On family, flutes and fairness

Some of my murdered daughter's flutes

Perhaps it's our grandchildren's recent interest in her musical instruments - recorder, guitar, flute. 

Or perhaps it is this past Shabbat family reunion and the impending Pesach gatherings - all without her.

Whatever it is, Malki's absence from our lives has been particularly oppressive of late.

And recent news from Jordan has intensified that. 

Ahlam Tamimi, the arrogant, unrepentant and boastful murderer of the fifteen Sbarro innocents - including Malki - has just broken her year-long silence.

With Tamimi's husband exiled in 2020 to Qatar by Jordanian King Abdullah, and with the fear of arrest by US authorities preventing her from joining him there, she has decided that silence has failed her.

Last week, in an interview ["My media silence is at an end, she warns", March 16, 2023 hosted by Facebook] with a Hamas-aligned TV station, Al-Quds News Network, she expressed (in Arabic) her displeasure with the king's handling of her situation. 

She says she is through with "keeping silent" and "staying away from the media" as she has been since her husband's deportation. She complains that her "good faith initiative" has not borne fruit. In response to the question of why she doesn't leave for Qatar she says "I am wanted by the Americans in a case filed in Washington courts since 2013".

She wallows in self-pity:

"We [she and husband] have spent many years in prison. It is our natural right to have family reunification by now... Nizar is a Jordanian husband... [he] did not violate any order or any legal and natural mechanism on Jordanian territory. He would always go and renew his residence every six months... Why is he an unwanted person?"

She even appears to single out Arnold and me as one of the 

"families of the two dead Americans [who] work systematically. They are members of the Zionist lobby in America who went to associations and went to AIPAC... They worked intensively and systematically to rearrest me. They formed pressure to periodically send the [U.S.] ambassador."

She concludes with a direct demand of the King: 

"I only need a decision from His Majesty the king to the concerned authorities in order to live a normal life with my husband, especially since when I was released in the "Wafaa al-Ahrar deal" [meaning the Gilad Shalit Deal]. I entered Jordan with the will and consent of my king."

A promo for last week's Quds interview with the fugitive

 

In another interview in the past few days, again with a Hamas-affiliated TV station - Al Aqsa - headquartered in Gaza [and also hosted by Facebook] her grumbling segues to blatant terrorist incitement.

She references the recent wave of attacks against Israelis:

"In light of the recent success of individual Palestinian heroes in carrying out heroic operations against the Zionist entity..." 

and concludes: 

"There should be a volcano and an earthquake in Palestine that is a popular uprising to confront... the enemy face to face. I call on the Palestinian people not only to hold pickets and not only to establish permanent points in order to support prisoners but to confront the enemy. The general Palestinian atmosphere is now calling for confrontation. The emotional and poetic situation now calls for confrontation."

Arnold and I hope that Tamimi's airing of her displeasure with Jordan's ruler along with her outright incitement to violence will lead to the scenario we have awaited for so long: her extradition by Jordan under its signed, ratified treaty with the US.

And my request to readers. Your forwarding of Tamimi's words will deepen the king's embarrassment. It may also prompt the White House to cease pandering to King Abdullah and to seriously pressure him to abide by the treaty his father signed and praised. 

Please help our cause and publicize Tamimi's messages!

On my birthday, thoughts of justice

Tamimi in Jordan last week: proud and remorseless 

March 14th is my birthday. 

Six years ago to the day, Arnold and I were invited to a meeting in Jerusalem with visiting officials from the United States Department of Justice in Washington - the DOJ. 

They informed us that the charges against Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer, would be unsealed in a matter of hours. 

We had no idea that she had been indicted by the US and the news reduced me to tears of joy. I felt I'd been handed a birthday present.

With time, I realized my reaction was utterly inappropriate. 

The DOJ's action would bear no fruit. The Jordanian ruler's refusal to extradite Tamimi to face trial in a US court would block the pursuit of justice. The murderer of our fifteen year old Malki, would evade punishment thanks to "the King's" rejection of the extradition treaty his own father signed and ratified.

Instead of justice, we have witnessed the brazen flouting of justice. 

We have watched the powerful, the influential and the self righteous of the world embrace and honor a ruler who persists in protecting a self-confessed mass murderer. 

Somehow, her public boasting and gloating of murdering fifteen innocent men, women and children does not move any of them.

Mysteriously, King Abdullah has won the hearts and minds of them all, be they Democrats, Republicans, Americans, Israelis, Jews or Gentiles.

It has left us suffering a pain that exacerbates the interminable grief of longing for Malki.

We intend to continue our efforts to convince the US government to stand firm. It is high time that the no-strings-attached friendship and financial aid lavished on Jordan be withheld until this king relinquishes Tamimi. 

We need a clear-headed re-assessment of Jordan's relationship with the U.S. The former is dependent on the latter and hence cannot dictate terms.

A reminder: The treaty that Abdullah is trashing is one which the U.S. officially deems valid to this day. It is also one with which Jordan has complied in the past. But that only happened when the victims of the crime were - no surprise - not Jewish.

 
Jewish American victims - which Malki was - also deserve justice.