Remembering Malki's Birthday

My daughter Malki was a talented

classical flautist. This photo is from 2000.

I imagine that few shared our reaction to the Hamas invasion of October 7.

While most were shocked and blind-sided by the horrors and cruelty inflicted on Israelis that day, we were somewhat prepared, having been introduced to Hamas barbarism a little over 22 years ago. 

During the years of the Second Intifada, between 2000 and 2005, Hamas along with Fatah and Islamic Jihad waged a campaign of heinous murders against innocents. Some 1,083 civilian Israelis, among them 124 children, perished.

True, the attacks were often several days apart and the numbers of Hamas invaders never neared the thousands who attacked us at once on last month's Black Shabbat.

But the planning, cunning and bloodthirst were identical.

Our precious Malki, who would have celebrated her 38th birthday today, perished in the Sbarro bombing of August 9, 2001.

Hamas' first female operative, Ahlam Tamimi, orchestrated that attack meticulously. She later boasted of her several preparatory visits to Jerusalem's city center to scout for a suitable target. 

She found that on summer afternoons, the Sbarro pizzeria at the major intersection of Jaffa and King George Streets met those criteria. She chose it as her target because it was frequented by "religious Jews," she told an interviewer from the Center for Near East Policy Research.

Hamas provided her with a "weapon" - another Hamas operative, ‘Izz Al-Din Al-Masri, carrying a guitar case containing a 10 kg. bomb riddled with nails and screws to intensify the injuries.

She escorted him through Jerusalem's streets to that intersection where she parted from him. Her last instructions to Al-Masri were to wait 15 minutes before detonating to allow her ample time to make a safe getaway.

And so, our precious angel - a generous, artistic, musically gifted girl - left this world along with six other children and nine adults.

 
Tamimi boasts of her "success" to this day from her refuge in Amman, Jordan. She has been protected there by King Abdullah II since her release in the now infamous Shalit Deal - the same one that freed Hamas' current chief Yahya Sinwar. 

She says she has never regretted what she did and that if given another chance she would do the same again ["Tamimi: I have never regretted what I have done", Ammon News (Jordan) October 23, 2011]

Malki was a U.S. citizen, as were two other Sbarro victims. Hence Tamimi was indicted under seal by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2013 (and unsealed in 2017). Her extradition has been demanded under a valid 1995 treaty of extradition between Jordan and the United States signed, ratified and lauded by Abdullah's father King Hussein.

 
Abdullah has thumbed his nose at the U.S. demand for extradition. Despite our tireless efforts, no one with power or influence is at all interested in tackling this travesty of justice. In 2022, President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ unwavering support to Jordan as a key ally and a force for peace in the region. In fact Abdullah is still referred to by the U.S. as its partner in the fight against terrorism.

Today, as is our custom, my husband and I intend to visit Malki's grave. With a son-in-law now fighting in Gaza against the very same Hamas that murdered the sister-in-law he never met, our world looks bleak indeed.

CNN, Hamas and the Queen of Jordan

Screen Capture via YouTube

Queen Rania - wife of Jordan's dictator - has become quite a fixture on CNN. Her apologetics for Hamas, while infuriating, ought to be heard by all.

It is important to realize that CNN is directly enabling Hamas in this war by repeatedly providing this woman with a platform. 

Couched in sacchariny words, a soft voice, a winning smile, Rania's hateful message sounds convincing. And it is clearly one that CNN's veteran presenter Becky Anderson and CNN itself welcome. They referred to it hours later and re-aired her choicest morsels. 

Just dismiss the facts as "insulting", "outrageous" and "audacious" and you're a star at CNN.

Here are just a few verbatim quotes I selected from her Hamas promo: "Hear what Queen Rania of Jordan said about Hamas and the 'root cause' of the conflict" [CNN, November 5, 2023]:

• "For the Israelis to claim that they are trying to protect citizens, citizens is, you know, honestly, it's an insult to one's intelligence. When 1.1 million people are asked to leave their homes or risk death, that is not a protection of civilians."
• "Of course, the use of human shields is criminal, but even if one side uses it, puts a civilian in harm's way, that civilian is still entitled to full protection under international humanitarian law... 
• "I find it really outrageous when Israeli officials audaciously dismiss Palestinian casualties as human shields."
• "If we want to make sure that we never have to be in this situation again, we have to ask ourselves how we got there."

How we got there? Needless to say, the barbaric atrocities of October 7 barely get a mention from Rania. For her, Israel alone is the culprit.

• "You know, I think the world is just screaming when how many more people have to die before our global conscience awakes? Or is it forever dormant when it comes to the Palestinians.."

Actually, the world is now screaming about the Palestinians. It's the Israeli victims who leave it unmoved.

So it should not surprise anyone that the kingdom headed by this royal couple is harboring an active Hamas operative, Ahlam Tamimi, who, in 2001 murdered 16 innocents in a Jerusalem pizzeria. The US Department of Justice unsealed charges against her in March 2017.

Our child, Malki, was one of the eight children among her victims. 

