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?

Where does Speaker McCarthy stand on US justice?

US Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy
with Jordan's King Abdulla II and Crown Prince Hussein [Image Source]

As U.S. Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, addresses Israel's Knesset today, it would be apt to note whom he visited just prior to that event - King Abdullah of Jordan. 

As is obvious from the photo on the right, to call it a warm encounter is an understatement. It is also very disturbing.

Saturday's get-together came on the heels of a recent meeting the two had in Washington D.C. in January. At that tête-à-tête, McCarty lavished this praise on his buddy:

“From my perspective, our relationship, our friendship and your work to bring peace is just integral to where we go in the Middle East.”

Lest anyone imagine McCarthy challenged Abdullah on either occasion regarding any of his positions, the following press release by Jordan's monarchy left no doubt that did not happen:

McCarthy said, "Jordan is the very first country I chose to visit as Speaker. There’s a reason for that. They are a strategic ally in the Middle East and share America’s commitment to peace, prosperity — and most importantly — stability in the region." [Times of Israel, April 30, 2023]

Apparently McCarthy is not at all troubled by Jordan's harboring of a self-confessed Hamas terrorist who also happens to be a fugitive from the U.S. Dept of Justice. She is none other than Ahlam Tamimi, who murdered 15 men, women and children in the Jerusalem Sbarro bombing of 2001 which she orchestrated. Among the innocent victims was my child, Malki.

McCarthy's "love affair" with Abdullah is unfazed by that ruler's refusal to accede to the U.S. demand for her extradition and for justice to be done. It was made in 2017 under the 1995 treaty which Abdullah's father King Hussein enthusiastically signed, ratified and publicized.

Speaker McCarthy, tell us please: How does that reflect that Abdullah "share[s] America's commitment to peace, prosperity - and most importantly -stability in the region."

It is high time McCarthy made his devotion to Abdullah contingent on handing over Tamimi to the U.S. to stand trial for her murder of two U.S. citizens - one of them, Malki.

Because, really, justice absolutely ought to be "integral to where we go in the Middle East".

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!

The deception of a harsh sentence

Tamimi, my child's killer, presenting her made-in-Jordan

terror-promoting television show in 2016

Today Muhammad Mruh Kabha, the murderer of Esther Horgen HY"D, a 53 year old Israel mother of six, was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The Times of Israel report quotes the startling words of the court in handing down its decision: “This is a case that shocks the soul... an inconceivable evil.”

I suppose many who learned of the outcome were satisfied that justice was done. 

Some critical voices noted the fortune that the convicted killer's family now stands to amass thanks to the Palestinian Authority's "Pay For Slay" program. 

The Horgen family's lawyer, Maurice Hirsch, is quoted saying

During the life of this vile killer in prison, he will earn over NIS 4 million from the Palestinian Authority. He will enjoy it, his family will enjoy these funds, the Palestinian Authority will rebuild his destroyed house. And the Israeli government is doing nothing. The court has gone a long way this morning... but it is not enough.”

But no mention was made of Israel's past - and ongoing - readiness to release convicted murderers in lopsided swaps like the 2011 Shalit Deal ["Ten lessons the Shalit deal taught us"]. 

There was also no mention of Israel's shameful embrace of rulers who actually protect the murderers of innocent Israelis who have walked free in the course of such despicable deals.

.
I refer, of course, to the case of my child's murderer: Ahlam Tamimi, the main orchestrator of the infamous 2001 Sbarro terrorist bombing in which 15 adults and children perished. One of them, my daughter Malki, was 15.

The terrorist convicted today is probably as confident as Tamimi was back then that he will not die in prison. During Tamimi's own relatively brief imprisonment in Israel she declared in multiple interviews "I will be free!"

And so she was. 

In 2011, Tamimi, along with 1,026 other terrorists including several hundred murderers, indeed walked free. Many of them had been sentenced to life imprisonment. Tamimi was sentenced to 16 life terms. And to our horror walked free after just eight years.

Tamimi today remains free and active, shielded by Jordan's absolute ruler King Abdullah II who declines to submit to U.S. demands for her extradition  despite there being a valid 1995 treaty for that purpose signed and ratified by his own father, the late King Hussein, with the Bill Clinton administration.

 
The understanding my husband and I have, based on conversations with senior officials in two United States administrations, is that Israel is unwilling to see Jordan's king put at risk by handing Tamimi - one of only two women on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list (a total of 25 are currently on it) - over to U.S. justice and law enforcement. 

We have also seen signs that Israel has conveyed to the leaders of major American Jewish organizations that a Tamimi extradition to Washington is a topic they want to leave utterly unmentioned. Its best-buddies relationship with Abdullah is deemed too valuable to be undermined by such pressure for justice.

