This Ongoing War: A Blog

29-Apr-25: US leadership must secure justice in the Jordan/Tamimi case: A call to action

2025-04-29T08:21:00.010+03:00

As an invited speaker on its Legal Affairs Forum, Arnold Roth addressed this week's Jewish News Syndicate 2025 International Summit in Jerusalem. Here's the speech he delivered.

Decades after becoming a lawyer, I find myself involved in a legal process that is spectacularly paralyzed.

This summit comes at a moment demanding moral clarity and courageous leadership from the United States. Today, I focus on a case that encapsulates these issues. It’s about Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian terrorist who orchestrated the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, murdering 16 innocents, including three Americans. One was my daughter Malki, 15.

The Jordan/Tamimi case exposes a troubling truth: Jordan, a US ally, has failed on two fronts—refusing to condemn Tamimi’s terrorism and violating a cornerstone treaty made with the US under President Clinton. This injustice has festered in silence for years. It’s time for the US to lead with principle and hold treaty partners accountable.

Tamimi is no repentant fugitive. She scouted Jerusalem for a target rich in families and children, settling on a crowded pizzeria during school vacation. She accompanied the human bomb to the site, then rushed back to Ramallah to present the evening television news. Since then, she has lived freely in Jordan, celebrated as a hero. She hosted a TV show, addressed rallies, and appeared on social media, bragging about the lives she ended—lives like my daughter Malki’s, an American citizen whose memory demands justice.

In 2017, the US Department of Justice charged Tamimi with terrorism and added her to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, offering a $5 million reward for her capture. Yet Jordan, bound by the bilateral 1995 extradition treaty, refuses to hand her over. Jordan’s courts claim the treaty is invalid—a technical argument contradicted by facts and disputed by the US. Meanwhile, Jordan’s leaders remain silent, unwilling to condemn Tamimi’s crimes.

This silence isn’t neutrality—it’s complicity. Jordan accepts billions in US aid, pledges cooperation against terrorism, and even outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood last week. Tamimi is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jordan continues to harbor America’s most wanted female fugitive, prioritizing political convenience over principle. This makes a mockery of justice and erodes trust in international law.

The United States cannot afford ambiguity on terrorism. After 9/11, Washington demanded allies stand with the US or step aside. It’s time to apply that same clarity here.

My family and the families of other victims deserve more than sympathy—we deserve action. Treaties are not guidelines; they are solemn promises. Jordan has extradited other terrorists under this treaty. Why is Tamimi different?

Today, I announce that nearly 27,000 people have signed a petition urging the US Secretary of State to press Jordan to extradite Tamimi.

From this podium, I call on you—America’s thought-leaders, storytellers and conscience—to bring this painful affair into the light.

The White House, Congress, and State Department have tools at their disposal: diplomatic pressure, economic incentives, even aid conditions. They must use them. And the media must challenge them to act.

Terrorism thrives when nations waver. By insisting on Tamimi’s extradition, America would reaffirm that terrorists cannot escape accountability. When justice is shoved aside, the foundations of civilized society are undermined. But it’s not too late. We yearn for leadership that is principled, determined, and unwavering. And for media reportage that respects the doctrine of “neither fear nor favor”.

Justice for Malki and the other innocents must matter more than the savages who took their lives. Let us unite to make that happen.

24-Dec-24: "I can do it": Reflecting on a precious life cut short

2024-12-24T14:41:00.008+02:00

As they do in some years, a major festive celebration for Jews all over the world gets underway tomorrow on the same day that Christians throughout the world mark one of the most joyous days in their calendar.

For our family, the eight-day-long religious festival of Hanukah and its emphasis on candles, joy and the Jewish people triumphing over evil is going to have a very different resonance this year. Exactly a year ago, moments after the first Hanukah candle was lit amid the happy chaos of playful children and dinner on the table, a small knock on the door at the home of our son-in-law's family here in Jerusalem heralded changes of the absolutely most nightmarish kind.

A team of solemn IDF soldiers stood there. With a war raging in Gaza for two months, they brought with them the worst news a family ever hears.

* * *

Naftali Yonah Gordon married our daughter Pesi in 2019. Everyone who knew them understood that theirs was a love match of the most beautiful kind. As Pesi's parents, we adored the young man she brought into our family's life, and when the children were born, two sweet and lovely girls who today are four and two, the blessings in their lives and in ours felt untouchable.

Today according to the secular, solar calendar, December 24, 2024, happens to be the day Naftali and those who loved him would have celebrated his 34th birthday.

The tribute below is written by Naftali's grieving mother, Beaty, for a booklet that is going to be distributed to friends and family who will attend the memorial events this week. They mark a year since he fell in a fierce battle with the forces of Hamas in Gaza exactly a year ago on December 7, 2023. [See 06-Feb-24: Obituary: Naftali Yonah Gordon, our adored son-in-law]

(The Jewish calendar is based on lunar months so that the anniversary marks a year since the eve of last year's Hanukah.)

Naftali Yonah Gordon was born on December 24, 1990 (the seventh day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, 5751) in Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City. With his Hebrew birthday coinciding with the "13th" Chanukah light, he was affectionately known as our family's Chanukah present.
When he was just 18 months old, we made aliyah to Israel, first settling in Ramot for five years before moving to the community of Hashmona’im.
Naftali began his education at the local MAMA”D elementary school and later attended Yeshivat Ner Tamid for high school.

During this time, he demonstrated his caring and generous nature through volunteer work. At the therapeutic horseback riding ranch in Kfar Ruth, he worked with children with special needs and helped train horses.
He also dedicated his time as a counselor at Keren Or, an institute for blind and multi-disabled children, where his devotion and compassion were deeply felt.
Naftali served in the Israel Defense Forces as a gunner in the Armored Corps. Afterwards he pursued his lifelong dream of becoming a physical therapist. He studied at Ariel University, driven by his personal ideology of "I Can Do It” which inspired him to overcome the challenges of dyslexia and achieve his goals.
Naftali's innate kindness and sensitivity blossomed as he matured, shaping him into a person who gave selflessly and found joy in helping others. His patients, both in his work with the Clalit Health Services and in the army, admired his dedication and his ability to inspire confidence and hope, enabling them to overcome their challenges.
In 2019, Naftali married Pesi Roth, bringing immense joy to his family. Together, they built a loving home, raising two daughters, Libi (now 4) and Gefen (now 2). Family was central to Naftali's life and he structured his schedule to spend meaningful time with his daughters — taking them to kindergarten, enjoying afternoons in the park, cherishing bedtime routines. Their home was filled with the warmth and laughter that characterized Naftali's spirit.
A talented cook and baker, Naftali delighted in sharing his culinary creations and recipes with loved ones. He also took pride in bringing his daughters to shul every Shabbat, instilling in them a deep love for Judaism and its traditions.
His devotion to his wife, children, parents, and siblings was unwavering, and his presence enriched the lives of all who knew him.
On December 7, 2023, Naftali heroically gave his life defending his country. During a mission in Sejaiya, his tank was hit by a rocket, triggering an explosion that claimed the lives of both Naftali and his tank commander, Omri Roth. His courage, dedication, and love for his country will forever be remembered.
May Naftali’s memory be a blessing, and may the love and joy he shared continue to inspire and comfort those who were privileged to know him.

Naftali is terribly missed.

26-Sep-24: A question to people who have children and love them

2024-09-26T10:03:00.001+03:00

Arnold Roth posted this on his X account yesterday.

Imagine someone kills your child, not because the child did something but for reasons that you need to be a sociopath to understand and sympathize with.
Imagine the killer is indicted by the US but is held close to the bosom of another country. It's a country that your taxes have kept afloat for decades.
Imagine that the US can demand that the killer is handed over for trial in Washington. A treaty for that exists.
Imagine that the US does this but in a very small voice. The country keeping the killer safe understands this to mean they don't really have to hand her over at all.
Imagine the people running the US write to you, tell you how cut up they are about what happened, and say this a really important case for them.
Imagine that you learn they didn't mean a word of it.
Imagine that after years of them ignoring you, it finally hits you that absolutely nothing has been done to get the killer handed over and tried in the US.
Imagine that along the way, the killer is given her own television show by the country keeping her safe and sound. And that her show is beamed into homes all over the world, including into the US, weekly for nearly five years. And that it's all about whipping up support for people like the killer -- support for other people who want to kill your child.
Imagine no one in the US government agrees to talk with you about what's really happening, about how the US won't allow the country doing the hugging-to-the-bosom to be criticized. Or even mentioned.
In fact, imagine that most of them fail to acknowledge your existence.
Imagine a decade goes by and no one in the US government - not its diplomats, not its law enforcers, not its lawmakers, not its many spokespeople - has done anything to get your child's fugitive killer into the dock of a US criminal court.
My question: At what point do you give up trying to make American justice happen?

27-Aug-24: This is how we affirm the principles of justice, fairness, and the rule of law

2024-08-27T18:39:00.011+03:00

A version of the short essay below, authored jointly by Frimet and Arnold Roth, was first published on August 20, 2024 by Jewish News Syndicate.

On August 18, 2024 - a recent Sunday evening - a Palestinian Arab male blew himself up in central Tel Aviv with enough explosives to murder hundreds of Israelis. He managed only to end his own life.

For us, almost 23 years to the date that a Palestinian suicide bomber murdered our teenage daughter Malki and so many other innocents, this served as a jolting reminder that the scourge of Palestinian human-bomb attacks is still here. Hours afterwards, Hamas claimed responsibility, calling it “a suicide bombing conducted as a joint operation with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and vowing further such attacks”.

For Israelis and Americans, the “failed” bomber is a wake-up call, a harbinger of fresh trouble ahead. From where we stand, it’s the kind of wake-up call that should never have been needed.

• • •

In August 2001, during a busy lunch hour in central Jerusalem, a bomb exploded in a Sbarro pizzeria. The attack killed 16 people, including eight children. 130 were injured, some catastrophically. Three of those killed were American citizens. All were Jewish.

Source: YouTube screen capture

The mastermind behind this massacre was a 21-year-old Jordanian journalism student and TV newsreader, Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. The atrocity, in her subsequent retelling, was “the crown on my head.”

Tamimi later told Arab audiences that she carefully selected a target rich in children, calculating the number of casualties with chilling precision. She accompanied the bomber—a young zealot carrying an exploding guitar case—to Sbarro, fleeing the scene minutes before the explosion.

Today, she lives in Jordan, free to glorify her role in the attack, to incite further violence, to normalize the murder of civilians as "resistance."

One of Tamimi’s American victims was our Malki, just 15.

Since 2012, we have fought to bring the Hamas terrorist to U.S. justice but are stymied by Jordan's refusal to extradite her and by American failure to compel Jordan to honor its treaty obligations.

It crushes us that Jordan protects a fugitive terrorist. Beyond that, it’s incomprehensible that the Biden administration—and those before it—continually fails to take the steps it should and can take to bring her to trial. Why does the U.S. government obstruct justice in this clear case of criminal terror?

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

In the weeks after the Sbarro disaster, Tamimi was arrested and then tried and convicted in an Israeli court. Pleading guilty to all charges, the judicial panel ordered a term of 16 life sentences with an emphatic recommendation that she never be freed. But that’s not how it worked out. Israel made a controversial 2011 deal with Hamas to secure the freedom of an Israeli hostage and, to our horrified disbelief, Tamimi was released along with 1,026 other convicted and imprisoned terrorists.

She returned to Jordan where she was born and educated. Embraced as a hero, Tamimi became a public speaker and television personality, urging respect for what she calls “resistance” and encouraging others to follow in her path.

Two years later, the U.S. Department of Justice charged her under seal with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals resulting in death. This was made public only in 2017 when the U.S. formally requested her extradition under a 1995 treaty with Jordan ["Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans"]. The FBI added her to its Most Wanted Terrorists list the same day; she remains on it today. A State Department $5 million reward for information leading to her capture was announced some months later.

But Tamimi has never been in hiding. She lives openly in Jordan, shielded by the Hashemite government that refuses to honor its treaty obligations.

A Personal Betrayal

The diplomatic failure and the trampling of justice have been accompanied by years of our being ignored and humiliated in Washington.

