The shootings in Texas

May 26, 2022: Uvalde, Texas (NY Times)

The harrowing nightmare tormenting parents of the massacred Uvalde children stirs up painful memories.

 
That frantic search for our daughter Malki in the local hospitals. The rage on learning that her death might have been prevented by authorities who gave petty concerns priority over decisive actions to halt the two terrorists heading for their target - a Sbarro pizzeria.

These facts reached us via a parliamentarian, MK Meir Shitreet, who revealed them to the public with no compunction. Here, however, no heads rolled afterwards. 

Nobody was excoriated for failing.to warn Jerusalemites that two terrorists traversed the the city's streets. 

Nor for their failure to order Jerusalemites to shelter in place. 

No "powers that be" were ever criticized for pleading with their "buddy" Yasser Arafat to help prevent the impending disaster. To nobody's surprise, he refused. 

Our hearts are broken with those of the Uvalde parents whom we heard pleading with the police to be admitted into the school to rescue their children. 

Shame on all those who conduct themselves incompetently in the face of evildoers. None of these mass-murderers deserves to live free and protected the way our child's murderer does as I write this.

Are we seeing a sea change?

The front gate of Neve Ram

Over the past month or so, the disability sector of Israel's population has been rocked by several cases of neglect and abuse. Tragically, a few were fatal. 

One at the start of this month involved three deaths of residents from food poisoning. 

And the most recent one - two nights ago - involved the food poisoning and hospitalization of four institutionalized people with disabilities at Neve Ram in Rechasim (near Haifa).

In the past, such events elicited some media attention, a few interviews with activists and then a return to "business as usual". But there is a sense that a sea change has finally been triggered. Protest demonstrations are growing common. Activists are being interviewed on mainstream TV and radio news programs more frequently. Some have gained access to senior politicians including the prime minister.

Hatnua's logo [source]

 
One of them, Noa Kfir Dohav, mother of a child with disabilities and founding member of HaTnua L'Atzma'ut, (in Hebrew: התנועה לעצמאות) also known as the Movement for Independence, wrote about her meeting with prime minister Naftali Bennett along with several other activists (my translation from the Hebrew source):

For an hour he was with us. Entirely interested in the personal accounts, giving respect to the youth with their disabilities and special needs. Riveted to the story Chezi tells about his brother and to the possibilities that Roni presents to him when she tells about her sister. He asks questions, conducts discussions, and delves into the most sensitive point - money - and then returns very quickly to the understanding that the current situation is bad. 'I can't imagine living even one day like this', he says when he's told about the institutions. 'And I wouldn't wish this on my children and so not on any other person", he adds at one point. He understands what we're talking about... that change must come.

A key sign of progress is the now oft-repeated demand for the closure of all institutions. 

Previously, few uttered that drastic word "closure". Criticism focused on the dire conditions in those institutions, on the need for tighter supervision, more frequent surprise inspections, higher salaries for staff and stricter vetting of potential employees.

But now, most go further. Here is what Adv Na'ama Lerner, one of the founders of Hatnua L'atzma'ut, also known as Movement for Independence, insisted after that meeting with the prime minister in which she too participated (my translation again):

"I have been in the field for 35 years and don't recall an accumulation of so many incidents that reveal the rot/decay in Israel's institutions. We need deeds. Actions. Funding that will bring the total closure of institutions and that will enable thousands of people to live with respect and independence."

The text of the Hebrew poster on the right, taken from the group's Facebook page, in my English translation: 

People with Disabilities Exit to Freedom: From Institutions to the Community
Again Food Poisoning in an Institution for People with Disabilities
This Time in Neve Ram
Only Miraculously Did it not End in Death
The Next Disaster is Written on The Wall
What Else Must Happen for the State of Israel to Close the Institutions?

It's the right question. 

Remembrance Day - and remembering Malki

Malki's tiny handwriting in the diary she left behind

I was called last week by a young woman who asked me to speak about Malki to a group of teenage students who are on the verge of dropping out of school. She is doing her internship in education with these girls.

My knee jerk response was "No, that would be too difficult", even though she noted that her older sister had been a friend of Malki's. 

But then she added "Malki and Michal [the friend who was murdered with her] had decorated her sister's bedroom to welcome her home from an overseas trip on that day."

So I did a 180. Because on their last morning alive, Malki and Michal stood at my bedroom door to let me know about the room-decoration plan. I was in bed nursing one of my whopping migraines. I didn't even open my eyes to look at them - but it was the last time we spoke in person. 