As we prepare for another seder without our precious Malki at the table, Arnold and I are confronted by a wall of shunning and silence from almost every leader we approach on the Tamimi issue: American, Israeli, right-wing, left-wing, Democrat, Republican, Jewish and non-Jewish.

Having already experienced "inconceivable evil" from our enemies, we have learned to our sorrow that even what our own leaders do can simply shock the soul.

Five years and justice is as elusive as ever

Sbarro bomber Ahlam Tamimi continues to incite terror under Jordanian
protection [Image: Frimet and Arnold Roth’s blog, This Ongoing War]

Once again, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has cast his spell on yet another world leader. Whether it is his glibness, the impressive English, his seamless melding of East and West, it really hardly matters. He always gets what he is after.

Last week it was Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid who met with him. The public was told that the encounter was intended to reduce the likelihood of violence during the impending holiday season.

It was the second meeting the two had since the new Israeli government was formed last June. And since Jordan deigned to publicize this one – after keeping the first a secret – it was hailed by Israel’s media as a great success.

“We agreed that we must work together to calm tensions and promote understanding, particularly in the lead-up to the month of Ramadan and Passover,” Lapid said in a statement after the meeting at the Al Husseiniya Palace. “Our special relationship with the Kingdom of Jordan ensures a better future for our children, and the peace between us isn’t just good neighborliness but is also our moral responsibility to both our peoples.”

Mr. Lapid, I am both heartbroken and infuriated by your meeting last week with Jordan’s ruler. If moral responsibility is really your concern, why did you not mention to your “good neighbor” his immoral conduct towards my child’s murderer?

Why did you, and do you, consistently ignore how this leader with whom you boast of a “special relationship” refuses to abide by the kingdom’s extradition treaty with the US?

That he steadfastly rejects the U.S. demand to extradite the self-confessed mass-murderer who is one of the 25 most wanted terrorists in the world?

Our child’s blood, along with that of the fourteen other innocent victims of Tamimi’s treacherous attack on Israeli soil cries out for justice.

Lapid and Jordan's king this past weekend

[Image Source]

But you, Mr. Lapid, see fit to sing kumbaya with the one man who can hand Tamimi into the hands of the U.S. Department of Justice.

Five years ago today, on my birthday as it happens, officials of that same arm of the U.S. government met with my husband and me along with the parents of another U.S. citizen murdered by Tamimi to disclose that criminal charges against her were about to be unsealed.

They came to share this with us before the public announcement at a press conference scheduled for several hours later. I shed tears of relief then in the naive belief that the move signaled an end to Tamimi’s years of frolic since she was freed in the Shalit Deal five and a half years earlier: an end to Tamimi’s celebration of murder and to her incitement of others to emulate what she did.

The conduct of leaders both in the U.S. and Israel since that day has taught me that my belief in their sense of “moral responsibility”, to quote Mr. Lapid, was entirely unfounded. Realpolitik and personal advancement are what motivate them.

And so, my dear Malki, I am sorry but one more year has passed with your murderer still free, still protected, still unrestrained.

[A version of this post initially appeared in Times of Israel]

Nothing, not even justice, trumps politics

Israel's Defense Minister Gantz meets in Amman with Jordan's king 

on Jan. 5, 2022 [Image Source: The Royal Hashemite Court, Jordan]

An Israeli military court this week handed down two life sentences to a Palestinian Arab with US citizenship who carried out a drive-by shooting attack at Tapuah Junction on May 2, 2021.

Firing on three students standing at a bus stop, he killed 19-year-old Yehuda Guetta and injured two others. 

He was convicted by the Ofer Military Court last August on charges of intentional manslaughter, several counts of attempted intentional manslaughter, and possession of a weapon and obstruction of justice ["Palestinian-American gets two life sentences for deadly West Bank terror attack", Times of Israel, January 5, 2022]. 

The court called the gunman's actions premeditated, “cruel and coldblooded”, found that he had been training for it for at least a month and that it stemmed from a “burning hatred and a desire to murder Jews”. 

The panel of judges ruled that he serve one life sentence for the killing Guetta, and another for the attempted murder of the companions standing with him at the bus stop and injured in the attack.

But hold off rejoicing over justice achieved. Just remember what our government has done to other murderers serving multiple life sentences. 

Take for instance Ahlam Tamimi whose victims were 15 innocent Jewish men, women and children, most of them Israeli and including my 15 year old daughter Malki. 

Tamimi, who admitted to all the charges stemming from the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001, was freed in the Shalit Deal of 2011. Since then she has lived the charmed life of a self-confessed, proud mass-murderer and media celebrity. She has travelled the Arab world inciting her fans to terrorism.