Something seemed to change when a personal letter addressing us as bereaved parents and written in the names of both President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was delivered to us in October 2022. Tamimi must be held accountable, they wrote, and the U.S. is fully committed to bringing her to the U.S. to stand trial. Justice for Malki and the other murdered Americans was "a foremost priority for the United States". It closed with this assurance: “We will stay in contact with you regarding our ongoing efforts to ensure Tamimi is held accountable for her despicable crimes.”

Our spirits were dramatically raised.

We responded with thanks and questions to the senior official who had signed the letter: Victoria Nuland, at the time the Deputy Secretary of State. Nuland never responded – not to that first of our letters and not to any of the dozen that followed. When she retired from the State Department in May 2024, no other official stepped in to continue the dialogue or deliver on the commitments she made.

This failure to act feels like a personal betrayal—just one more in a long series that have denied justice for Malki.

The past year has been especially hard for us. In December 2023, our son-in-law Naftali Gordon, an IDF reservist, was killed in Gaza while fighting Hamas, the same terrorist organization that sent Tamimi into our lives. Naftali was the husband of one of Malki’s sisters and the father of two young children. Our fresh grief, compounded by ongoing neglect in our search for U.S. justice, underscores the imperative of seeing Tamimi held accountable in a U.S. court.

Congress must help

This agonizing, ongoing failure of justice demands that Congress take a meaningful role. While the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all claimed to pursue Tamimi’s extradition, forceful measures are clearly needed. If they become involved, Congressional lawmakers can escalate America’s response so that it matches the gravity of the terror charges and the prevailing view in Jordan and the Arab world that Tamimi cannot be touched.

Leveraging U.S. foreign aid to Jordan, which currently exceeds $1.4 billion annually, is one way. Conditioning it on Jordan’s cooperation in Tamimi’s extradition would convey that U.S. prioritizes justice and the rule of law, a very different message from the reality of this past decade. Financial aid provided by American taxpayers cannot be used to harbor terrorists or undermine justice.

Congress can hold hearings to look into the passivity that has marked the failed Tamimi extradition until now, and insist on greater transparency, putting essential pressure on the State Department and the White House. Lawmakers can insist that key current and past administration officials testify about steps taken—or not taken—to achieve the Tamimi extradition.

Congress can issue a resolution aimed at galvanizing public opinion in the U.S. and internationally and to end years of media neglect—or suppression—that have made this case essentially unknown to most Americans.

Grassroots outrage—expressed by advocacy groups, community organizations, and spiritual leaders—can and should call on the government to ensure that those who harm Americans are held accountable, no matter where they are. Or who shields them.

A Moral Imperative

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously taught that "in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible." The U.S. is not responsible for Tamimi’s crimes, but Americans and their institutions can ensure that justice is served. Those who obstruct it—including those within Washington's chambers—must be made to address their duties.

Those who commit acts of terrorism must expect to be brought to account. This is how we affirm the principles of justice, fairness, and the rule of law. The extradition of Ahlam Tamimi goes beyond legal obligation; it is a moral imperative.

• • •

Versions of this opinion column by Frimet and Arnold Roth appear in the Baltimore Jewish Times (August 28, 2024) and the Washington Jewish Week (September 2, 2024) as well as Israel 365 News (August 21, 2024) and J-Wire (August 21, 2024)

24-Apr-24: The Sbarro bomber: Betrayal, lies, politics and grief

2024-04-24T14:54:00.008+03:00

Nuland, Biden, Blinken [Image Source]

On March 14, 2024, under the headline "Betrayal, lies, politics and grief | The world’s refusal to bring my child’s killer to justice.", the Jewish News Syndicate published a first-person opinion piece authored by Arnold Roth.

Its appearance was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the day in 2017 when federal terrorism charges, kept secret up to that point by the US government for years, were finally made public.

Since the op ed was republished by no more than a handful of JNS syndication outlets, we think it's right to repost it (with light changes and additional hyperlinks).

What's said here is important to us - important enough that we continue to press the government of the United States to finally do what its law enforcement arms have endeavored to do since 2013 when it indicted Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi under seal: to put her on trial in Washington and if convicted, to put her behind bars for the rest of her life.

For murky reasons which we think we understand but which have never been revealed by any news media anywhere, those US federal charges remained secret from the world, the media and the families of Tamimi's victims for four years, until March 14, 2017.

But they were not kept secret from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which is bound by bilateral treaty to the United States to extradite Tamimi to the US. Via a formal ruling by one of its appellate courts, just six days after the charges became public knowledge in 2017, Jordan flatly refused. It still refuses until today.

Here's the updated version of what Arnold Roth wrote for the JNS in March.

* * *

Seven years have passed since criminal charges were brought in Washington, D.C. against the woman who murdered my sunny, lovely, empathetic 15-year-old daughter Malki. The anniversary of the charges being made public is today, March 14.

As milestones go, this one is dark. The fugitive killer admits to her central role in the massacre for which she is being prosecuted. Though she brags about her atrocity, she lives the life of a celebrity and an inspiration to others.

Yet her ongoing freedom gets negligible attention in the news industry and public discourse—even in the U.S. To the extent that the Arab media report on her, it is overwhelmingly favorable and sympathetic.

The dry details of Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi’s long-thwarted prosecution are easy to find. The mugshots, biographical details and charges are accessible via three sites: The FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, the 2017 Department of Justice unveiling of the hitherto secret charges and the State Department’s 2018 post of a $5 million reward that is still unclaimed two full decades after it first went public.

What’s behind Tamimi’s freedom is harder to ascertain.

Those who know don’t talk openly and those with a stake in her ongoing freedom are too often untruthful about it. Understanding this and conjecturing why it is the case is at the heart of the nightmare my wife and I endure years after our beautiful child’s life was extinguished.

* * *

Tamimi was recruited by Hamas in 2001. The first female to become one of its jihadists, she was given the mission of bombing one of Jerusalem’s few large department stores.

Hamashbir Lazarchan, located on busy King George Street, was an easy hit. On July 30, 2001, she entered its basement supermarket with an explosives-filled beer can. No security people stood at the doors in those innocent days. Tamimi placed the bomb on a shelf among other beverage containers and strolled out.

An FBI “Most Wanted Terrorist” poster for
Jordanian terrorist Ahlam Ahmad Tamimi [Source: FBI]

Still flush with excitement in a 2012 interview on an Arab TV station, she recounted what resulted:

“The supermarket completely exploded... The Israelis said that nobody had been killed or wounded... This was the beginning of the intifada, and it was normal for them to conceal the number of casualties in order to avoid panic among the Zionists” (Arabic-to-English transcript).

A calmer version from the standpoint of the bombmaker, a Kuwaiti kinsman of Tamimi by the name of Abdallah Barghouti, stated,

“The operation was not intended to cause deaths or injuries but was intended to test the occupation’s security precautions” (source).

Both accounts are absolutely untrue. No one was injured by the bomb, though the aim was to cause a bloodbath. And when it failed, Tamimi badgered her Hamas handlers to immediately give her a better bomb for a second shot at jihadi fame.

That came just a week later on Aug. 9, 2001. An exploding guitar case fabricated by Barghouti was handed to Tamimi by a Hamas handler who paired her up with a religious zealot willing to sling it across his shoulder and carry it inside the target she had selected: central Jerusalem’s bustling Sbarro pizzeria.

From Ramallah, she accompanied the suicidal human bomb by bus and cab to Jerusalem. Then on foot through its downtown streets where, unknown to Tamimi or the young man by her side, the Israel Police had been put on alert following an intelligence tip that a terrorist attack was about to take place.

Tragically, the general public was never told.

Sbarro, central Jerusalem, the afternoon of August 9, 2001
[Image credit: Avi Ohayon, Israel Govt Press Office]

The massive explosion gutted Sbarro at two o’clock on a hot school vacation afternoon, erasing 16 lives and injuring 130 other innocents. Three Americans were murdered, one of them Malki.

Tamimi was arrested weeks later. Tried in Jerusalem, she was convicted and sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. The three-judge panel, horrified by the smiling accused who admitted all the charges against her, recommended from the bench to the Israeli authorities that Tamimi should never be set free—not in any political deal, not on bail, not for any reason.

Their advice was ignored.

Tamimi walked free in a 2011 deal between Hamas and Israel for the release of a young IDF soldier held hostage for five years. Israel paid heavily, conditionally commuting the sentences of 1,027 convicted Palestinian Arab and other Arab terrorists and setting them loose. More than half had blood on their hands.

Tamimi was bused to Cairo on the day of the release. Following a high-profile media event there in which Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal blessed her arrival, she left on a VIP flight to Jordan and a tumultuous welcome at its main airport and instant, noisy stardom.

In the years that followed, she hosted her own made-in-Amman terror-friendly Hamas show that was beamed globally via satellite TV. She settled into a jihad-centric talk circuit that got her in front of television cameras, on public event panels and before live audiences throughout the Middle East, as well as opinion pieces in influential Arabic mainstream and social media outlets. Tamimi’s position as one of Islamist terror’s most influential icons is beyond doubt.

* * *

Meanwhile, starting in 2012, just weeks after she left her Israeli cell, Tamimi became a person of interest to the U.S. Department of Justice. A core factor was that two of her victims were U.S. citizens, one of them Malki. (A third, who suffered profound injuries in the atrocity, died in May 2023, having never regained consciousness.)

Those charges were signed off by a U.S. federal judge in July 2013. But they became public only much later on March 14, 2017 via a Department of Justice announcement.

As this was happening, we were quietly told that Jordan, which is obligated by a 1995 treaty with the Clinton administration to extradite Tamimi, had flatly refused to comply. “You’re now in the court of public opinion,” one of the officials told me. “Good luck.”

The court of public opinion doesn’t have a single address but many. As Malki’s parents, we have tried to reach all of them. We have gone to Congress, assailed the mainstream Western media, written privately to the Biden administration and to the two that came before it, turned to a herd of America’s Jewish organizational insiders, sought help from the government of Israel, and engaged with numerous respected commentators and analysts with expertise in the field.

One or two have said getting Tamimi prosecuted is a bad idea if it offends Jordan. The vast majority either fail to respond or acrobatically avoid dealing directly with the issue even as they sit in the room with my wife and me. The result is mostly the same: We come away frustrated and dismayed by the miles-wide gap between the values they profess and their inaction or actual obstruction.

We have written or spoken about some of those beating-our-head-against-the-wall encounters, but not all. I present a small sample:

Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the U.S. in 1995 and complied with it for years. There’s no doubt that it remains valid and enforceable. But a Jordanian court, suspiciously ruling just a week after the charges against Tamimi were unsealed in Washington seven years ago, said the treaty needed to be ratified by the parliament but never was and thus was invalid.
No reporter whom I have contacted has ever pressed the Jordanians about the patent falseness of this claim. If it’s true, Jordan created the problem and Jordan can fix it by simply ratifying the treaty tomorrow morning. But as we discovered by suing the State Department in 2021 under the Freedom of Information Act, King Hussein—the father of Jordan’s present King Abdullah—personally ratified the treaty and swore not to allow its violation. That should have ended the controversy but, of course, it hasn’t.
Years of appeals to senior American Jewish leaders have been brushed off.
But two significant breakthroughs came this past year: The American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in July 2023 and the Conference of Presidents wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January 2024. Each asked the U.S. to press Jordan harder so Tamimi is handed over for trial in Washington. Both requests have failed to get a response of any kind.
My wife Frimet is a registered voter in Queens, New York, where she lived for 20-some years. Our requests to the lawmakers who represent her to take up the Tamimi issue with the State Department have gone unanswered or gone nowhere. Both parties in Congress have shown the same unwillingness to tackle the issue.
All our encounters with Washington’s ambassadors to Israel have been, putting it respectfully, a disappointment.

That’s also true of the things we have done to get reactions from the top of the pyramid. I have avoided publicizing this but I feel justified in sharing how our polite, cogent personal appeals to various presidents, secretaries of state ["27-Aug-21: What we said to Secretary of State Blinken about our child's murder and how he replied"] and current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have been brushed aside as if the Tamimi case were not worth addressing.

* * *

Out of the blue, months after we decided to stop wasting further time on them, a letter dated October 25, 2022 arrived from Victoria Nuland, at the time the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Deputy Secretary of State. She has just retired.

