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?

Revering a master of delusion

[Source: Jordan Times, September 18, 2017]

This post is triggered by developments announced a few days ago. See "AJC calls on Justice Department to pursue Ahlam Tamimi extradition" [Jewish Insider, July 13, 2023]. The call by one of America's most important Jewish organizations is a significant event.

The Jordanian dictator - otherwise known as King Abdullah II - is a master of delusion.

His victims include the entire spectrum of American influencers: politicians, journalists, Democrats, Republicans, Jews, non-Jews. All revere and praise him as a progressive leader.

But for me it is the leaders of major American Jewish organizations whose reverence is the most repugnant.

It impedes their interest in fighting for justice for the three Jewish Americans murdered in the 2001 Sbarro terror bombing in Jerusalem spearheaded by Hamas operative and Jordanian citizen, Ahlam Tamimi. 

The charges against her were initially signed off in a US Federal court ten years ago this week. But they were kept sealed and secret at that time. 

They became public much later, on March 14, 2017. Here's the official Department of Justice announcement: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans"

Among the sixteen victims was my daughter Malki, 15. She was just one of eight Jewish children targeted by Tamimi and her bomb. Though Tamimi, as the AJC's letter last week explains, faces terror charges in Washington, she is kept safe by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

[Source: Jordan Times, February 3, 2023]

Despite this, key executives of numerous major American Jewish organizations continue to meet formally with Jordan's ruler. 

Two photos - one at the top of this post and another on the right - are among many my husband and I have found online via Arab sources - showing the meetings they frequently attend (annually and sometimes more often than that) at King Abdullah's invitation.

With one or two exceptions, they do so without ever publicly demanding that Tamimi, whom Abdullah harbors, is extradicted to Washington despite her indictment by the United States. The extradition treaty, signed and ratified by Abdullah's father in 1995, and in effect from then onwards, doesn't move him one iota.

Nor does it move any of those influential Jewish leaders.

They are all under the spell of the "king's" stardust.

Shame on them all.

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.

Does Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times really understand what he's advocating?

Israelis running to the bomb shelters [Image Source]

It's difficult to know where to begin. 

For years, Nicholas Kristof, a renowned opinion columnist at the New York Times, has been akin to an idol for me. His op eds move me, sometimes to the verge of tears. He genuinely cares for the neglected, forgotten and desperate and proves that repeatedly. He buttresses his writing with action: projects and fundraisers that produce tangible benefits for the subjects of his pieces.

But when he tackles the current, tragic situation in Israel he misses the mark [see "The ‘Unshakable’ Bonds of Friendship With Israel Are Shaking" from May 19, 2021 and "What Your Taxes Are Paying For in Israel" from May 12, 2021]. 

And that both angers and frightens me. He is accusing Israel of war crimes and urges US sanctions. Et tu Nicholas?

My murdered daughter Malki and me, 2001

Israel is fighting a vile, ruthless and blood-thirsty enemy in Hamas. I have suffered and continue to suffer from it every single day. In 2001 Hamas operative, Ahlam Tamimi, now living free and protected by Jordan's King Abdullah II, snatched my angel, Malki, from us in the Sbarro massacre that murdered 15 men, women and children. 

Tamimi publicly bemoaned the fact that "only" eight children were among the victims [video]. She was funded, instructed, sent and is - to this day - lauded by Hamas.

That is the very enemy that Israel is again battling. And has been for decades. 

It is a terror group that stockpiles missiles and launchers in residential buildings. It does so precisely to produce the op-eds that Nicholas Kristof has been writing during this war: harsh rebukes of Israel for bombing buildings that house residents, including children. 

Just as Hamas desired for my Malki to die, so does it desire for its own children to die. How else does one interpret its decision to endanger Gazan children by effectively using them as human shields?

Kristof's other arguments are immaterial while he ignores the above reality. Because it is crucial. Israel cannot defend itself against missiles and launchers housed amongst families without endangering those families. That is what Hamas wants and has accomplished. And it has garnered invaluable, immeasurable and unprecedented support by doing so.

From influencers like Nicholas Kristof.

Words my murdered child left behind

Every year at Yom Hazikaron time (it begins at sunset today), I comb through my Malki's last diary for an excerpt to publish. It isn't an easy task.

First, it breaks my heart to read her words. And second, it is an eyestrain because her script is miniscule. 

She tried her utmost to milk that pocket-sized diary for all it's worth. Details of nearly every day of her last year of life are recorded: youth group activities, quotes of her friends, tallies of hours studied for an exam, help she gave me in caring for her severely-disabled little sister, thoughts, worries. and records of every single terror attack and its victims. 

When the pages didn't suffice, she would glue on strips of paper to enable her to complete the account. It's in the photo on the right. 

Just as she squeezed every bit of writing possible into that diary, so too she squeezed into every day of her short, special life the experiences and deeds that spread joy and pleasure to everyone she encountered, whether through her words, her artwork or her flute and guitar playing.

What a precious girl she was.

And here below is a photo of the new diary she had just purchased and dedicated shortly before a Hamas terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, cut short her life. Malki was carrying it in her backpack on that sunny, August afternoon. 

The condition of the diary, which is here beside me, demonstrates the brutal force of those 10 kgs of explosives Tamimi used to execute the Sbarro massacre - the terrorist outrage she has publicly called "my operation".

In the diary entry of June 11, 2001 to which I randomly turned today and which I've photographed, she records something I remember her telling me that had touched her. She and her older brother, Shaya, went to buy themselves new glasses - and independently selected the identical frames.

She ended that day's entry: 

"I studied all day. I didn't go to the snif [a Hebrew word that means her youth group's hangout]. I went in the middle on a tour with Mommy. And that's it."

I don't recall that tour. Nor can I imagine where it was. I will never know.