But to this day, I can't forgive myself for passing up on that last chance to see my Malki's face.

And so I spoke about her earlier this week to six 15 year olds - the same age as Malki was when Ahlam Tamimi decided that she, Michal and 13 other Jews must die. 

I told them what a gifted flautist she was; how her music brought tears to my eyes at every concert of hers that I attended; about her devotion to her profoundly disabled younger sister and to other children with disabilities with whom she volunteered. 

I told them that often, as her sister was and remains, they were not only non-verbal but barely responsive at all. Few adults are capable of doing the work she did. 

 

I remembered how uplifted she was as she described the smile she had brought to a neighbor's child, dying of Canavan's Disease, when she sang him a song. She spent one summer helping out his single mother.

I told the six girls that Malki cherished her friendships, both at school and in her youth group, Ezra.  And mentioned the children there for whom she was a counselor in her last year of life and with whom she spent every other Shabbat in Ma'ale Adumim during her last year on earth. 

The mostly shredded new diary in Malki's bag

I showed them her diaries - the last one she wrote, kept in her microscopic handwriting to enable her to pack in the maximum text. And the new one which was found in her back-pack. It was void of entries and pummeled by the 10 kg bomb's nails.

I showed them photos of Malki and concluded with a very brief mention of our struggle to get Tamimi extradited from Jordan to the US. It isn't an issue I felt I could delve into for this audience. 

Afterwards, it was question time. They only asked one - which I couldn't really answer. "What have you learned, taken with you, from Malki?" 

After a pause I told them: "As her mother, I haven't learned from her. She was my child. What I am left with is only pain and grief. As I'm sure you have heard, the loss of a child is incomparable to any other.  But Malki's friends have told me that they did learn lessons from her. In particular, they carry with them her joy of living, her passion for life."

Thus began for me the difficult week of Yom Hazikaron - Remembrance Day.

Politicians, justice and missing the point

Shai visits Aleh Jerusalem 2018

I was first introduced to Knesset member Dr Nachman Shai when Bizchut (“Promoting the rights of people who have disabilities in Israel”) paired me up with him to pay a joint surprise visit to a large, closed Jerusalem institution for children and adults with disabilities.

Across the country on that same day, other such facilities were similarly inspected. The reason for having activists accompanied by Knesset members was that the latter can legally insist on admittance to those institutions. Civilians, like me, are almost always denied entry.

I certainly was, anytime I previously tried.

After the tours, each Knesset member's impressions were recorded on video. Shai astounded me with his praise for the institution. He was well aware that Bizchut and other activists, some with disabilities themselves, were intent on replacing institutionalization with in-community living for everyone.

Nevertheless he emerged with this reaction: 

"I believe I am leaving with a good impression, a positive impression... We toured from top to bottom, the institution was open... We were not prevented from viewing anything, everything we requested we received and I leave as much as possible with a good feeling." (My translation of his Hebrew as recorded at the time.)

Shai had entirely missed the point.

People with disabilities are often locked up in “gilded prisons”.  Their human rights are denied, the love of family and home stolen from them. Funding which our government could and should channel to parents and children with disabilities is lavished on institution operators.

The rest of the Western world has, as a universally agreed matter of strategy, abandoned the institutionalization of people with disabilities over the past two decades. But Israel persists in supporting, funding and promoting it for its population with disabilities.

Standing outside that institution on the day of that visit, Shai briefly related to that "debate", as he called it, and said he intended to leave it at that.

On April 20, 2022, a demonstration will be held at Tel Aviv's Kikar Habima at 16:00. In the Passover spirit, it is being called "Our Exodus to Freedom - From Institutions into the Community".  

Nachman Shai just didn't get it.

Last week, he missed another crucial point again. And just as egregiously. 

Here is how he is quoted by Michael Freund in an opinion piece [source: The Jerusalem Post]:

In an interview on Army Radio on March 30, he asserted that “hungry people turn to terrorism. Without food and water, they will disrupt our lives... this contention simply does not stand up under further scrutiny. To begin with, consider the fact that according to the World Bank, there are approximately 700 million people on the planet living in what is described as “extreme poverty,” which is defined as earning less than $1.90 a day. That is nearly 10% of the world’s population...

If the simple equation that suggests that poverty directly gives rise to terrorism were true, one would expect to find millions of people, if not more, taking up arms worldwide and launching terrorist attacks. But that is clearly not the case.

Simply put, most hungry people are not violent nor are they terrorists. They might be desperate, embittered or dissatisfied, but that is a far cry from joining the ranks of terrorists...