She opened with some startling words:

“On behalf of the President, Secretary Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan I want to reiterate…”

She then listed things no government figure has until now: Tamimi must be held accountable; the U.S. is fully committed to getting her into a U.S. court; it’s pursuing “all viable options” with Jordan; and getting justice for Malki and others “is a foremost priority for the United States.”

The most distressing part of Nuland’s letter was its final sentence:

“We will stay in contact with you regarding our ongoing efforts to ensure Tamimi is held accountable for her despicable crimes.”

She hasn’t stayed in contact at all. And now she's left her job as America's third-highest ranking diplomat.

On one level, the ongoing pain of our bitter experience stems from the failures of U.S. justice, Congress and the executive branch, reinforced by a depressing propensity for clear-cut issues to fall victim to politics both domestic and global.

On another level, especially painful for us, there are the lessons about American Jewish life and its leadership’s failure to lead.

On yet another level, ours is simply a human story of parents fighting so that the killer of our teenage daughter is brought in chains to a U.S. court to face prosecution.

Tamimi hosted an Arabic language TV series,

"Breezes of the Free", beamed from Amman to the entire

Arabic-speaking world for five years.

The U.S. and the world want to see the Israel-Hamas war wrapped up. In some ways, there’s a mood of “whatever it takes” in the air, and therefore a realistic prospect that Israel will free Palestinian Arab terrorists, including senior Hamas figures. (We’re totally opposed.)

Some of them might go to Jordan.

So what would it mean if the incomprehensibly generous grant of impunity that Jordan, one of the world’s most antisemitic entities, has enjoyed while illicitly holding tight to Tamimi were extended to cloak those terrorists?

The Tamimi case is a red light for what may lie ahead.

* * *

Our battle for justice and against the terrorists has been personal from the outset; not because it’s important for us alone (it’s more important than that) but because it’s driven by pain and grief. Those feelings grew even more intense a few weeks ago when our son-in-law, the beloved husband of one of Malki’s sisters and adored father of two of our toddler granddaughters, was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza.

It’s time to change how America views the war against the terrorists and those who stand with them. Everything dear to us depends on getting that right.

06-Feb-24: Obituary: Naftali Yonah Gordon, our adored son-in-law

2024-02-06T12:02:00.007+02:00

The obituary that follows was published yesterday by Times of Israel under the headline "Master Sgt. (res.) Naftali Gordon, 32: A man of ‘honesty and justice’ | Killed in combat in the Gaza Strip on December 7".

The fallen soldier was our greatly-loved and admired son in law, the father of two of our toddler grandchildren.

* * *

Master Sgt. (res.) Naftali Yonah Gordon, 32, a soldier in the IDF's Artillery Corps Battalion 53, was killed in battle in Gaza on December 7.

Naftali, who was a physiotherapist in Jerusalem, leaves behind parents, siblings, a wife, and two daughters.

Speaking at Naftali’s funeral, his wife Pesi, who lost her sister Malki Roth in the 2001 Sbarro bombing, said that he was a perfect husband and father.

“Since you entered my life, it’s been full of light,” she said. “I wanted to grow old with you, you will always be mine and I will always be yours.”

She also promised him that she would raise their two daughters with joy.

Naftali’s mother Beaty Gordon said her son had been an excellent swimmer and loved jogging. She also said he always wanted to help people.

His sister Shira Posner echoed this, saying that he was a “man of action” and a “man of honesty and justice who was filled with joy and humor.”

A new memorial corner in the Jerusalem
medical clinic where Naftali practised as
a physical therapist

Naftali’s fellow soldiers said he had been like a brother to them and that he had regularly put himself at risk for them.

Over Hanukkah, Naftali’s clinic dedicated one of the holiday nights to their lost friend. They described him as having been deeply loved by his whole team.

“Naftali was everything,” they said before the candles were lit. “He had golden hands that could build and repair anything, and he was very smart, giving, kind, and modest.”

A former physiotherapist at the clinic, Effi Hileli, told Mynet that Naftali was a friend to everyone and had easily fit into the team when he first joined.

He had also been set to begin a process management and clinical training course.

The physiotherapy clinic’s manager, Joanie Meron, told Jerusalem MyNet news, “He had endless patience which stemmed from an incredible combination of him being a wonderful, caring, and hardworking person alongside his outstanding wisdom and expertise.”

01-Feb-24: Jordan, Tamimi and a long-awaited public call for US moral integrity and justice

2024-02-01T20:05:00.009+02:00

Image Source: The FBI

Getting Jordanian fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi into a Washington courthouse to face trial on charges that were signed off more than a decade ago has been orders-of-magnitude more difficult than we originally thought possible.

And she's still free. This is despite

Jordan being a treaty partner of the US and the recipient of well over a billion and a half dollars annually in aid funded by American taxpayers - more than any other country (and we don't mean per capita).
Tamimi being an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist of whom only 24 are currently alive and only two of them are females.
Tamimi living proudly and openly in Amman, never in hiding as far as we know for even a single day since her return to her homeland in October 2011 - an arrival marked by tumultuous receptions and cheering crowds at the airport, and a long series of exuberant public rallies in downtown Amman, at the University of Jordan's main campus, and at numerous other schools and universities, as well as dozens of venues in other Arab countries.

How she's perceived in Jordan is straightforward. There, she's a celebrity, widely admired for what she did (the dead Jewish children, the getting away from the scene, the getting out of Israeli prison, the outspoken and unwavering promotion and admiration of deadly terror. There's more.) We're reasonably sure that we follow Jordan's media more closely than most non-Jordanians do. If a critical word about Ahlam Tamimi has ever appeared in any newspaper or magazine article, we haven't seen it.

We doubt it's ever happened.

But how Tamimi is viewed in the highest reaches of America's power hierarchy is considerably less simple.

On one hand, she has faced criminal charges in Washington DC since 2013 that, if she's convicted, may see her spending the rest of her life behind bars in a federal prison.

In January 2018, a unit of the State Department called Rewards for Justice announced a reward of "up to $5 million" "for information on Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi". That reward is still in effect. Referring to the Sbarro atrocity, the reward offer page says that

"in 2003, al-Tamimi pleaded guilty in an Israeli court to participating in the attack and was sentenced to 16 life terms in Israel for assisting the bomber. She was released in October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. On March 14, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and an arrest warrant for al-Tamimi. The FBI also added al-Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists List."

In addition, we know what President Biden says about bringing her to US justice. It's the very same thing Secretary of State Antony Blinken says. There's a good reason we can say this and that is that on October 25, 2022, a senior official in the US State Department (we prefer to give no names at this stage) sent us a personal letter in their names. "Us" means Frimet and Arnold Roth - we write this blog.

Here's most of it:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Roth:
Thank you for your July 10 letter to President Biden and your September 1 letter to National Security Advisor Sullivan. On behalf of the President, Secretary Blinken, and National Security Advisor Sullivan, I want to reiterate our deepest condolences to you and your family for the unimaginable pain and suffering you have experienced over the tragic loss of your daughter, Malki. Ahlam al-Tamimi must be held accountable for her role in the terrorist attack that claimed the life of your daughter and 14 others.
The U.S. government remains fully committed to bringing Tamimi to the United States to face federal terrorism-related charges in U.S. courts. The U.S. government is pursuing all viable options to hold Tamimi accountable, including ongoing engagements with the Government of Jordan.
I can assure you that pursuing justice for American victims of terrorism, including Malki, is a foremost priority for the United States. We will stay in contact with you regarding our ongoing efforts to ensure Tamimi is held accountable for her despicable crimes.
Sincerely yours,

As it happens, there were some questions we wanted to ask the writer of the letter. So we wrote back. And then wrote again. And again and again.

In fact the "we will stay in contact with you" part of it has ended up being pretty puzzling for us. Not one of our dozen or so emails and messages to the writer has gotten even a single response in the nearly sixteen months since the letter was sent to us by the US Department of State. That's a serious piece of pretending not to hear us.

Has Tamimi been held accountable by the US? Not in the smallest way. Her name has never once been mentioned in any public utterance by President Biden, or by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, or by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, or by any of their media spokespersons.

Pause and read that again; it's a serious thing.

On the other hand, and perhaps others will be less surprised by this than we are, those very same, very important officials who haven't once managed to speak publicly about Jordan's harboring of the killer and who have never mentioned on the record the killer's name or the names of her victims have very little reluctance in publicly praising the ruler of Jordan and his country.

Examples from among many:

The American President offered some widely-reported warm appreciation: "Biden Praises Jordanian King as Strong Ally in 'Tough Neighborhood'" [VOA, July 19, 2021].
Secretary Blinken, speaking after a May 2021 Middle East tour, spoke highly of King Abdullah’s “crucial” leadership in helping to secure a cease-fire agreement between Israel and “Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip... Jordan’s recent contributions to help bring an end to the conflict in Israel demonstrate the kingdom's enduring role as a force for peace in the region, which is one of the reasons our relationship is so strong and so vital,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with King Abdullah in Amman.” [Source]. That's the ceasefire that so viciously ended with the Hamas mass-butchery, rape and pillage of October 7, 2023.
And the National Security Advisor in May 2022: “Sullivan commended Jordan’s pivotal role in promoting regional security and stability, stressing the United States’ keenness on maintaining coordination and working with the Kingdom to counter threats to regional stability and their implications on international peace, in addition to ongoing efforts in the fight against terrorism and extremism.” [Jordan Times, May 14, 2022].

As the parents of a greatly-loved murdered American child, we have fought since 2012 to see Tamimi brought to justice under US law in the US. It's a process that has been marked by rudeness and disdain over those years from a long list of officials in three consecutive US administrations.

That's why we were so heartened by what happened just two weeks ago.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an influential roof-body organization based in New York, is

"the proven and effective voice of organized American Jewry for more than half a century... (working) publicly and behind the scenes to advance the interests of the American Jewish community, sustain broad-based support for Israel and addresses the critical concerns facing world Jewry with US and world leaders, key opinion molders and the public. [It's] the preeminent forum for diverse segments of the Jewish community to come together in mutual respect to deliberate vital national and international issues, set policy and priorities, deliberate proactive strategies and take collective action."

It speaks in the names of some fifty member organizations. They include AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti Defamation League, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the Jewish Federations of North America, the National Council of Jewish Women and some 44 more.

This is what the COP sent to Secretary Antony Blinken on January 16, 2024 and made public shortly afterwards:

Dear Secretary Blinken,
Thank you very much for your and President Biden’s continuing support for Israel during the ongoing crisis. Your steadfast dedication to ensuring a peaceful and secure future for the people of Israel is noted and appreciated by the American Jewish community.
We write today to reiterate how deeply concerned we are by the fact that Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist responsible for the heinous 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, continues to find refuge in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The horrific attack on the Sbarro pizzeria claimed the life of sixteen innocents, three of them American nationals. These victims included a pregnant woman, a woman who remained in a coma for more than twenty years before succumbing to her injuries, and 15-year-old Malki Roth. The pain and anguish experienced by Malki’s family, Frimet and Arnold Roth, are shared by countless others in the American Jewish community and beyond.
We are heartened by President Biden’s commitment to conducting diplomacy rooted in America’s democratic values and dedication to upholding universal rights. We believe that these principles should extend to seeking justice for victims of terrorism, regardless of where the perpetrators seek shelter.
Jordan’s refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi represents a breach of the 1995 bilateral treaty between the United States and Jordan. Despite her confessions and incriminating statements, she has enjoyed immunity from justice, further exacerbating tensions and fostering an environment of hatred and extremism in the region.
We believe that the United States should prioritize Tamimi’s extradition in our bilateral relations with Jordan. We suggest a comprehensive review of the leverage that could be applied by the United States to signal the importance of compliance with U.S. law and principles. We urge the State Department to engage in a robust diplomatic dialogue with Jordan’s leadership, stressing the importance of upholding international agreements and commitments to justice.
Also of concern, Jordan’s Court of Cassation denied a 2017 US request for extradition by asserting that the country never ratified the extradition treaty with the United States. However, the ruling failed to acknowledge King Hussein’s ratification of the treaty at the time of its signing in March 1995. We request that the United States make this information publicly available to counteract misconceptions and bring clarity to the matter.
We also request that you raise the issue and seek tangible progress on Tamimi’s extradition with King Abdullah II.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations stands united in our unwavering commitment to combatting terrorism and ensuring justice for victims and their families. We trust that the United States will continue to demonstrate its leadership and moral integrity by pursuing this crucial matter.
Sincerely,

Harriet P. Schleifer William C. Daroff

Chair Chief Executive Officer

The text of the letter was made public by the COP on or just after the day it was sent [here]. When we checked today with a senior source there, we were told there has been no response so far from anyone at the State Department.

