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 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.

Don't we deserve better than this lamentable leadership?

A Jordanian news report from 2017 includes this photo of

American Jewish leaders meeting with King Abdullah II.
The report quotes the king, but not the Jews.

Et tu Brute?

Those words are uttered at a dramatic juncture in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar by the dying emperor at the moment he is assasssinated by his friend Marcus Junius Brutus.

They come to mind whenever I learn of a recent and deplorable Jewish practice that directly impacts on me in personal and unspeakably painful ways.

Here's how Jewish Insider reported a Washington gathering on February 2, 2023:

King Abdullah II of Jordan met with Jewish leaders in Washington, D.C., yesterday. Those in attendance included Rabbi Marc Schneier, Ted Deutch, Jeremy Ben-Ami, Jonathan Greenblatt, Susie Gelman, Hadar Susskind, Dana Gershon, Betty Ehrenberg, Jason Isaacson, John Hannah and Harriet Schleifer.

There's a Jordanian news report [here] as well. As usual, no Jews are named or quoted.

On February 3, 2023, Jordan's Royal Hashemite Court published
and disseminated this photo to illustrate its report under the headline
"King meets representatives of international,
US Jewish organisations"

It's become an annual tradition. Eexecutives of major Jewish organizations in the US solemnly file into a meeting room in some fancy hotel or embassy hall and pay their utmost respects to the visiting ruler of Jordan. he speaks, and his words are faithfully reported in Jordan's media. 

I don't personally know most of the people in the list. And since this hasn't been reported anywhere, I don't know what they said. Or whether they spoke at all.

I do however know something about what previous groups of Jewish leaders said and didn't say when they met the Jordanian. And what they have and have not said publicly to America's top political leaders. 

My husband and I [see This Ongoing War] have been outspoken for years about the abject failures of America's Jewish leadership in the Tamimi/Jordan/justice affair.

From a quick check on the web, I see all the distinguished Jewish people meeting King Abdullah this past Thursday hold leading positions in significant organizations (listed alphabetically) that include:

• Americans for Peace Now (educating Americans about "policies that will lead to comprehensive, durable, Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab peace")
• The American Jewish Committee ("the leading global Jewish advocacy organization")
• The Anti Defamation League
• The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
• The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding ("to build Muslim-Jewish relations globally")
• Israel Policy Forum ("mobilize support among American Jewish leaders and U.S. policymakers for the realization of a viable two-state solution")
• J Street ("we advocate for diplomacy-first American leadership and policies that advance justice")
• The Jewish Institute for National Security of America
  
• National Council of Jewish Women ("social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children, and families and by safeguarding individual rights and freedoms")
• World Jewish Congress ("to foster the unity and represent the interests of the Jewish people")

I know I should have grown used to it. But the pain these encounters inflict only intensifies with time.

My Malki's photos speak to me every day when I am in their presence in our living room. Her gentle eyes, sweet smile, modesty and love radiate from them. Since she was murdered in the Sbarro terror bombing in the summer of 2001, it's the only way she communicates with me.

As I peruse them tonight, I am reminded afresh that Jewish leaders promoting themselves in the Jewish media and mailed solicitations as staunch advocates of rights of the Jews evidently care not one bit about her or us.

Malki's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, indicted in Washington in 2013 (though this was kept secret until; 2017) is protected and shielded from justice by King Abdullah II of Jordan. And, whatever the leaders say, this clearly doesn't matter one iota to them.

The facts are so clear to me and, as far as I can tell, so irrelevant to them.

The fact that Jordan and the United States have had a valid and active extradition treaty since the days of the Clinton administration and the late King Hussein - the father of today's monarch. 

The fact that the U.S. Department of Justice has demanded that Jordan extradite her under it, and hand her over to the FBI's waiting arms so she can be brought to criminal trial in Washington.

The fact that King Abdullah has authorized the rejection of that demand since Tamimi's indictment. 

The fact whenever he calls, they come running, as they did last week.

It is an incomprehensible exhibition of sycophancy toward a man who is brazenly using them to buttress his position as a close ally of the U.S. And, most important, as the world's largest recipient of U.S. financial aid - now running at some $1.5 billion a year.

Jordan's disdain for Israel is apparently not a factor for Jewish leaders when deciding whether to accept the vaunted invitation of His Majesty (as they usually refer to him).

In meetings, letters and phone calls with many of those leaders we have pleaded since 2017 for their assistance in pressuring the United States to get Jordan to comply with its treaty obligation. All produced nothing more than demeaning, dismissive responses.

What a pathetic show of spinelessness.

Remember this when these organizations next solicit your donation.

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.

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 failing to move our fight for justice to center-stage

King Abdullah II of Jordan addresses a Congressional committee

As Malki's yahrzeit nears (the twentieth day of the month of Av in the Hebrew calendar which this year falls on July 29, two days from now), we are digesting the failure of last week's efforts to bring our fight for justice to center-stage.

Despite some of our terrific media exposure, Jordan's King Abdullah scored his customary adulation - groveling, actually - from his US hosts. They included the White House, Congress and major media outlets. And that was across-the-board, bi-partisan groveling.

The king's last interview (actually the only interview he appears to have given to the American media throughout his entire lengthy visit (text here via Jordan Times; video here via CNN), was with CNN's Fareed Zakaria who rates by most, myself included, as level-headed, intelligent and insightful. 

So I was surprised and disgusted to watch him behave as sycophantically as every other American has in Abdullah's presence. Each sentence was preceded with "Your Highness" (he used the expression seven times). And his last line was "Your Highness, it always an honor and a pleasure to talk to you."

I invite anyone to explain to me why champions of democracy are so obsequious to a ruthless, unelected totalitarian dictator; a leader who protects a self-confessed mass-murdering terrorist and refuses to extradite her to the US despite its demand that he do so in accordance with a valid extradition treaty signed and ratified 26 years ago.

Mr. Zakariah, please explain why you studiously avoided this issue in your lengthy interview - "wide-ranging" was how the Jordanian press described it. 

Source: FBI website

Explain why the fact that Abdullah harbors one of the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists didn't detract one iota from the respect you lavished on him. 

How has he captivated you? With his impeccable mastery of the English language? His almost-British accent? His glibness? His beautiful, designer clad, and equally articulate, wife?

But Zakaria is in good company. Neither President Biden nor Secretary of State Blinken mentioned the Tamimi travesty of justice either when they met with Abdullah this past week. Since videos of those conversations weren't released, we have no way of knowing whether they were also as sycophantic as Zakaria toward a ruler, don't forget, who is recipient of US$1.6 billion in aid annually.

This king-worship - a monarch who remains in power by the grace of US benefaction - is as baffling as it is infuriating.