Numerous academic studies over the years clearly demonstrate this to be the case. As MIT Prof. Alberto Abadie concluded in a groundbreaking 2006 study titled “Poverty, Political Freedom and the Roots of Terrorism,” published in American Economic Review, there is “no significant association between terrorism and economic variables, such as income, once the effect of other country characteristics is taken into account.”

The same holds true vis-à-vis Palestinian terrorism. Studies have repeatedly found that those who engage in it are generally better off economically than most Palestinians… The resulting evidence on the individual level suggests that both higher standards of living and higher levels of education are positively associated” with the likelihood of a Palestinian joining Hamas or Islamic Jihad, Hebrew University's Professor Berrebi wrote in 2003...

Indeed, Berrebi discovered that Palestinian suicide bombers “tend to be of higher economic status and higher educational attainment than their counterparts in the population.

My child's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, reinforces the above findings. Neither poor nor uneducated, she was a middle-class student of journalism working as a TV news anchor who thirsted for Jewish blood. Released in the tragically lopsided Shalit Deal in 2011 along with several hundred other convicted murderers, she maintains her previous comfortable standard of living today in her city of refuge, Amman.

She continues to boast of her "successful operation" in which fifteen Jews perished and urges others to emulate her.  

It may be ignorance that lies behind Dr Shai’s recent responses - or rather, non-responses - to me. As we parted after that visit to the Jerusalem institution, he handed me his card inviting me to contact him if I ever needed his help.

My husband and I have been eager to take him up on that offer. Our quest for justice for our daughter is blocked by many, including Israeli politicians. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Tamimi in 2017 and has asked Jordan to extradite her to Washington where she faces terrorism charges. But King Abdullah's regime has rejected those requests and she remains free, sheltered by the Hashemite kingdom.

The State Department has throughout all our years of effort been uncooperative. So have U.S. politicians on both sides of the aisle. We have learned that the Israeli government has signaled American Jewish leaders know they would prefer our requests for their support to be ignored. 

We approached Dr Shai in the naïve hope that he would speak up in support of our quest for justice. But he has never responded to my emails and his spokesperson has repeatedly advised me to direct my pleas elsewhere.

Here’s how she framed the brush-off:

While I understand that this response is not satisfactory for you, I will keep you posted if something more concrete develops. I am deeply sorry that I cannot help you further at this moment in time… I will continue to explore how we can be of support - particularly through other diplomatic means."

It’s been months and the exploring is presumably still underway.

Perhaps I should not have been surprised. Public figures who don’t respond when the massive problems of institutionalization of the disabled are under discussion are probably not that tuned in to justice either.

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.

On Covid and institutions

My RAT result

I wrote (but didn't post) the following two weeks ago:

As my kids say, "bummer". I had a positive result on my at-home Covid rapid antigen test last night. I administered it because of fever and a cold. Now, I am a scrupulous mask wearer, a Covid recoverer, had two vaccines, scored 2,000 + on a serological antibodies test four months ago and have, to my family's chagrin, grown extremely anti-social during the last two years.  

So, we're stumped as to where and how I caught this.

On the off chance that this is a false positive, I will go do a PCR test this evening.

I am particularly disappointed because the pool to which we bring Haya for hydro has been broken all week. It only recovered and reached the desired 32 degrees Celsius (about 90 Fahrenheit) this morning. I did a lot of Whatsapping to land a cancellation of one hour by one of the teachers for this morning. 

So Haya will miss her hydro this week. As I have often noted: It's the highlight of her life...

Haya, in a recent drawing of mine

Since then, Haya has thankfully had two magnificent sessions of hydro. The second one was this past Sunday which we did in 30 degree (Celsius) water, instead of the usual 32 degrees. With her wetsuit on, Haya appeared as comfortable as usual. But I really missed those extra two degrees.

All the Whatsapp groups I'm in for people with disabilities and their families have been abuzz with talk of forming inspection groups. Clearly, the recent uptick in accounts of abuse in institutions here in Israel triggered that.

The idea is for those groups of volunteers to visit unannounced Israel's institutions for people with disabilities. I just volunteered for the Jerusalem area. Hopefully we will visit ADI Jerusalem and uncover whatever there is to uncover.

This time we won't be accompanied by politicians as we were the last time such visits were made ["Notes from an Aleh visit"]. 

My "partner" back then in 2018 was Knesset member and now Israel's Minister of Diaspora Affairs, Dr Nachman Shai, who in my opinion was utterly deceived by our guide's slick spiel. Sadly, Shai's reactions were confined to unadulterated praise.

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]