As we have said in this blog before, our experience in getting Secretary Antony Blinken's attention on the Tamimi case, or in prodding him to take concrete steps towards bringing the Jordanian fugitive to US justice, haven't gone well. Some of that quite bitter experience is laid out here: "27-Aug-21: What we said to Secretary of State Blinken about our child's murder and how he replied".

And as we noted above, none of the people who have served him as spokesperson or deputy spokesperson in the role he has had since 2021 has ever pronounced Ahlam Tamimi's name in public.

It's a depressing reality made far worse by the way America's mainstream media have ignored the story, and continue to ignore it today.

What this means is the vast majority of Americans know nothing about Jordan's ongoing breach of the treaty, about its devotion to harboring and protecting a fugitive charged with being the central figure in a massacre of Jewish children and of Americans, or about the Conference of Presidents' open letter of two weeks ago.

Little wonder that Congress - both sides of the aisle - ignore the scandal, thereby allowing Jordan to keep pocketing massive taxpayer-provided US aid and Ahlam Tamimi to avoid justice and accountability.

04-Jan-24: Adjusting to a new reality

2024-01-04T07:03:00.012+02:00

Our family is about as well-adjusted, mutually supportive, loving as those around us here in Jerusalem. Maybe in some respects even a little more than many.

That's not only relevant but perhaps even core to the experience we're undergoing right now.

Those who know us - not via our writing or our social media presence but as neighbors and actual friends - will already be aware of the crushing challenge that's overtaken us in recent weeks. But for the many who pass through our blog or come into contact with articles penned by people outside our family circle, a few lines here to explain.

We were as private as most families are until the summer of 2001. And then lost some of our anonymity in the explosive horror of a bombing in the heart of the city we have called home since moving to Jerusalem in the eighties.

The middle child of our young family, Malki, a sunny, sweet-natured, generous and talented fifteen year old, was one of many children targeted for her Jewishness in a massacre engineered by Hamas and centered on a pizzeria that's gone on to become a by-word for carnage and vicious cynicism: Sbarro Jerusalem.

Half the victims of that early afternoon atrocity, timed for a busy school-vacation afternoon in one of this city's bustling gathering points, were children. The shocking-enough death toll was fifteen, with some 130 others injured, overwhelmingly mothers and children. That, we soon learned, was the explicit plan. The list grew to 16 just a few months ago when one of the victims - a young mother out for lunch with her toddler daughter - died of her injuries decades after the bombing without ever having regained consciousness.

Accompanied by one of her very closest friends and our neigbours' daughter, Malki was standing at the counter placing her order when an exploding young man (not the terrorist as he is mistakenly called but the terrorist's human bomb) walked in off the busy intersection of King George Avenue and Jaffa Road and, after a few moments of seeming to study the overhead menu, pressed a button on his chest. The button was wired to the guitar case slung across his back. But what was inside was no guitar.

Though this wasn't obvious to our family for a while, the massive explosion that ensued, destroying the eatery and the tranquility of dozens of families like ours, marked the end of one stage of our lives. And the start of a new and very painful and challenging one.

For us, losing Malki was traumatic in ways we won't try to articulate here.

With time, the wounds and scars did what they usually do. Not quite healing, they remained ever-present parts of the reality of coping with loss and pain as well as the sometimes-quite-complicated background to lives-going-on.

The years that followed included family weddings, the births of grandchildren, the passing of older members of our families. And, in passing, the ongoing pursuit of the atrocity's mastermind who is safe and shielded in Jordan until today. There were private and occasionally public celebrations, along with observances that for an Orthodox Jewish family like ours give specific shape to the flow of the months and years and even lifetimes. And a myriad of shared experiences that anyone who is close to anyone will recognize.

On December 7, 2023, just after we lit the first Hanukah candle, several sombre-looking members of a special purpose team from the Israel Defence Forces knocked on the door of our son-in-law's family. Two of our youngest grand-daughters were in the room with their Mummy enjoying a special family moment. It was a relief from the stresses and strains of living without their Abba (Daddy) who was posted to far-away Gaza - along with several hundred thousand other Israeli Abbas - as part of the largest mobilization of military reserves our country has ever known. Again, as in the Battle at Sbarro, the enemy was Hamas.

The special family moment ended as soon as that door was opened.

The army buried our son-in-law with pomp and very respectful formality three days later. In atendance were many hundreds of people whose lives were touched by this lovely young man, along with his extended family. Though his military role as a reservist involved being inside a tank, our son in law was a physiotherapist with a burgeoing career and many apprecative clients.

But first he was a loving and adored husband, father, son and sibling.

In heart-breakingly gentle tones, our newly widowed daughter spoke at the graveside and then in a television interview during the shiva of losing a deeply admired partner who saw his responsibility, without question and without delay, as being to help defend his family and the society in which we live.

His life, like that of our Malki 22 years earlier, was distinguished by an all-embracing love and a pureness, a fineness and a nobility of personality that is almost impossible to adequately express in words.

23-Nov-23: Not war in the conventional sense

2023-11-23T20:27:00.011+02:00

Source: YouTube

Like all wars, this war, the one in which the savages of Hamas launched an all-out slaughter of innocents, and the armed forces of Israel struck back in unusually powerful fashion, has public dimensions - mostly arguing with or trying to understand the politicians and the media.

And private ones: looking after family members, worrying about loved ones who are serving in the standing army and in the reserves; keeping children and grandchildren calm.

To state the obvious, a time of immense stress. Our apologies for being silent for much longer than usual.

We continu to be active on our three Twitter channels (it's hard to the point of offensive to call it X): Frimet's, Arnold's and the one we work on jointly, This Ongoing War.

But sitting down to write something longer continues to call for juggling skills and balancing capabilities that are beyond us most of the time right now.

And stress being what it is, we're both battling colds or something like it.

Negatives notwithstanding, it's been a time when we have wanted to be heard. The dramatic events that started October 7 raise issues - Hamas, terrorism, war, idiotic media among others - on which we have first-hand experience and things we want people to know.

On October 10, just three days after the horrific events of Black Shabbat, Arnold Roth was interviewed on NEWSX, an Indian TV news platform ("India's leading English News Channel and the #1 choice of the young, aspiring and urbane") and a brief intro on its Twitter stream).

He emphasized that this was not war in the conventional sense, a war waged overwhelmingly against civilians. And that Israel was experiencing the calm before the storm, after the first storm.

We have more to share. Just not yet.

14-Aug-23: Getting Tamimi to US justice: A modest positive step

2023-08-14T18:46:00.013+03:00

The admitted Sbarro bomber hosted a made-in-Jordan weekly TV

show from Amman between February 2012 and September 2016.

Taking a robustly pro-terror line, it went to air globally via the
Hamas Al Quds TV satellite channel with a generous
assist from YouTube.

A small but meaningful step forward by America's organized Jewish communities in addressing a subject they have avoided confronting for years happened, to our surprise and appreciation, a month ago.

But first some background.

The woman who brought a suicidal/murderous human bomb to the door of a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem 22 years ago this week lives in Jordan today.

A fugitive with a $5 million reward on her head from the Rewards for Justice unit of the US State Department, she's free but not only that.

She's also a media celebrity. A 21 year old TV news reader when she spearheaded the Sbarro massacre, she went on to host a television program aimed at a global Arabic-speaking audience that was produced in Amman, Jordan's capital, and beamed from there throughout the world weekly from February 2012 for the next almost-five years.

If she wasn't already famous, the terror-focused show called "Breezes of the Free" turned her into a pan-Arab public figure. If anyone has a claim to being an icon of Islamist terror, a person who more than anyone else embodies murderous lust for dead Jews and Israelis, it is Ahlam Ahmad Aref Al-Tamimi.

But this isn't about her.

What's disturbed us more than any other single factor through the years that we have striven to see her arrested in Jordan, put on a plane and brought in chains to Washington where federal US charges have faced her since July 15, 2013, is the incomprehensible passivity of so many parts of American society.

And none more incomprehensible than America's Jewish organizational leadership.

The still-thwarted US prosecution of Tamimi ought to have been embraced as an American-Jewish issue par excellence. The woman is open about having targeted Jews, and in particular Jewish children, in the massacre she engineered at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. And in this, she succeeded on a shattering scale: a death toll of sixteen, half of them children, most of the rest women, and three US nationals among them.

She is on the record saying that nothing she did left her feeling any moral or other doubt:

I have no regrets, and no Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done. We were defending ourselves. What are we supposed to regret? Should we regret defending ourselves? Should we regret that the Israelis killed one of us so we killed a different one of them? We have no regrets. [Palestinian Media Watch]

And not only no regrets but redemptive theological conviction:

This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner (Source; Tamimi interviewed in Jordan in October 2011 - translated by MEMRI).

Referring to two separate Jerusalem bombng attacks which she spearheaded, she brags (to a Turkish audience in October 2021) that

Allah let me have a membership in the ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions and [allowed me to] participate in two jihad operations that produced, by the Lord’s virtue, the deaths of fifteen zionists with 122 zionists wounded in two Jihad operations. We ask Allah to accept this. These two jihad operations are a crown on my head. By Allah’s virtue, I entered history by doing the finest of deeds, the finest operations, in the finest of ways, which are the ways of jihad. Praise Allah, He has prescribed me this fate.

With years of detailed, recorded and filmed interviews, speeches and public rallies behind her, there is absilutely no reason to doubt Tamimi's deep belief in the righteousness of the crimes that have made her one of the FBI's twenty-four Most Wanted Terrorists.

* * *

Jordan's supremely shabby role in keeping this appalling woman free and out of reach of America's law enforcement agencies is a matter of record.

The Hashemite Kingdom entered into an extradition treaty with the United States in 1995. But in March 2017, just six days after the Justice Department in Washington unsealed its long-secret 2013 charges against Tamimi, it repudiated the bilateral agreement ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]

There is no legal validity to Jordan's judicial assertions, whatever the Jordanians may claim.

The United States has made a variety of official statements - some relatively forceful, some whispered, and none of them directed at Jordan in any public way - confirming that it views the treaty as in force. We summarize them here: "29-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?"

It's a troubling chronology.

Treaties and legal obligations are. of course, only as effective as the people who enforce them. In the Tamimi case, no one answers to that description with the exception, as we know from our own experience, of the prosecutors and investigators of the Department of Justice and of the FBI. Almost all the obstacles we know about, and to a large extent have experienced, emanate from the Department of State.

How do State Department officials justify stepping into the path of US law enforcement? How can they explain taking measures to ensure Tamimi isn't handed over to US marshals? Why would they align their interests and those of the US government with a monstrous terrorist responsible for he deaths of sixteen innocents including three Americans?

They don't.

In fact, in an unclassified October 2022 fax to the parents of Malki Roth, one of Tamimi's many victims, they assert that Tamimi

must be held accountable for her role in the terrorist attack that claimed the life of your daughter and 14 others [that became 15 in March 2023 with the death of an American woman who had been left in a coma in the pizzeria atrocity]... The U.S. government remains fully committed to bringing Tamimi to the united States to face federal terrorism-related charges in U.S. courts. The U.S. government is pursuing all viable options to hold Tamimi accountable, including ongoing engagements with the Government of Jordan. I can sure you that pursuing justice for American victims of terrorism, including Malki, is a formost priority for the United States...

and so on.

Nothing substantive has happened to bring this loathsome woman to US justice in more than a decade. Nontheless some of the most senior officials at the pinnacle of US power continue to say how much they want her, how hard they're working to get her, that their thoughts and prayers go out to the families of her victims.

It's not a terribly complex picture. Most people can figure out the truth of what's actually going on.