Tamimi speaks via video link to an Islamist symposium

for girls in Turkey, October 2021

Tamimi had also been sentenced in the very same military court - Ofer - to multiple life terms: sixteen of them, no less! In dramatic language, the panel of judges added their advice to the government of Israel that Tamimi never be freed in any future deal. 

That sentence and the judicial recommendation - along with the desperate pleas of my husband and me not to include our child's murderer in the swap - were disregarded by Israel's prime minister at the time, Binyamin Netanyahu.  

To add insult to injury, the absolute ruler who is protecting Tamimi from extradition to the US - Jordan's King Abdullah II - has now made it onto Israel's list of best buddies. Tamimi faces federal terrorism charges in Washington under US law ["Why is Ahlam Tamimi still free, 19 years after the Sbarro bombing?", Jerusalem Post, Aug. 12, 2020]. 

On Wednesday of this week, our Minister of Defense, Benny Gantz, met with him for  

a rare public sit-down with the monarch, discussing shared security and diplomatic concerns, Gantz’s office said. This was the second meeting between Abdullah and Gantz in the past year, with the first happening secretly last February... [Times of Israel, January 5, 2022]

Terror charges against Tamimi were unsealed

in Washington on March 14, 2017 [Source: DOJ/FBI]

Secretly, of course, at the king's insistence because so many of his constituents hate Israel so much that news of these meetings would rile them. As an Israeli news report put it,

The secrecy around these meetings typically comes at the request of the Jordanian government, with much of the population opposing the country maintaining close ties with Israel.

We can be certain that the defense minister did not mention the king's unwavering refusal to comply with the US Department of Justice's demand for Tamimi's extradition. And that Jordan's refusal contravenes a valid extradition treaty the US and the Hashemite Kingdom signed and ratified in 1995.

In fact, according to unnamed sources, Israel has urged American-Jewish leaders to refrain from pressuring either side to bring Tamimi to justice in the US. 

Instead, we were subjected today to the praise our defense minister reportedly lavished on Jordan's dictator: 

Gantz highlighted “the strategic importance of strong and enduring relations between Israel and Jordan, which contribute to the security and prosperity of both nations” according to a statement released by his office.

And to hell with justice for murderers of Jewish children.

It's my murdered child's birthday

Today, November 27, my precious daughter Malki would have turned 36. 

If only she hadn't stopped with a friend at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on her way to a summer camp counselors' meeting. 

If only the evil Ahlam Tamimi had been arrested on her way to that target to satisfy her bloodlust. 

If only Tamimi hadn't succeeded by bombing to death 15 innocent Jews. 

If only our worst nightmare hadn't eventuated. 

If only, if only...

But the reality is my angelic, generous, musical and loving daughter is gone while Tamimi is alive and free, enabled by the world's silence to boast publicly about her "accomplishment" and to urge others to emulate her.

She did just that some six weeks ago in a video address to Turkish children that has gone unreported in the news.

Among her words to them: 

"I participated in two jihad attacks which produced thank the lord, the deaths of 15 Zionists... These 2 jihad attacks are a crown on my head. Thank god, I entered history doing the best deeds."

This dangerous monster lives under the protection of Jordan's King Abdullah II who persists in defying the United States' demand for extradition. 

His widely revered father, the late King Hussein, signed an extradition treaty with the US in 1995. Jordan gave formal assurances to the US prior to it being put into effect that all Jordanian formalities had been satisfied. The US says today that the treaty is in full force and effect. Jordan makes no formal statement about this but conveys in a variety of ways that it views the treaty as invalid due to a decision of its highest court in 2017, twenty-two years after the treaty took effect. 

Despite his recalcitrance, Abdullah somehow still garners the adulation of powerbrokers across the globe while Jordan annually receives US aid amounting to billions of dollars.

And all the while, Tamimi, one of only two females listed among the FBI's 25 Most Wanted Terrorists, lives free and famous in Jordan.

When will this brazen injustice be rectified!

Pandora Papers: How has Jordan's Abdullah ridden out the storm?

Image Source: The Guardian UK

It is one month since the release of the Pandora Papers: "A Money Bomb with Political Ripples", the New York Times dubbed them at the time. Other major papers gave the revelations wide coverage.

Major political repercussions were predicted by the pundits. And despite my now deep-seated cynicism, I too entertained a smidgeon of hope for our mission, Justice For Malki. 

Could it be that Jordan's king, star of those papers ["While foreign aid poured in, Jordan’s King Abdullah funnelled $100m through secret companies to buy luxury homes"], whose name opened nearly every article covering them, would actually lose some of his magic?

In its October 4, 2021 piece, the New York Times quoted Gary Kalman, director of the U.S office of Transparency International, an organization that monitors financial corruption around the world.