Jordan's refusal to extradite Tamimi under a valid 1995 extradition treaty with the U.S. is a clear indication of where its sympathies lie. Hamas could not ask for a more effective spokesperson than Rania.

Bear in mind that she, alongside her husband, rules a state that is considered a close ally of the U.S. and enjoys its largesse of more than a billion and a half dollars annually from American taxpayers.

Isn't now the time for the U.S. State Department to end this charade of "shared ideals" with Jordan - a blatant Hamas supporter?

Appeasement: Gaza, Jordan and my child's killer

Ahlam Tamimi has been an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist since March 2017

[A version of this post was published by Times of Israel under the title "Jordan, the Hamas terrorist it harbors – and Gaza" on November 2, 2023]

The red flags were everywhere. 

That is irrefutable. Journalists, starting with the intrepid Zvi Yechekieli and Ohad Chamu, now replay the chilling footage of and by Hamas which they disseminated on Israeli news stations prior to October 7. Sometimes many years before.

They are as stunned as we all are that those red flags were ignored.

The recent expose ["How Years of Israeli Failures on Hamas Led to a Devastating Attack", Ronen Bergman, Mark Mazzetti and Maria Abi-Habib, New York Times, October 29, 2023] cites myriad other unheeded alarm bells sounded for years by experts on Hamas.

Instead a policy of appeasement was pursued by our leaders.

Hamas was deemed both a weak movement and the lesser of any other evils liable to fill a void left by its eradication. 

Image Source: AP

So confident were Israel's leaders in our superior capabilities that one year ago we stopped eavesdropping on Hamas' internal phone  conversations. It was assessed to be a waste of time and resources.

Had that eavesdropping continued, October 7 would not have happened.

Even among Israel's masses, warnings about Hamas were sounded.  

My husband and I were among those who took up the cudgel after suffering from Hamas' blood-thirst two decades ago. [See for instance "In Israel, Swap Touches Old Wounds", Ethan Bronner in the New York Times, October 14, 2011] 

In the Sbarro massacre of August 9, 2001, Hamas robbed us of our child, Malki.

Eight children were among the 16 victims. That was, for Jerusalem, the equivalent of New York suffering 170 victims based on today's population figures. 

The Hamas operative who orchestrated that bombing, Ahlam Tamimi, selected her target after carefully scouting the Jerusalem city center. In her testimony to Israeli law enforcement officials, she explained that she chose a business and hour when the site would be laden with religious Jewish women and children. 

We pleaded with then-prime-minister Netanyahu not to release this particularly evil murderer in the Shalit Deal which he ultimately carried out at the urging of his wife, Sara (as he later revealed in a published interview with a German magazine.) 

The 12th anniversary of that infamous "deal" was marked two weeks ago and prompted a scathing piece by Nadav Shragai in the Hebrew daily Yisrael Hayom on October 19, 2023, summarizing its background and its consequences. See אם כל חטאת (ב'): המחיר הבלתי נסבל של עסקת שליט

Tamimi was freed along with 1,026 other terrorists, hundreds of whom were convicted murderers and most of whom were sent to the West Bank. Tamimi herself went to Jordan, where she was born, raised and educated. Most of her immediate family is from there.

Many of those let loose in the Shalit Deal are today central figures in Hamas' elite, with one, Yahya Sinwar at its helm. Another releasee, Ali Karachi, oversaw the October 7 horrors. Overall, more than half of those freed in the Shalit Deal returned to terrorism shortly afterwards.

Source: Yisrael Hayom

As Shragai details, caving in to the Israeli consensus and ignoring the warnings of experts was a catastrophic move by Netanyahu and his cabinet. (Out of 29, only 3 dissented.) 

It lay the groundwork for numerous subsequent Hamas terror attacks including the October 7 massacres and kidnappings.

Because our Malki, along with another Sbarro victim, was a US citizen, charges against Tamimi were unsealed and announced by the Justice Department of the United States in March 2017. (They had been sealed, meaning kept secret, since being signed off by a federal judge in July 2013.) 

A third American victim died years after the bombing, having never regained consciousness, on May 31, 2023.

King Abdullah II's regime has refused to comply with the US demand to extradite her. It has been intransigent in its non compliance despite a treaty signed and ratified by both countries in 1995 and recognized as valid by the US.

We have been beseeching the State Department to pressure Jordan to comply. But to no avail.

Not even American Jewish leaders have raised their voices to urge her extradition, despite our repeated pleas to them.

And we have learned from unnamed sources, that the Israeli government as well, has been opposed to pressuring Jordan to extradite her.

We are baffled.

Today, when Israel is risking the lives of its precious young soldiers to eradicate the existential threat of Hamas, one active operative, Tamimi, is free and safe in the arms of the US "ally", Jordan.

As a brazen vocal inciter to violence against Israel, Tamimi is as dangerous a terrorist as those Israel is fighting in Gaza. Yet she can be easily silenced without any loss of life. A mere unequivocal demand (threat?) to King Abdullah, and the deed is done.

Why, six years after her indictment, must we still wait?