* * *

But in the midst of this remarkable saga where America's lawmakers, senior government officials and - to a surprising extent - America's mainstream media all show a striking passivity, there has been a long-overdue positive development.

One of American Jewish life's leading advocacy organisations made an announcement a month ago that marks one of the very few positive moments in the years-long struggle to prosecute the Sbarro bomber. They addressed the US government with a request that efforts be made to get this extradition done. This is good news.

Here's how Jewish Insider reported it on July 13, 2023.

AJC calls on Justice Department to pursue Ahlam Tamimi extradition

The letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland comes ahead of the 10th anniversary of Tamimi’s indictment for her role in 2001 Sbarro bombing
Israeli medics and volunteers treat the injured at the site
of a Palestinian suicide bombing August 9, 2001, in Jerusalem, Israel.
By Melissa Weiss
The American Jewish Committee is for the first time publicly calling on the Justice Department “to exert every effort” to push Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a Palestinian terrorist convicted in an Israeli court for her role in the 2001 bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in which 16 people, including three Americans, were killed.
Tamimi, who received 16 life sentences for escorting a suicide bomber to the restaurant, was freed in a 2011 exchange with Jordan along with more than 1,000 prisoners, most of them Palestinian. She has since become well-known in Jordan and for years hosted a program on a Hamas-affiliated television network.
In a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland, AJC CEO Ted Deutch writes that Tamimi is “unrepentant” and has “enjoyed celebrity status since returning to Jordan, glorifying and inciting terrorism and for five years hosting a program on the Hamas-affiliated Al-Quds TV, beamed throughout the Arabic-speaking world.”
The letter comes ahead of the 10th anniversary of Tamimi’s indictment — done under seal — by the Department of Justice. After the charges were made public in 2017, Jordan rejected the premise of a longstanding extradition treaty between Washington and Amman.
“There is no ambiguity regarding the U.S.-Jordan extradition treaty,” the letter says. “Legal obligations between nations cannot be set aside because they are inconvenient to enforce.”
Americans Malki Roth, 15, and Shoshana Greenbaum, 31, were killed in the blast. New York-born Chana Nachenberg was critically wounded in the attack, and remained in a vegetative state for more than two decades before dying from her injuries in May. Nachenberg’s young daughter survived the attack unharmed.
Malki Roth’s parents, Frimet and Arnold Roth, told JI that the AJC letter was “honorable and welcome.”
“In urging the DOJ to press for extradition by a valued treaty partner, the AJC is backed by justice, American law and Judaism’s profound respect for the sanctity of human life. Ahlam Tamimi calls the Sbarro atrocity ‘a crown on my head.’ The obscenity of her being free to inspire admiring crowds in Jordan and beyond with her savagery should have ended years ago in a Washington courthouse. We pray it will now,” they said in a joint comment for JI.
Yael Lempert, the Biden administration’s nominee for ambassador to Jordan, pledged in her confirmation hearing in May to “do everything in my power” to extradite Tamimi.

The full text of the AJC Ted Deutch letter to the US Attorney General mentioned above is here.

* * *

A month has now passed since the AJC's very welcome initiative was made public. We asked the AJC for an update last week. They said there has been no response and that such things take time.

We responded:

that the DOJ have had a decade to formulate a view. And over six years have passed since their unambiguous March 14, 2017 public statements of determination to bring Tamimi to justice. They have stayed silent, without exception, since then. On any view, it's an exceedingly long time to formulate a position...

As far as we can tell, Jewish Insider is the only Jewish publication to have reported on the Deutch letter. In our view, there's no conceivable way a letter like this one, coming after such an extraordinarily long period of general silence, isn't news.

Call us puzzled - and disappointed.

In the past few weeks, we have launched a broader effort to elicit further American Jewish responses to the Tamimi/Jordan fiasco and hope for results in the coming days. Watch this space.

02-Jul-23: A festival, a funeral and failed leaders

2023-07-02T15:18:00.009+03:00

Tamimi is a featured interviewee on Al-Aqsa TV (and Facebook) June 30, 2023

America's most wanted female fugitive made a featured appearance on global TV again this past Friday.

Ahlam Tamimi, a designated FBI Most Wanted terrorist since March 2017, looked jubilant as the centerpiece of a 25 minute interview on the Al-Aqsa TV network. It's been beaming programs daily from Gaza to Arabic-speaking audiences in every part of the world since 2006.

The background is worth knowing. In 2010, the US Department of the Treasury, calling it "a television station financed and controlled by Hamas", designated Al-Aqsa TV as

a primary Hamas media outlet [that] airs programs and music videos designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood. Treasury will not distinguish between a business financed and controlled by a terrorist group, such as Al-Aqsa Television, and the terrorist group itself... [link]

Treasury designations like this one are intended to freeze assets held by the station and to

prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions with these parties. Executive Order 13224 targets terrorists, terrorist organizations, persons owned or controlled by or acting for or on behalf of designated terrorists or terrorist organizations, and those providing financial, material, or technological support to designated terrorists or terrorist organizations, or for acts of terrorism [Source]

Sounds fearsome.

But for years, video programming that originates with Al-Aqsa TV has gotten a considerable part of its global distribution and exposure from Facebook. Could this amount to giving "financial, material, or technological support to designated terrorists"? It's a question that was posed in the past.

Ahlam Tamimi, who has long called her central role in the massacre of Jewish children in Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 "a crown on my head", was interviewed live on Friday June 30, 2023 in a program marking the festival of Eid al Adha.

The adulatory interview, entirely devoid of criticism and long on compliments and adulation, ran for 25 minutes on Al-Aqsa TV that day. It remains viewable now on Facebook [here].

Rambling and unfocused, with lengthy elements of theology, it calls for understanding of the greatness of what jihadists like Tamimi see themselves personifying. When Tamimi has the media's attention, it's generally about her dedication, her determination, her victimhood. And sometimes about her skillful cooking:

...I mean, I am a professional in making Jordanian mansaf [lamb cooked in fermented dried yogurt, served with rice or bulgur - considered the national dish of Jordan]... I mean, I make mansaf and feed everyone, God willing. I want to talk. Mansaf is also one of the dishes that Nizar and I love. Most Palestinian prisoners and editors also love this dish. On the other hand, I mean, if I want to compare to you, we used to make Mansaf in prison. No one asked me this question honestly. The method of making it in prison is completely different from the way it is made in. In freedom, God willing, in future episodes. If you want to talk about this talk, it is necessary, we would love it very much.

This, remember, is an interview with a confessed mass murderer.

* * *

Until a month ago, the death toll that resulted from Tamimi's August 9, 2001 execution of an act of violent savagery on behalf of Hamas was 15.

Two of those killed were Americans. Our daughter Malka Chana Roth, 15, was one. And a young American Jewish tourist (and her parents' only child) visiting Jerusalem briefly while pregnant for the first time, was the other. Sveeral American nationals were injured.

The number of murdered rose to 16 on May 30, 2023. Chana Tova Nachenberg had been profoundly injured in the Sbarro bombing when a splinter of shrapnel penetrated her skull, rendering her comatose - but sparing her toddler daughter. A month ago, she died in a Tel Aviv hospice, having never recovered consciousness throughout the nearly twenty-two years that ensued.

Chana Finer Nachenberg's grave

Her closest family - parents, husband, only child - visited her for years, praying, hoping, weaping, wishing for a miracle that never came.

Then the vigil came to an end.

We hope none of them ever hears Tamimi wail, as she did on Al-Aqsa this past Friday, about how

I am trying to be happy and get joy. But I mean, the family entity has been shaken because of this forced distance, because of constant demands, constant pursuit. However there is no listening ear to our cause as if [it were we who] committed the massacres of the whole world. They want to put the blame on my back and Nizar's back. [Source]

Her family entity has been shaken, says Tamimi, the proud murderer? It's a reference to how Nizar Tamimi, her husband and cousin, an unrepentant convicted murderer imprisoned for life and freed, like Ahlam Tamimi, in the notorious Shalit Deal in 2011, now lives free in Qatar after Jordan declared him persona non grata in 2020 ["Jordan deports Sbarro bomber’s husband, also a convicted terrorist, to Qatar", Times of Israel, October 13, 2020]

But the presenter, like every presenter of every interview Tamimi has done in all her years of obscene celebrity, doesn't once mention the children this barbarian blew to pieces.

In the Arabic-language media, there is zero interest in addressing the humanity of Tamimi's murdered victims. Tamimi herself has said repeatedly she has no regrets. She would do it again if she could.

In a startlingly large number of Arab media outlets, our beautiful fifteen year old daughter is repeatedly called "zionist rapist". So are all the other Sbarro pizzeria victims, some of whom never reached their teens.

The horror is not limited to Tamimi.

* * *

The dedication ceremony at the fresh graveside of Chana Tova Nachenberg this past Friday included no references to more violence. No calls for revenge. No bitterness or anger. But much heartbreaking wistfulness, deep longing, love.

The FBI issued a Most Wanted Terrorist poster for Ahlam Tamimi in March 2017. It says she's dangerous and likely armed. You can see the English and Arabic versions here.

In the past week, evidently triggered by the increase after so many years of the number of dead, and of the Americans among them, the FBI with no fanfare has just issued an updated version which shows Tamimi looking 43 years old. It also updates the death toll.

King Hussein and President Clinton

What it doesn't say, at least not in the way we think should be said, is that Ahlam Tamimi remains free, a celebrity, safe under the illicit protection of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Why illicit?

Because a 1995 extradition treaty made between the William J. Clinton administration and the late King Hussein of Jordan, the father of today's Jordanian ruler, gives Jordan no discretion in the matter.

If pursuant to the treaty America asks for the handover of a fugitive wanted by the US justice system which Tamimi certainly is, Jordan can really only ask "Which flight?"

Jordan has issued a host of alibis and made-up rationales to conceal the truth of why it refuses to extradite Tamim to Washington where she began facing terror charges under seal in July 2013. (The charges were made public only on March 14, 2017 after years of unproiductive efforts by the United States to induce Jordanian compliance with its undoubted treaty obligation.)

From speaking with a wide selection of authorities, it's clear to us that Jordan's self-excusing acrobatics aren't taken seriously by anyone.

It's also worth noting that in the formal ratification document signed back in 1995 (we obtained the documents by personally suing the State Department), King Hussein expressing himself in formalized language (and understandably using the Royal "We") says that Jordan pledges

to carry out its provisions and abide by its articles and... shall not allow its violation. Accordingly We have ordered that Our Seal be affixed to it and We have signed it properly

Jordan did in fact observe the provisions and articles of the treaty appropriately and conscientiously every time the US requested an extradition, as a treaty partner of course must. That however came to an end with the Tamimi case, years after King Hussein's death.

* * *

It's hard to ignore how Tamimi's continued freedom, her encouragement of more terror, her glorification of the murders she carried out, her inciting of others to do the same, all get buried again and again by those who ought to have taken action years ago.

Since this is about justice, there's plenty of disgrace to go around.

* * *

This post, like many others before it, has been translated into the Polish language ("Święto, pogrzeb i nieudane przywództwo") by Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.

04-May-23: Will the Senate press the new US ambassador to Jordan about Malki's killer?

2023-05-04T17:45:00.004+03:00

AA/S Yael Lempert, the nominee, is speaking as we post this [Image Source]

[A version of this post appears today as a Times of Israel blog]

* * *

This morning (May 4, 2023) in Washington, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will hear from President Biden’s nominee for Ambassador to Jordan.

Yael Lempert is a highly qualified and experienced nominee who deserves to be confirmed and given the chance to serve as the American people’s representative in Amman. However, it will be a missed opportunity if senators on the Committee fail to press her for greater clarity on the Biden Administration’s position on a key issue of concern not only to the US-Jordanian relationship but to the basic practice of American justice.

For more than a decade, one of the F.B.I.’s most-wanted and highest profile perpetrators of terrorism, Ahlam Tamimi, has been living freely in Jordan, loudly celebrating the murder and maiming of American citizens she spearheaded and encouraging others to do the same. Instead of extraditing her to the United States to face justice, as is required under the valid extradition treaty, Jordan has refused to hand her over – while eagerly siphoning billions of dollars in aid from American taxpayers.