“I don’t think this is the end of Vladimir Putin — let’s not get carried away,” said Gary Kalman, director of the U.S. office of Transparency International, an organization that monitors financial corruption around the world. “But I do think the leaders of these countries, King Abdullah and others, do worry about their reputations,” Mr. Kalman said​ in a telephone interview.

Kalman went on:

For King Abdullah especially, he said, Jordanians now know “he has spent money on properties in Malibu and Georgetown, while in Jordan they don’t have enough money to provide basic services. That looks really bad.”

But not bad enough. A month down the road from Pandora's revelations, Jordan's dictator still has in his thrall powerbrokers of every persuasion imaginable: on both sides of the Congressional aisle, of all religions, and residing on several continents.

Arnold and I and our small circle of supporters are puzzled and perturbed by the global tolerance of Abdullah's documented corruption. 

The silence of the US government after Jordan's steadfast refusal to comply with its demand of Ahlam Tamimi's extradition is incomprehensible. 

The State Department's limp statement that the extradition treaty between Jordan and the U.S. - which Jordan declares void - is valid, is disappointing. 

The refusal of American Jewish and Israeli leaders to speak out and pressure Jordan to extradite her is beyond despicable. And the silence they toss us - or worse, their occasional empty, cliched words of sympathy - are offensive.

Our Malki, still so missed and loved, would have been 35 this month. It is a puzzle to me why so many callous people have managed to attain such influence and power and in so many spheres. And why those people choose warm relations with a dictator who shelters a mass murderer over fighting for justice.

Forgetting justice: On Jordan and my child's killer

September 15, 2021 in a NYC hotel: Jordan's king hosts some of America's

most prominent Jewish leaders in an off-the-record gathering - again [Image Source]

It is hard to select only one major recent headline that dovetailed with our ongoing pursuit of justice for our child, Malki. 

Specifically, we seek the extradition from Jordan of the confessed female bomber charged by the US Department of Justice as the terrorist behind the massacre. 

There have been just so many. While I was consumed with recent holiday cooking, doting on grandchildren and coping with the challenges of my daughter Haya, those incredible news breaks just piled up.

First came the annual "King-Worship Gala". This is when the presidents of major US Jewish organizations are invited to an event centering on a speech by King Abdullah II of Jordan in a New York City hotel banquet room. And which they never fail to attend. As is traditional in these encounters, the sycophantic participants were instructed by the host and the officials who run his Washington embassy to hold secret every word uttered at the event. And to keep the event itself confidential.

They dictate that the meeting is "off the record" but that's a royal euphemism. This year's gathering, held as usual during September in the week of the annual United Nations General Assembly opening, was promptly reported via a Royal Jordanian media release.

And reported in a very specific way. The Jordanian media promptly publicized his version of the conversations illustrated with photos of those leaders assiduously scribbling notes of his precious words.

The Jewish attendees, as always, were obedient guests, divulging (as my husband and know from experience) nothing. Not even a public acknowledgement of having been there. A sorry bunch of self deluding king worshippers they are.

Second, there was the extradition to the US of a terrorist from Syria - a Saudi-born Canadian citizen, Mohammed Khalifa. Now in FBI custody, he is charged with supplying material terrorism support via his English voice-overs of ISIS films and of being a combatant.

Meanwhile Ahlam Tamimi, self-confessed brutal mass-murderer of patrons in a bustling eatery - some of them Americans including our Malki - enjoys a life of celebrity and freedom. 

Tamimi's crimes undoubtedly eclipse those of Khalifa. She orchestrated the horrific terror bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 by scouting for and then selecting that family-friendly site, transporting the 10 kg bomb, escorting her accomplice across the city to the entrance of the restaurant and instructing him on how and when to detonate the nail-enhanced device. Khalifa, on the other hand, worked for the media unit that publicized and exploited the killings of hostages.

When will the relevant authorities see to it that our child's murderer follow the same route as Mohammed Khalifa and stand trial as well?

The US State Department has acknowledged - but barely and very quietly - Jordan's refusal to extradite Tamimi in breach of a 1995 treaty that State itself says is valid. Senior officials assured us this past week - and as emphatically as always - that the unresolved extradition of Tamimi from her homeland, Jordan, remains as it has been for years a top priority.

When a matter enjoys that status for a decade with no progress whatever, it is clear either that the claim is bunk or that the "top priority" label just won't cut it.

Yesterday, in the week of the tenth anniversary of her release from Israeli prison in the lopsided Shalit Deal, an Arabic-language Facebook article showed a woman who looks somewhat like Tamimi being a guest of honor at a Jordanian girls school. The text that accompanies it mentions both Tamimi explicitly and the Shalit Deal in an adulatory way.  [I am checking whether it was Tamimi herself who appeared and spoke and will update here when I have a clearer picture.]

