Unlike most countries in the Middle East, Jordan has diplomatic relations with Israel and allows Israeli citizens to enter its borders. Jordanian law, however, prohibits Jews from becoming citizens or owning property. A handful of Jewish students and aid workers do currently live there, but they keep their Jewishness secret. Avi Lewis writes about their lives:
Jordanian society has a peculiar attitude when it comes to Jews. Walking through Amman, one can find copies of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, translated into Arabic and proudly adorning the windows of bookstores and street newspaper vendors. . . .
Moshe Silverman [a pseudonym] . . . encountered overt anti-Semitism—not directed at him specifically but as a general antipathy to Jews that engendered a sort of camaraderie among people as it unified them in acrimony toward Jews. . . .
Silverman related a conversation he took part in at the local gym, which he visited regularly. He and the gym owner had become quite close, trading jokes and spotting one another at the lifting station. “One day I asked him what would happen if he saw that a Jew had joined his gym . . . ,” Silverman told me.
“He responded that, ‘if I meet a Jew in the gym, I will drag him out into the street and beat him to a pulp’—and he said it in such a friendly way, as if this was a perfectly normal thing to say.”
Read more on Times of Israel: http://www.timesofisrael.com/dodging-swastikas-and-israel-hate-jordans-secret-jews-slip-beneath-the-radar