On August 9, 2001, a human bomb exploded inside a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Tamimi selected the site as her target with great care as she has explained in numerous appearances in the Arabic-language media, and deposited the bomb-carrier at its entrance before fleeing to safety.

Fifteen innocents were murdered, eight of them children, with 130 injured.

Our daughter Malki, just fifteen years old, was one of two Americans among the dead. A third American, a young mother lunching with her toddler, remains in a coma still after all these years. We know Tamimi had the key role in the bombing on behalf of Hamas. We know she chose the pizzeria because of its popularity with young people. We know she sees this as the crowning achievement of her life.

We know these things because she has boasted publicly over and again and again of the unfathomable evil she unleashed that day.

* * *

Justice alone cannot comfort bereaved parents. But its absence aches terribly, stinging at our wounds. It’s an agony that is amplified because justice for Malki’s murder is both attainable and elusive.

Arrested soon after the attack, Tamimi was convicted and sentenced by an Israeli court in 2003 to sixteen life terms in prison. The bench of three judges recommended that no Israeli government ever contemplate paroling her. Thus, for a time, it seemed to us that justice had been done and we could get on with our lives.

But then, in 2011, Israel - to our horror and riding roughshod over Israel’s judicial system - freed her, along with 1,026 other prisoners, in an unfathomable exchange with Hamas for a hostage IDF soldier, Gilad Shalit.

We were devastated.

Hope, however, came via America’s justice system. In Washington, US federal prosecutors filed charges against Tamimi in 2013, seeking justice for Malki and another American woman killed in the Sbarro atrocity. US law allows the Justice Department to prosecute tightly-defined terrorist acts perpetrated against Americans no matter even if they occur outside American territory.

Jordan, however, refused to cooperate, violating the extradition treaty it signed with the United States and ratified in 1995. And it has persisted in its unjustifiable refusal right up until today. Though it has extradited Jordanian citizens to the United States under that accord previously, Jordan began claiming in 2017 that a technicality two decades earlier in the treaty’s ratification process now absolved it of any obligation in the Tamimi case.

We know that’s not accurate.

We brought a legal action to shed light on Jordan’s claims. This was something the Freedom of Information Act empowers us to do. The result was that the State Department almost immediately shared with us a document written and signed by Jordan’s late King Hussein attesting unmistakably to the treaty’s valid ratification at that time. No one, as far as we knew then and know now, was aware of this other than government officials. It’s a stunning contradiction of Jordan’s official stance today.

When the current Ambassador to Jordan, Henry Wooster, faced his confirmation hearing in 2020, he was very properly pressed by some of those on the panel about the prior administration’s view of the 1995 treaty’s status.

“We continue to dispute the [Jordanian] court’s claim,” Wooster said to the Committee, “as we exchanged instruments of ratification that brought the treaty into force on July 29, 1995, and the treaty has not been terminated… The United States has multiple options and different types of leverage to secure [Tamimi’s] extradition. We will continue to engage Jordanian officials at all levels not only on this issue, but also on the extradition treaty more broadly.”

Long overdue, it is vital that the Biden Administration takes the same view. When senators have an opportunity to pose questions to Ambassador-designate Lempert, we hope they will again press for clear answers on the Tamimi case and the validity of the 1995 extradition treaty.

If the view of the US government continues to be that Jordan is violating the treaty, Congress has already offered a prescription on how to force the kingdom’s hand. Almost entirely unreported, it’s a fact that every State and Foreign Operations Appropriation title enacted since December 2019 has included a prohibition on the use of Congressionally-appropriated foreign assistance to any government that violates an extradition treaty. That certainly covers US aid to Jordan.

Last year, Congress approved a seven-year Memorandum of Understanding that will send Jordan $1.45 billion annually in US assistance. We believe those funds cannot legally be sent to Jordan until it upholds its obligation to extradite Tamimi.

American support, delivered generously for decades, remains absolutely critical to Jordan’s security, economic reforms, and growth. We know the outgoing ambassador agrees with that view. Everyone does. Yet Ambassador Wooster insisted earlier this year – reported only in Arabic as far as we know –that this generous aid comes with ‘no strings attached’.

Since 2017, we’ve repeatedly implored presidents, secretaries of state, ambassadors, and many legislators – Democrats and Republicans alike – to make clear that taxpayer funds do carry strings: that Jordan respect its treaty obligation and extradite Tamimi. Over those same years, though, we’ve been met with pressure to cease campaigning for justice by the politicians and entrenched interests promoting ever-closer U.S.-Jordanian ties.

The fact is we are not politicians. What we are is parents.

So long as the perpetrator of our daughter’s murder walks free in Jordan, we will continue urging America’s leaders to pursue justice for Malki and the other Americans targeted in Tamimi’s heinous attack.

That’s why we beseech the senators sitting in today’s Committee to – at minimum –ask Ambassador-designate Lempert the same questions that were posed to her predecessor. Americans ought to know whether their hard-earned dollars are being handed over to a foreign kingdom harboring an unrepentant, fugitive mass-murderer with ‘no strings attached’. Or whether Congress and the Administration will truly do everything in their power to ensure that American justice is served.

* * *

Frimet and Arnold Roth, who jointly authored this post, are founders of the Malki Foundation which they established in their murdered daughter’s memory. Since 2001, it has given broad-ranging support to families of special-needs children - both Jewish and Arab - in Israel.

* * *

UPDATE: The video of the Senate hearing is here.

29-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?

2023-03-29T15:36:00.023+03:00

Al Arabiya News, April 5, 2021 [Image Source]

One of the useful indicators of how Washington views terror and terrorists comes in an annual publication, "Country Reports on Terrorism". Though mandated by Congress and issued by the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism, it gets surprisingly little public attention.

The State Department itself gives this background:

U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism.
The report covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular interest in the global war on terror. As provided in the legislation, the report reviews major developments in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism cooperation as well. The report also provides information on terrorist groups responsible for the death, kidnapping, or injury of Americans...

If you're reading this on the This Ongoing War blog site, you probably know our interest isn't academic or theoretical. We want our child's killer, an admitted bomber, a zealous terrorist and for more than a decade a media celebrity in Jordan, brought to Washington to face trial for her central role in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre atrocity.

Her name is Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi.

She has so far evaded American justice thanks to a dubious and highly problematic claim made by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in March 2017 that the Jordan/US extradition treaty is invalid.

The problematic part of this stems from how the US has demonstrated incredible and almost totally-unreported deference towards its Jordanian ally by deflecting attention and commentary away from the embarrassment of America's most lavishly funded foreign-aid beneficiary sticking a finger in Washington's eye.

At the same time, in one of the exceedingly rare communications we have gotten from any State Department officials, a senior figure in Washington sent us a letter dated October 25, 2022 which makes some bold and serious-sounding claims about what the sender calls "a foremost priority for the United States" when referring to bringing Tamimi to US justice.

In the five months since that letter was sent to us, we have responded to that official in writing on seven occasions. Number of responses received by us: nil.

The last photo taken of our daughter Malki
the evening before her murder

Country reports

You get a sense of that by looking at the Jordan section of State's Country Reports on Terrorism over the past several years.

But first this.

The Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Tamimi almost a decade ago on July 15, 2013: see "US -v- Ahlam Al-Tamimi - Criminal Complaint (Sbarro Pizzeria Bombing)". She's been free the entire time. And not only free but influential in the worst way. She's a poster child for terrorism with access for most of the past decade to high-powered media channels.

Now read on.

At the request of DOJ prosecutors, the criminal complaint (essentially the same as an indictment) was then immediately sealed. In other words, it remained undisclosed and unknown to us and to the general public for the next four years.

We wrote about the eventual announcement here: "14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested".

What we were quietly told by people familiar with the details is that between the summer of 2013 and the spring of 2017, the US made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to persuade the Jordanians to extradite Tamimi to Washington. They were doing their best to get a strategic US ally to respect and comply with their bilateral treaty. And they failed.

It's likely those efforts continued after the charges were made public. But no details have ever been made public.

However there's little doubt about the bottom line: the Jordanians were not willing and remain unwilling today to do what their solemn bilateral treaty demands they do. What the US position is in all of this is worth trying to decipher.

What the reports reveal

If you look at the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, there's a consistent and unmissable emphasis on how true Jordan is to the mission of defeating the terrorists. The praise flows without interruption down through the years.

The 2014 report, issued a couple of months after the deadline in June 2015 [PDF] says in its Overview to the Jordan section starting at page 182, that in the year under review -

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology. Jordan’s geographic location leaves it vulnerable to a variety of regional threats, while also facilitating its regional leadership in confronting them... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL, joined the Global Coalition from the outset, and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts...

There's no mention here of Tamimi. She had been received as a hero in Jordan in October 2011 and hosted a weekly made-in-Jordan global TV show starting in early 2012 and continuing for the next five years. This Hamas-aligned program, beamed throughout the world and garnering an international audience of Arabic speakers, had a singular focus of encouraging support for terror. That show, "Breezes of the Free", was still thrilling its worldwide audience weekly at the time the report was published.

The 2015 report, issued in June 2016 a little more delayed than the previous year's edition and adopting similar but not identical language, says at page 191 that -

Jordan remained a key U.S. ally in countering terrorism and violent extremist ideology in 2015. Jordan’s location in a tumultuous region made it vulnerable to a variety of threats, yet also facilitated its regional leadership in confronting them. Jordan continued to take part in all key aspects of the Global Coalition to Counter Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)...

Once again, no mention of Tamimi. Nor of the 1995 treaty or its breach or her weekly terror-promoting TV show.

The 2016 report came out on July 19, 2017, later than in the past. By then, the US criminal charges against Tamimi had been unsealed in Washington (that was done on March 14, 2017). And Jordan's Court of Cassation had ruled on March 20, 2017 that Jordan was free to ignore the 1995 Extradition Treaty with the United States because it was flawed and for that reason invalid. [See "Jordan court blocks extradition of bombing suspect to US", Associated Press]

The court's ruling makes clear the flaw, if there is any flaw at all, is a Jordanian flaw - a failure by Jordan to comply with its own rules.

Using similar phrasing, this 2016 report says

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2016. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Jordan faced a marked increase in terrorist threats, both domestically and along its borders...

Tamimi once again isn't mentioned at all.

The 2017 report emerged on September 19, 2018, nearly five months after Congress' statutory deadline. By that time Tamimi, who continued to be harbored by Jordan in breach of the 1995 treaty but was never in hiding and lived an unusually high profile public life, had already been an FBI Most Wanted for a year and a half. Her TV show had meanwhile come to an end.

The report again says

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Although Jordan experienced a decrease in terrorist activity in 2017 compared to the previous year, the country faced a continued threat posed by terrorist groups, both domestically and along its borders...

This time, however, the Tamimi case is a key part of the discussion:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in March charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in an August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. Jordan’s courts have ruled that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.

We were gratified to note that the State Department narrative explicitly mentions Tamimi's victims in addition to the fugitive zealot herself. At the same tine, it raised some troubling concerns:

The validity of the 1995 US/Jordan treaty isn’t discussed here at all.
What does get mentioned is the Jordanian view that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. Whatever the compleixities of Jordan's stand, this claim is plainly untrue. There's abundant evidence that Jordan has - and is very public about - the multiple extradition treaties it has negotiated with numerous countries.
What's more - and this too goes unmentioned - Jordan has extradited to the US multiple times in the past.
Does the United States regard the extradition of Tamimi as being within the power of Jordan to do? There's no examination here of that question.

The 2018 report was published on November 1, 2019 - later than those that came before. Its Jordan chapter this time is explicit about the Tamimi case:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in 2017 charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001 suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.  The United States regards the extradition treaty as valid.

We were glad to see these aspects covered:

The extradition treaty is mentioned.
For the first time, the US calls it valid. That should never gave been a contentious issue but it's good to see it there in black and white.

The 2019 report was published on June 24, 2020. It covers terrain similar to that of the previous edition but significantly more than in earlier years.

In 2019, Jordan did not extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, who has been charged in the United States with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Following publication of the 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism, Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi confirmed that U.S. authorities asked Jordan to extradite Tamimi, and he expressed the view that Jordan’s constitution does not allow the extradition of a Jordanian citizen to a third country. The United States regards the extradition treaty with Jordan as valid and in force.