Last, but not at all least, was the gift that keeps giving: the headline that remains on center stage even a fortnight after the story broke. The Pandora Papers look primed to harm numerous leaders and celebrities but every article covering them highlights King Abdullah's shenanigans. 

"Jordan’s King Among Leaders Accused of Amassing Secret Property Empire" began the New York Times Pandora piece of October 3, 2021, before launching an account of luxury homes in Malibu, London and Washington.

It was inexpressibly satisfying to read that the darling of the American right and left, of Democrats and Republicans, of conservatives and progressives, of American and Israeli politicians, of liberal and religious Jews was, in fact, just another thief, albeit with a British accent.

 
The question now dogging Arnold and me is this: Will the dictator's embezzlement of his poor constituents' cash tarnish his stellar image? To put numbers on that, within 3 months of the pandemic's outbreak, the poverty rate in Jordan leapt from 15% to 26%. Unemployment rose five points, reaching 24.7% by the end of 2020.

Will the exposé reduce the billions in financial aid his kingdom pockets every year from the United States. Tiny Jordan has for years been one of the world's largest recipients of such funds. It's currently ranked number two.

From Haaretz, October 19, 2011

I find myself hoping at this point that some, at least, of the above penetrates the hearts and minds of the powers that be (they know who they are) who refuse to help us win justice for Malki and in many cases actively block the process. 

As we near the anniversary of her murderer's release, let's remember what a fiasco the Shalit Deal was. For my views at the time, not so different today, see "Shalit Prisoner Swap Marks 'Colossal Failure' for Mother of Israeli Bombing Victim" in Haaretz, October 2011 .

One of the deal's outspoken proponents, Nehemia Shtrassler, who writes on economics at Haaretz, was forced to dredge up ridiculous defenses this past weekend ["Opinion | Israel Must Do Everything to Bring Soldiers Home"]. One is that past leaders who refused to release terrorists with blood on their hands had blood on their own hands - since they had waged wars! And another: that releasing dangerous terrorists isn't all that bad because there's an unlimited supply of them out there. So imprisoning the captured ones won't prevent terror attacks in any case! 

Of course applying that "logic" to its conclusion would mean emptying all our prisons. And just forgetting justice.

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.

Pompeo, justice and betrayal

What we published last November

I promised to prove that our struggle is apolitical. 

My last post [Fear Uncertainty and Doubt at the State Department, August 9, 2021] lambasted the U.S. State Department, and especially Secretary Antony J. Blinken, for honoring - no, idolizing - Jordan's ruler King Abdullah II during his recent visit to DC and a full day at the State Department. 

It noted State's omission of Abdullah's refusal to extradite mass murderer Ahlam Tamimi despite the US Department of Justice's demand he do so. Our daughter Malki was murdered in the bombing she orchestrated and for which she has claimed credit for years.

Many readers have critiqued my husband Arnold Roth and me for "squandering" the "golden opportunity" that ex-President Trump's administration offered us. They insist that had we approached him and his team in some other, better way, Tamimi would now be in US custody.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is we made strong and repeated attempts to reach out to them right through the Trump years. All of this effort was in vain.

Here below is a summary of the pleas we directed specifically at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as it appeared in the blog we have produced together for the past fifteen years. The blog is called This Ongoing War and we published this post which was authored by Arnold, nine months ago. 

We published it at the time because we felt it important to let people know we had tried, and failed again totally for the last time, to get Pompeo's attention. From the reactions we're hearing now. it failed to be seen or understood widely enough.

19-Nov-20: Putting justice back on the agenda

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement in a mainstream newspaper: today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message appears on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18). 

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (the Biblical book called Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the Jewish world's annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. 

That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside. 

Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who arrived from her homeland alone, soon joined Fatah. And then, in June 2001 and aged 21, she switched to Hamas. She was evidently in search of something and found it that summer: the opportunity to kill Jews on a satisfyingly large scale. It was an opportunity she grabbed.

On the morning of July 27, 2001, a Friday, Tamimi carried a smallish made-by-Hamas bomb embedded inside a beer can and surreptitiously placed it on a shelf in what was then a Co-op Supermarket. This was located in the basement of a building on Jerusalem’s King George Street that locals knew as Hamashbir. It's an office building today with some shops at street level. She quickly left the scene.

The bomb fizzed with no serious damage except to the ambitious bomber’s pride. 

By her own account, she raged in fury at her Hamas handlers right afterwards and demanded something much larger. She got it ten days later: a diabolical exploding guitar case and a young religious fanatic eager to carry it on his back into whatever target Tamimi chose.

