9/11 and me

Today, many of us are answering the question "Where were you when you heard of the 9/11 terror attacks?"

Like most others, news of the crash into the North Tower reached me without the slightest suspicion it was anything more than a horrific aviation catastrophe. I was seated in a grief therapist's office and after he saw the headline on his phone, we were shocked together.

We then proceeded with our conversation intended to help me grapple with another terror attack, one that had turned my life inside out just a month earlier: the August 9, 2001 massacre at the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria.

A newsagency photo of my daughter Malki's grave

on the day we buried her [Image Source]

My fifteen year old daughter Malki perished there that afternoon and the therapist was trying to comfort me. 

Without much success. 

I remember his references - about once in every session - to grieving wild animals who curl up and isolate from their herds or packs when they lose a child.

By the time I emerged onto the hot and sunny Jerusalem streets in the late afternoon, the news of the attacks in New York and Washington had crystalized. What I learned was they were being attributed to Islamic terrorists. 

I was struck at how the identical evil targeting Israel for the past year had now also reached America. New York is my birthplace and had been my home until the age of 22. 

The sense of helplessness before a powerful and merciless enemy was overwhelming.

Twenty years later, the grief, both personal and collective remains terribly raw. 

And that helplessness, mostly unchanged.

On making terrorists pay the price and other questions for the President

The Jordanian royals on the day they were hosted in the Oval Office

We're in the hours leading up to Rosh Hashana, the start of the High Holydays season in Jewish life and the start of a new year according to the lunar calendar of the Jewish people.

It's an appropriate time to mention what President Biden expressed in the wake of the August 26, 2021 atrocity carried out at Kabul's airport in Afghanistan. 

Speaking after what he called “a tough day”, he said the United States would uphold its “sacred obligation” to the families of the fallen. Quoted in the New York Times, President Biden sounded unequivocally determined:

“To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive,” the president said. “We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” ...He vowed the United States would respond with force at “a moment of our choosing,” echoing President Bush’s remarks days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

President Biden, here's what I am wondering. Why isn't the mass-murdering terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, the one whose bomb took the life of fifteen innocents inside a pizzeria including my sweet daughter Malki, being made to "pay the price". 

Seven men and women and eight children perished in Tamimi's 2001 attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. Two of her victims were Americans including Malki who was just fifteen.

Bringing Tamimi to justice ought to be surprisingly straightforward. There is no need to "hunt her down" in your words; her whereabouts are known to all, or at least everyone who needs to know which includes the law enforcement agencies of the United States government. 

But here's the thing. Tamimi, who has never denied what she did, lives as a protected celebrity in Amman, Jordan's capital city. To judge from the number of media interviews she has given, her precise home address is a matter of public knowledge. 

And it gets even easier: there is an extradition treaty that was signed and ratified by the US and Jordan in 1995 and that is regarded as valid by the State Department. 

What's more, her extradition to stand trial in the US has already been demanded over and again by the Department of Justice, starting - according to well-placed sources - in 2013, more than eight years ago.

Eight years. 

So you and anyone reading this may ask why it is that Tamimi hasn't already been made to "pay the price"? Why is she still free, influential, a Jordanian icon?

And here too the answer is not complicated. It is because the White House and the State Department are afraid to upset Jordan's King Abdullah. They have accepted his refusal to comply with their extradition demand without the slightest whimper. 

King Abdullah, the unelected ruler of a small, impoverished country which has received billions of dollars in US aid for years, gets to dictate the rules: No extradition. 

And you, Mr President - who talks so tough to the Kabul airport terrorists - have no tough words for King Abdullah. Only reverence for "His Majesty". 

And, of course, more cash.