Notably it adds the view of Jordan's foreign minister (who has also been the kingdom's deputy prime minister since 2021) that Jordan had indeed been asked by its American ally and benefactor to comply with the extradition request made under the treaty. And that in US government eyes the treaty is not only valid (as the 2018 report says it is) but also "in force".

In this battle of contending claims, every word counts and the implied assertions about Jordan being in breach encouraged us.

Then the 2020 report appeared (on December 16, 2021, later than ever) and the mood changed. Throughout that year, the US was under a Trump administration. But the report itself was published after almost a year of a Biden presidency.

In dealing with Jordan, it says that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Defeat-ISIS successes by preventing the terrorist group from regaining any territorial control and restricting its operational reach…

But then this:

The United States continued to press Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam al-Tamimi for her role in a 2001 suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15, including 2 U.S. citizens.

And that's all they say. We were alarmed by how

While the word “extradition” does appear...
the 1995 treaty is not mentioned at all.
The legal duty to comply with a treaty obligation is translated to an absurdly, misleadingly bland formulation in which the US continues to press. Pressing for a decade? Is that even called a press?
No statement that Jordan breaches the treaty
No mention of the fact that the US views the treaty as being valid and in full force.
And this: The State Department's authoritative Treaties in Force, an on-line compendium whose name describes its contents and function well, lists the Clinton-era Jordan/US extradition treaty at page 245 of the downloadable PDF in these words: "LAW ENFORCEMENT - Extradition treaty. - Signed at Washington March 28, 1995 - Entered into force July 29, 1995."

And finally the 2021 report. It's the last one to have appeared so far and was published just a month ago on February 27, 2023. The mandated deadline was April 30, 2022. But the 10 month delay for an annual report doesn't seem to have troubled anyone.

Its full text is downloadable here; the Jordan chapter is here. It opens with the now-customary formulation that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2021. As a regional leader etc.

and then goes on to say this about Tamimi and her scandalous freedom:

The United States has emphasized to the Jordanian government the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that included two Americans among the 15 victims. She had been serving a prison sentence in Israel for a terrorism conviction related to the bombing before she was released by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange.

It's fair to say the cold disdain to which we, the parents of one of Tamimi's victims, have been treated at the hands of State Department officials in all the years since Tamimi's indictment, ought to have prepared us for this. But it didn't and we were stunned.

Note what's said and what is not:

As with the report covering 2020, the cornerstone 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty gets no mention here at all.
In fact, the word ‘extradition’ doesn't even appear.
The Jordanian court decision invalidating it in 2017 gets no mention either.
Nor do the grounds on which the invalidation was based by the Jordanian judges.
Nothing is said about the nature of the flaw alleged by the Jordanian court six years ago. Even if it is real and even if it has legal consequences (both very unlikely), this is a self-inflicted Jordanian flaw.
And by definition - since it involves a failure by the Jordanian parliament to take a certain step - it's a flaw that could have been cured by the Jordanian parliament on any day that its members sat in session from 1995 right up until this morning. That a defective Jordanian procedure hasn't been repaired is a result of Jordan deciding to leave it that way.
No mention of the US government's position as articulated in previous State Department Country Reports on Terrorism. The US says the treaty is valid and in force. Why after years of asserting what is plainly true is this central issue now dropped from the State Department analysis?
No statement that Jordan is breaching it.
But what is mentioned, and for the first time, is that Tamimi was imprisoned and then released by Israel. There's surely a good reason for the Bureau of Counterterrorism in Washington doing that. But right now we can only think of reasons that are not good.
Something else that could have - and perhaps should have - been included in this important survey: some mild expression of US determination that in fighting terrorism the US has its principles and red lines. Whether or not the DOJ people articulating them in the 2017 unsealing ceremony for the Tamimi charges believed what they said, they said important things about justice and US determination. Check it out: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans" [Department of Justice Media Release, March 14, 2017].
Has that important moment been flushed away along with the principles and the determination?

As we said, stunning.

But also revealing about what the US government wants Americans to know about Tamimi's ongoing freedom.

The take-aways

We're not giving up.
But if we could tap into wider and stronger support from Americans (and not only Americans) who get the same sickening sense we do that Jordan unjustly benefits from unprincipled backing in Washington, we and our pursuit of accountability and justice would be in a better place.
If only the State Department's annual reports got more attention.

13-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber says she has rights and she's demanding them

2023-03-13T01:16:00.017+02:00

In Amman on March 10, 2023, a crowd of Tamimi supporters calls on
King Abdullah II to return the pizzeria bomber's husband to her [Image Source]

The Sbarro bomber, FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, has embarked on a pre-Ramadan campaign to get her husband back.

Where did he go? To Qatar, as we wrote at the time ["04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments"].

He appears - that's what reports are saying - to be taking up residence in Qatar. But note that the government of Jordan has said precisely not one word. And no reports of him actually being in Qatar have emerged yet. There's room to be cautious in interpreting what's happened. [Source]

We noted back then, some two and a half years ago, that the abandoned wife had issued this "special statement":

The expulsion of her husband from the Hashemite Kingdom came "suddenly and without prior coordination" [the special statement of Ahlam Tamimi said] and "at a very sensitive time... in light of increasing American demands to extradite me to there... The deportation of my husband Nizar was met with much joy and pleasure in the Zionist newspapers." The husband's deportation is, she fears, "a prelude to handing her over to the American authorities." This is very wrong since, as she puts it, "it is my right for my husband to live with me on Jordanian lands with dignity just like all other Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians."

Ahlam Tamimi is a stunningly cold killer who boasts of her central role in two bombing atrocities in Jerusalem, one of which actually happened.

She has never expressed a single word of remorse for the massive loss of innocent lives including that of our precious fifteen year-old daughter Malki. Those murdered by her bomb get no mention in this latest of her publicity campaigns.

For someone described in law enforcement posters as a person who "should be considered armed and dangerous", it's worth noting Tamimi's uncommon fixation with asserting her rights. She has been doing that again these past few days:

The human life of any Jordanian woman married to a non-Jordanian is a right and a natural requirement for Jordanian women on Jordanian soil... I mean, I am asking for a reunion with my husband. At this moment, it has been two and a half years since I was removed from my husband, but I cannot go to him because there are many security agreements that govern other countries with America. Leaving Jordan puts me in danger if I leave Jordan and go to any other country. Therefore, the best solution is the return of my husband... This is our right as Jordanians and an entitlement because I am a fighter who has suffered in Zionist prisons for ten and a half years. Therefore, through you [a news interviewer], I appeal to the Jordanian tribes... I appeal to the hearts of Jordanian tribes, mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, to support and stand by me in this darkness. We are at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, a month characterized by mercy and compassion. I hope you will sympathize with me and my cause, especially since at the end of 2022 in November, my father died. We asked the concerned authorities to allow Nizar [Ahlam Tamimi's cousin and hasband] to come - my father is Nizar's uncle - in order to attend his uncle's funeral and stand by me. This request was absolutely rejected. If such humanitarian situations arise, Nizar will not be allowed to come to Jordan. When will the family be reunited? Before Ramadan, I ask you for mercy. I ask you for sympathy. I ask you for sympathy. [Source: Video interview of Ahlam Tamimi published by Facebook]

Tamimi's appeal via Gaza's Shehab Agency

She made a push for those same rights a day earlier in another video interview, this time with a Gaza-based, Hamas-aligned news platform called Shehab Agency whose Facebook presence was shut down by Facebook in 2021:

I am exposed to great darkness [an Arabic-speaking friend who saw this says "injustice" is a better translation] in Jordanian territory... This darkness [injustice] hurts me every time because it has shaken the entity of family stability. In 2020, the decision was made to remove my husband from Jordan without knowing the reason. We received verbal reasons that he was an unwanted person on Jordanian territory and was removed from Jordanian territory... During the two and a half years, I have tried to claim my rights as Jordanians married to a Palestinian man. These are the rights of Jordanian women in Jordan. I have asked my husband more than once to return to Jordan in order to be reunited with the family, in light of the fact that I am being subjected to an American attack by [the threat of them] rearresting me in America and I cannot leave Jordan. In addition, in 2017, I obtained a Jordanian judicial decision from the highest Jordanian discrimination body to reject the American request for my arrest. Therefore, my presence in Jordan is a legal right by judicial decision... When I got out of prison... I was hosted and welcomed by the King of Jordan [but] all these privileges were systematically taken from me - and my husband was expelled. Therefore, I am not honored as a Palestinian-Jordanian activist on Jordanian soil. On the contrary, I was separated from my husband and my family life was disrupted. They do not want to return my husband to me. I do not work in the media... and have been subjected to unjustified persecution for which there is no convincing reason. Therefore, through the Shehab Agency, I want to speak and send a message and appeal to the King of Jordan to look into my grievances. So the King of Jordan: in history, when a woman appealed to the Caliph al-Mutasim... he answered her call and got her out of prison. Therefore, King of Jordan... Respond to my call to return my husband to reunite my family by directing your decision to the concerned authorities... As a helpless Jordanian woman, return my husband to me as we enter the holy month of Ramadan. I hope to receive an appeal through Al-Shehab Agency to listen and that this family will be reunited. May God bless you to send my message through this platform on International Women's Day, when I am exposed to great darkness on Jordanian soil... [Source: Video interview of Ahlam Tamimi with Shehab Agency via Twitter]

There's much Arabic social media coverage of Tamimi's cries from the "darkness" of Jordan these past few days. And of her efforts to attract synpathy for what she calls the loss of "family stability".

Not so much in English. Middle East Monitor, a news platform that uses the revealing motto "Creating New Perspectives", offers a version ["Activist: Jordan is putting pressure on freed prisoner, Ahlam Tamimi", Macrh 10, 2023] that's notable for its distortions, deletions and sloppiness with the facts.

Here's how it describes Tamimi and what got her famous:

On 9 August 2001, a Palestinian man broke into a pizza restaurant in occupied Jerusalem and blew himself up, killing 15 people including two American citizens, one of whom was Malki Roth, an Israeli-American woman.
Tamimi was arrested for her alleged involvement in the operation weeks later and was sentenced to 16 life sentences. She was released in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Palestinian factions. She currently lives in Jordan.
Last year, a document issued by the Interpol revealed that Tamimi's name had been removed from its wanted list.
In 1995, the United States and Jordan signed an extradition treaty, but in 2017, Jordan's high court blocked Tamimi's extradition, since the treaty was never ratified.
In 2013, the Justice Department included Tamimi on the FBI's most wanted list and charged her with "conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction against Americans outside the United States". [Source]

About their "New Perspectives" it's worth noting that:

the unnamed "Palestinian man" didn't break into a pizza restaurant but walked in through the unguarded front entrance.
His name was Al-Masri and he was carrying an explosives-filled guitar-case on his back. He was decapitated by the explosion which killed 15 innocent patrons inside the pizzeria and left a sixteenth, a young mother, unconscious until today. About 130 other people were injured, many of them horribly. Among the victims were several US citizens.
Tamimi accompanied the human bomb to the doomed pizzeria by bus and taxi from Ramallah and then fled to safety before he and the building exploded. The pizzeria was chosen as her target by Tamimi because of the large number of Jewish children it attracted at lunch-times. The children were in no sense caught up in the crossfire; their murders were the reason for the atrocity.
Most of those murdered were children. The Middle East Monitor people seem not to regard that as worth reporting. Given their outlook, we understand why they would fail to mention it. A small point, really.
Alleged involvement? Tamimi admitted every aspect of her "alleged involvement" to the Israeli court that heard the charges against her in 2003. She pleaded guilty. In the years since then Tamimi has repeatedly recounted - with undisguised enthusiasm and often in front of cameras - the details of the massacre she spearheaded and painstakingly plotted.
This doesn't stop the editors of this not-so-classy piece of journalism from referring to Tamimi as "freed prisoner" as if that's why she's in the news.
Jordan's Court of Cassation ruled on March 20, 2017, almost exactly six years ago, that the Jordan/US treaty was void because of an alleged technical flaw created exclusively by Jordan (and, assuming it exists, curable by Jordan). That court ruling is contradicted by documnts we received via a Freedom of Information Act suit we filed against the US State Department in a US federal district court. It's also challenged by the official position of the US which is that Jordan remains bound by the treaty.
Tamimi was added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list in 2017, not in 2013. She is still there.
That's because the United States indicted her (or to be more precise - issued a criminal complaint against her) six years ago. The Middle East Monitor report somehow overlooks that element. Their report makes no sense at all without mentioning it.
Tamimi's name was never removed from Interpol's wanted list. Interpol doesn't have a wanted list. The Middle East Monitor people have made the same erroneous and misleading claim in the past. Interpol provides information to police forces. It doesn't pursue criminals or issue warrants for their arrest or prosecute them.