Tamimi scoured Jerusalem and chose Sbarro. The busy pizzeria with the good hashgacha (certificate of being kosher) was popular among religiously observant youngsters like Malki. Tamimi has for years wanted it to be known that her choice was based on the large number of Jewish children reliably inside at that hour. We don't know why this single fact does not lead every report ever published about this exceptionally cold-blooded murdering Islamist. It should.

Mostly behind the scenes, we have pressed the United States to insist Jordan extradites Tamimi since 2012. She has faced serious federal terror charges since they were unsealed by a team of senior department of Justice officials in a public event in March 2017. They had been issued secretly by a judge four years earlier.

This evidently was known to the senior members of Jordan’s political and royal power structure. That’s because secret – and entirely unsuccessful - efforts were made by high-level American officials for several years to persuade Jordan to hand Tamimi over to the FBI. They knew Tamimi was charged even before we (or even the US Congress) did. And to be clear about this central element: there's been an active and totally valid treaty between Jordan and the US since 1995 for the extradition of fugitives like Tamimi. The State Department said nothing for years about the way Jordan breaches that treaty in the Tamimi case (though not in other cases). It started being open and explicit about it late last year ["03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice"]

Why should US charges and American justice even enter the Tamimi story? 

The simple answer: Because Malki had American citizenship via her New York-born mother. And there’s an American law that gives it the right and the obligation to go after terrorists who kill American nationals outside the territorial United States. Once taken into custody, the fugitive terrorist can be flown to the US and tried in a US court under US law. It’s what ought to have happened to Tamimi.

But first the FBI has to get its hands on the fugitive terrorist. 

The good news is the US and Jordan signed a treaty to facilitate extradition in both directions. That was in 1995, and in the years that followed extraditions were carried out on request just as the treaty stipulated. But something about the Tamimi case made it different for the Jordanians. They started refusing as soon as the requests arrived and have continued refusing right up until today [see "16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world"]. The US has made clear its view that Jordan is wrong,

Tamimi not only lives in complete freedom under the patronage of the Jordanian government but has become a media celebrity there and in large parts of the Arab world. The details are chilling - almost beyond comprehension.

Our Jerusalem Post ad is a call to action to the Trump administration and specifically to its Secretary of State. There’s no political dimension to it - just a call to compel Jordan to abide by a bilateral treaty to which it is a party. And for pure and simple justice to be done.

We have made repeated efforts to recruit politicians to give our campaign some clout but they have borne no fruit. And it’s not that we’re on the wrong side of politics because we’re not on any side.

It’s also not that people actually refuse our request or argue with us or give us cogent reasons why Tamimi ought to be left alone. That’s of course not true about Jordan. There its media, some of its public officials and citizens enthusiastically stand with her.

What mostly happens is we’re ignored. Many of those we approach don’t return our calls or emails or look right through us if we happen to be speaking face to face.

How likely is it that this time will be different? Hard to know but it doesn’t matter to us. Tzedek tzedek tirdof, as the scripture says. Justice, justice though shalt pursue.

That’s our role.

We’re not alone. As our ad says, we have a petition (here - and it's not too late to sign if you haven't already). Thousands of people from everywhere – a not insignificant number of them from Arab countries and even from Jordan – have signed. Their support encourages and empowers us.

“Secretary Pompeo, it’s not too late to act” reads our banner headline. “We ask that you do what needs to be done so that Tamimi is at last brought to justice in Washington.”

Next week, after the American visitor leaves, we will go, just the two of us, to Malki’s grave. We do that every year on her birthday. This next time, we are going to have to deal with the reality that she would have become 35 years old that day - but instead she was ripped from our grasp and will not come back. 

We remember her precious life when we get together with our children and grandchildren. And we feel gratified and proud when we look at the exceptional work done daily by the Malki Foundation, the charitable organization that for the past nineteen years has served as a non-sectarian memorial to Malki's short but remarkably impactful life.

And at night when we dream that she is alive and hug her lovingly.

Secretaries of State come and go as do ambassadors and presidents, prime ministers and kings. What never goes away is the absolute need to keep justice at the center of our lives as families and as a society. Our advertisement comes to deliver that message to the breakfast table of movers and shakers as well as to the hearts of ordinary people everywhere.

UPDATE December 5, 2020: Not a word of media comment from any of the many reporters traveling with the Secretary of State. And no response from Secretary of State Pompeo or any of his spokespeople, advisers or assistants.

So, for the record: Label us apolitical. Or at least non-partisan.

Here below is our paid Jerusalem Post front page advertisement, the one that Pompeo's entire retinue and the Great Man himself have ignored totally from November 18, 2020 until right up to this morning.

Click to see it larger. 

Fear Uncertainty and Doubt at the State Department

Malki z"l

Words cannot convey the enormity of a 20th anniversary of the massacre that took our child's life. 

Instead I'll take this opportunity to focus on the ongoing travesty of justice which we are endeavoring to correct. And rather than restate it in detail, I'll home in on the U.S. State Department's current stance.

That Department has concocted its very own, as yet unheard-of, definition of "prioritize". In its curt official response to our email enquiring whether Secretary of State Blinken mentioned Ahlam Tamimi to King Abdullah last week, that verb popped up repeatedly.

Secretary Blinken met privately with King Abdullah of Jordan following President Biden's tete-a-tete with Jordan's unelected ruler. My husband and I wondered whether Blinken raised the matter of Jordan's refusal to accede to the U.S. Department of Justice's demand that our child's murderer, Hamas operative Tamimi, be extradited to be tried in a U.S. Federal Court for the orchestration of of the 2001 Sbarro bombing - the terror attack in which 15 men, women and children perished - and a sixteenth has been in a coma ever since. 

Three of those victims, including our fifteen year old Malki, were U.S. citizens. (Malki and a young American tourist are the two dead American nationals. The third American is alive but has been in a vegetative coma all these years.) 

Moreover, in 1995 Jordan and the U.S. signed and ratified an extradition treaty.

Sec Blinken hosts Jordan's king - July 20, 2021 

So "prioritizing" the issue would have made a lot of sense. The official message below sent to us a few days ago as a private email would truly have been a welcome one: 

"I want to express the Department's sincere condolences on the tragic loss of your daughter, Malki, murdered in the heinous attack in Jerusalem in 2001. As the [exact job title deleted, at least for now] for Counterterrorism, I want to reiterate to you and your family that the Department of State continues to prioritize seeing Ahlam al-Tamimi face justice in the United States for her role in the terrorist attack that claimed the life of your daughter and 14 others. We continue to seek Tamimi's extradition to the United States at the most senior levels with the Government of Jordan."

It would indeed have been welcome had it been at all truthful. 

But clearly in the State Department lexicon, "prioritize" means something entirely different from what it does for you and me. 

Because this is how Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken actually handled the king's intransigence during his encounter with him...

Though he would presumably be considered an official at the "most senior levels" of his own department, it appears he simply did not raise it at all. 

Instead, like every other American official, politician or VIP who met with him during his July 19-23 Washington visit, he occupied himself with lavishing praise on King Abdullah.

Here are Blinken's words to the press prior to their private conversation. Don't be shocked at the hyperbolic royalty rigmarole - it is de rigeur when any U.S. official or journalist addresses that dictator:

"...Your Majesty, it is a real pleasure to welcome you to the State Department, the Crown Prince as well. We couldn’t be more pleased to have you here. .. I think it’s a reflection of the tremendous value that the United States places on its relationship with Jordan, a remarkable partnership over many years, many decades. Jordan is a powerful, powerful partner for peace, for stability in the region, dealing with ISIS and terrorism, a remarkably generous host to refugees. On so many levels, this partnership demonstrates its importance, its value to us... So, we’re so pleased to have you here... Lots to talk about, but mostly, welcome. Welcome to you, Crown Prince, welcome. It’s so good to have you as well." [Official remarks to the press according to the State Department record, July 20, 2021]

And in case that introduction left anyone in doubt, the exchange below between a journalist and a State Department spokesman at the subsequent press conference should put the matter to rest:

QUESTION: Yeah. Well, did it [the Tamimi extradition issue] come up?
MR PRICE: I’m not in a position to speak to the meeting, but we’ll have a readout...
QUESTION: Well, are you – I mean, are you – has this administration yet raised it with – raised the matter with Jordanian authorities, the King or not? Or is this something that would have just come up for the first time today?
MR PRICE: This issue has been raised with our Jordanian partners.

[Official State Department Press Briefing, July 20, 2021] 

I don't know about you but I would conclude that the spokesperson is really saying it wasn't raised but he prefers to not say that explicitly.

Stay tuned for my next post where I detail former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's dismissal of our entreaties. The State Department's adoration of Jordan's king is as bi-partisan as bi-partisan gets.

[Wondering what the term "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt" means? See this here.]

'Stuff' the ambassador forgot

Image Source: Israel Hayom

The hyperbole surrounding former US Ambassador to Israel David M. Friedman ["With ambassadors like this…"] and his tenure grows with every fresh interview he gives the media. 

And since reticent is not an adjective suited to the man, the interviews are accumulating. See for instance the recent items in the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post.

The latest one, in Israel Hayom ["'We left the Middle East in good shape'"], describes him as "the most influential US ambassador in the history of US-Israeli relations." It's unclear how that conclusion was reached. Perhaps Friedman himself contributed the assessment. He certainly seems enamored with his position and his accomplishments. As he said: "There are so many things that we've done that nobody really knows about." Adding, "I wish I could keep this job forever."

In fact, in his NY Times interview he revealed that he won't be making aliyah for four years, awaiting Trump's prospects in 2024. 

“I want to give myself every opportunity to return to government.”

In his Israel Hayom interview, he reiterates that hope. Asked whether there's any chance that Trump will run in 2024, Friedman responds: "I just don't know. It's too soon to be making predictions for 2024." 

And then segueing to self praise - his favorite mode: 

"During those four years, we had a lot to be proud of, we got a lot of stuff done." 

Well, there was one bit of "stuff" to which Mr. Friedman was entirely apathetic: Justice for the fifteen Jewish men, women and children who died in the Sbarro massacre of 2001. 

Image Source

My husband and I sought Mr. Friedman's attention throughout his tenure in that regard. We were, and still are, encountering silence from the State Department about Jordan's defiant refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of that terror bombing, in which our child, Malki, was one of the eight children who perished. 

The US Department of Justice unsealed charges against Tamimi in 2017 and has since been demanding her extradition pursuant to the extradition treaty signed and ratified by the US and Jordan in 1995. The validity of that treaty was most recently affirmed as valid ("The United States regards the extradition treaty with Jordan as valid and in force") by the State Department in August 2020.

Given that Friedman was employed by the State Department, he was the logical address for assistance in the matter. Yet our numerous approaches to his office elicited no response from him. To this day, he has not commented on the matter in any shape or form. Mr. Friedman was obviously too pre-occupied with his other "stuff" to deign to communicate with us. 

I trust that interspersed with the hagiographies emanating from the Jewish public, in particular, the Orthodox sector, will be this truth: That justice doesn't rank on Mr. Friedman's list of significant goals. That he is unperturbed by the fact that Jordan's regime has been honoring, sheltering and celebrating a self-confessed, proud murderer of Jews since 2011. 

That he is unmoved by the fact that the administration he represented maintained a strong partnership with and channeled millions of dollars to the ruler responsible for this travesty of justice, King Abdullah II.

The Israel Hayom article about the ex-ambassador noted that Mr. Friedman's Jewish name is David Melech. And that he quipped at a Bnai Brith International ceremony shortly after his appointment to the Post: "If you were wondering about my middle name, Melech, it's not because my parents expected great things of me, but because my grandmother was named Malka [the feminine version of the name]" causing the audience to "double over with laughter".

I certainly didn't laugh to read that. 

Rather it was pathetic. Even the fact that our murdered child had the same name as his grandmother didn't spur him to respond to our entreaties. 

Admittedly, power and glory have been known to extinguish one's idealism. So Mr. Friedman has plenty of company.

The king's quandary

The news on BBC Arabic devoted more than six minutes
on its October 8, 2020 bulletin to an extraordinarily sympathetic
re-telling of Tamimi's encounter with a Jordanian radio talk-show

The mystery surrounding the deportation of Ahlam Tamimi's husband, Nizar Tamimi, by the Jordanian authorities, remains unsolved.

It was a puzzling move which only made some sense as a tactic to lure Ahlam Tamimi out of Jordan.

She seems to have quickly morphed into a political hot potato in light of the US's intensified pressure on Jordan to extradite her. 

The speculation in the Arabic media has been that newly-appointed US Ambassador to Jordan Henry Wooster was flexing some muscle and threatening heavy monetary sanctions on Jordan for defying the demand of the US Department of Justice for Tamimi's extradition.

Hence, apparently, Nizar's deportation on October 1, 2020 to Qatar.

But since then Jordan's regime appears to have been paralyzed. Last week, a very public display of disdain for Tamimi on the Jordanian talk-radio program "We and You" galvanized public support for her "plight" on social media ["Report: Jordan deported Sbarro terrorist mastermind's husband to force her out", i24News.tv, October 2, 2020]

The host of that popular call-in radio program, who was video-taped mid-conversation signaling for caller Ahlam Tamimi to be disconnected, cited technical difficulties as the cause for the move. But he has now resigned and his show has been suspended indicating that was a fabrication.

Tamimi's fans who adore her for murdering fifteen innocent Jewish men, women and children (8 children!) are irate. The hashtags #WeAreAhlamTamimi and #AhlamTamimiYourVoiceIsHigh were near the top of Jordan's social-media trending lists.

 
Even BBC Arabic invited this monster to be interviewed - minus the "technical difficulties". 

Not once since the Sbarro massacre has the BBC deigned to cover the story. Only now, when Tamimi is pleading for pity, did it do so. And without the slightest reference to the massacre and its victims.

King Abdullah II is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place. Who can he afford to confront: his bloodthirsty constituents or his benefactor, the US?

While he mulls that choice, we sit with bated breath, hoping these latest developments will bring us the justice for which we have long pined.