Tamimi's crusade for sympathy and the exercise of her rights as a Jordanian woman is getting wide and noisy support in Jordan where the Royal Hashemite Court and much of the population are engaged this weekend in a wedding celebration.

We're tracking this as it continues to unfold.

[UPDATE March 21, 2023: Something's moving. Tamimi has made at least six public appearances in the past 12 day, up to and including yesterday. They have been either in person before live audiences or via media, or in some cases both. After a lengthy period of relative silence, she is now speaking publicly in strongly critical tones that veer into open disrespect for Jordan's ruler and the Hashemite Court. Her rhetoric focuses on the disrespect to her rights. Yes, the fugitive murderer wants her rights to be better respected and she is making sure public audiences know this. More details as we assemble them.]

05-Mar-23: Intertwined lives: A Purim reflection

2023-03-05T13:23:00.022+02:00

From a 1997 family snapshot:

Malki dressed up for Purim as a farmer

In a few days from now, we will be marking the sixth anniversary of the day in 2017 when senior US Department of Justice officials announced the unsealing of terror charges against our child's killer, the Jordanian fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"].

But before then, the Jewish world will mark one of its happiest annual events: the festival of Purim. An emotional roller-coaster? Certainly. Jewish life is replete with such moments.

About once every five years (and most recently in 2018), we repost here on our blog a reflection written by Arnold Roth touching on the festival through the lens of three intersecting lives. In posting it below, we have adjusted the dates of Purim so that they are correct for 2023.

■

Purim, for those not so familiar with the intricacies of the age-old Jewish calendar, works in a slightly unexpected way.

Throughout the world, Jewish communities will begin marking it this coming Monday night, March 6, 2023. That evening and then again the following morning, Tuesday, observant Jews will gather in whichever part of the world they are to hear the reading of the Book of Esther.

In Jerusalem where we live, we do the same - but exactly 24 hours later. The day is called Shushan Purim. (Shushan in the Purim narrative is where the Persian royal palace was located.) The first of the two readings of Esther in Israel's capital takes place Tuesday night (March 7, 2023). The second will be the following morning, Wednesday (March 8, 2023) as part of the Shacharit daily morning prayers.

Later in the day on Wednesday, March 8, 2023, Jerusalem's Jews - but not the Jews of almost every other community around the world - will celebrate what Purim stands for by means of a festive meal and appropriate beverages.

(Note that along the way there is a traditional fast day, the Fast of Esther, actually a dawn-to-sunset fast and not a full 25 hour fast, which this year starts before dawn on Monday morning, March 6, 2023.)

At exactly this time of year, but eighteen years ago in 2005, Arnold Roth was given an opportunity to publish a reflection about how Purim, with its family-focused joy and celebration of good triumphing over evil, feels to a family like ours that has lost a loved child to an act of hatred-based terrorist murder.

The result was a short essay published on the aish.com website. The themes which the article touches remain on our minds, so here is a replay.

Fifteen
The number that conceals G-d's name also represents the mysterious turning point for three generations of my family | Arnold Roth

Most Jewish teenagers growing up in Australia during the 1960s were, like me, children of concentration camp survivors. Our parents were involved in owning small businesses or were employed. There was hardly a professional among them. At birth, most of us lacked even a single grandparent; almost all of us were named after family members who perished at the hands of the Nazis.

It was clear that we were everything to our parents, and no one needed to tell us why. Top of their priorities list was ensuring that we gained the best possible education. Little wonder that several of the largest and most successful Jewish schools in the world were started in Melbourne in the years right after World War II. And the community's interest in things Israeli was unlimited; the occasional Israeli film and Israeli visitor to Australia's distant shores were memorable events.

The Six Day War happened when I was 15. The weeks of rising tension leading up to it left an indelible mark on me: the grainy television images of Egyptian and Syrian troops on the march; Nasser's strident speeches and unilateral blockade of the sea lanes to Eilat; the massing of Egyptian forces on Israel's Sinai border and of the Syrians on the Golan frontier; U Thant's disgraceful capitulation in removing UN peace-keeping forces from Sinai precisely when they were most needed.

Our daughter Malki Z"L with her
beloved grandmother Genia Roth Z"L

who visited us in Jerusalem, April 2000

And the blood-curdling threats of one after another of the Arab dictators and monarchs: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified... This is our opportunity to erase the ignominy which has been with us since 1948... Our goal is clear - to wipe Israel off the map."

Holocaust Horrors

Fifteen marked a turning point in my life.

A few months after Israel's stunning defeat of the forces bent (once again) on the liquidation of the Jews, I enrolled for the first time in a Jewish day-school. My ideas about being a Jew in the world, about history and how it affects our lives, about the Holocaust and the chain of Jewish life, began taking grown-up shape.

My mother grew up near Łódź in a town located close enough to the Polish/German frontier to have been overrun by Nazi forces on the first day of the war.

Among the men rounded up by the invaders on that September day was her father, the grandfather whose name I was given. As a father myself, I have to breathe deeply in calling to mind the image of my mother throwing herself at the feet of a German soldier, begging, screaming for her father's life to be spared.

On the day the Nazis marched into Poland and began the process of destroying a world, trampling a unique culture into the mud, murdering Jews by the millions, my mother had just turned 15.

My awareness of my parents' lives begins, in a certain sense, with the end of the war: their four or five years as displaced persons in post-war Germany, their long journey to Australia as a young couple with no English, no marketable skills and no roots beyond their few personal ties and their very Jewish sense of community.

An unexpected photograph changed this for me a few years ago.

I have a cousin, Chana, a kibbutznikit, the daughter of my father's oldest brother. She was brought to Tel Aviv in the 1930s as a baby by her parents who fled pre-war Galicia, and has lived her life in Israel. Returning as a tourist to her roots, she traveled to Krakow in 2000, and via a chain of circumstances ended up in possession of four photocopied pages which she shared with me. These were Nazi documents - census forms which the Germans required the Jews in the Krakow ghetto to complete prior to dispatching them to the death camps.

The first page had been completed in the distinctive handwriting of my father, of blessed memory. A small snapshot attached to the form showed him as I had never seen before: virile, handsome, young. Two other pages were the census forms of two of my father's sisters. Their names were known to me from a family tree I had put together years earlier with my father's help. But until that moment, they were nothing more than names. Now I gazed at the portraits of two vibrant young women.

My oldest daughter, Malki, had just completed a family-roots project at school and I knew she would be interested. A glance at the pages and she said exactly what I had been thinking: Malki bore a striking resemblance to my father's beautiful sister Feige.

Feige, at left, who did not survive the Holocaust.

And the great-niece she never knew, Malki, at right.

For us, and for Malki, the resemblance between them was striking.

Unlike my parents, Feige did not survive the Nazi murder machine. Whatever promise her life contained, whatever talents she was developing, whatever gifts she was planning to give the world - all these were overturned by a massive act of violent, barbaric hatred.

Some months after we gazed on those extraordinary pictures for the first time, Malki sat down and quietly (without telling us) composed the words and music of an infectiously upbeat song: "You live, breathe and move - that's a great start!... You'd better start dancing now!"

Living in the land promised to the Jewish people was a source of deep contentment to this granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. The discovery of Feige's picture enabled Malki, I think, to gain a strengthened sense of her personal role as a link in an ancient chain.

Unbearable Questions

Arafat's intifada war against Israel's civilian population broke out around the time we received those precious pages.

From the diary she kept, it's evident that the near-daily toll of injuries and deaths weighed heavily on Malki's mind. She writes of having to leave her classroom to weep in privacy upon learning of another terror attack… and another and another.

We, her parents and siblings, were unaware of the depth of her empathy for the victims of the war raging in her precious land. The turmoil and pain, to Malki, were deeply personal. Though born in Australia, she had lived in Jerusalem since age two. She felt deeply connected to Jewish history.

In August 2001, my daughter and her friend Michal interrupted the activities of a busy summer vacation day to grab lunch in a crowded Jerusalem restaurant, Sbarro.

If she had noticed the man with a guitar case on his back striding through the unguarded door and positioning himself next to the counter where she was engrossed in tapping out a text message on her cell phone, would Malki have recognized the hatred, the barbaric ecstasy, on his face before he exploded?

Malki and Michal were buried the next day. The closest of friends since early childhood, they lie side by side, forever, on a hill near the entrance to Jerusalem. Malki was 15.

Her diary is full of questions: How can such terrible things happen to our people? Why is our love for the Land of Israel not better understood by outsiders? What kind of Divine plan calls for teenagers to be injured and killed by people for whom we hold no hatred at all? How can such intense hatred even exist?

The unbearable question marks left behind by my daughter scream at me every day.

The Hidden Name

Jewish life, viewed from a distance, is an astonishing saga of tragedy, achievement, grandeur, destruction and greatness, played out over millennia. There is a risk we lose this perspective when we are the individuals living it.

Malki and her close friend Michal Raziel.The girls were
standing side by side at the Sbarro pizzeria's
counter when the human bomb walked in and exploded

At Purim, we feast, we drink, we ceremoniously deliver gifts, we celebrate with those we love and like. But the narrative at the heart of this festival is of a close brush with tragedy: the Jewish victory over a genocidal conspiracy by murderous Jew-haters.

Here in Jerusalem, a day later than almost everywhere else in the world, Purim is marked on the 15th day of Adar. Jewish calendar dates are written using a simple alphanumeric code: alef is one, bet is two and so on. But longstanding tradition is to avoid the straightforward way of writing the number 15.

You would expect it to be yud-heh (lit: ten-five); however these two letters happen to form the first half of G-d's name and are accorded special treatment and respect. Accordingly, 15 is written as tet-vav: nine-six. G-d's Name, as it were, is hidden within the number 15.

Purim is odd in another way: the name of G-d is completely absent from Megillat Esther.

Does this mean the victory of the Jews over their oppressor happened without His involvement? Jewish tradition answers with a firm 'no'. G-d's role was crucial, but our ability to make sense of how and why He acts is limited, inadequate.

Those of us raised in the shadow of the Holocaust, and who have experienced the tragedy of a child's death by hatred, struggle to understand the nature of the Divine role in our lives as individuals and as a people. There are times, according to Jewish wisdom, when you need to know that G-d's hand is at work even when the evidence is difficult to see, even when there are more questions than answers.

Malka Chana Roth's memory is honored by the Malki Foundation. It supports families wanting to provide their severely disabled child with quality home care. More information at the Malki Foundation website

[A Dutch version of the article above is online here.]

13-Feb-23: Three thousand five hundred days of thwarted US justice

2023-02-13T14:19:00.010+02:00

Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the United States, despite her being responsible for the horrific 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that killed 15 people, including two Americans (one of them our daughter Malka Chana Roth), is a clear breach of the 1995 extradition treaty signed - and in effect since that time right up until today - between the two countries.

The US Department of Justice brought charges against Tamimi in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on July 15, 2013. That's 3,500 days ago as of today.

At the US government's request, those charges were immnediately sealed by the court once they were signed off. This meant they were kpt secret.

They remained secret - even from the families of the victims of the atrocity, which includes Frimet and Arnold Roth who co-write this blog - for the following four years.

They were eventually unsealed on March 14, 2017, in a Washington media announcement that featured tough and principled language by determined American law enforcement officials.

But just six days later in Amman's Court of Cassation, a Jordanian judge handed down a decision declaring the long-active 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty invalid.

As Aljazeera reported, the decision meant Tamimi's extradition to face charges in Washington for her role in the Sbarro bombing was permanently blocked under Jordanian law. This was a contentious finding and one plainly contradicted by facts that we ourselves later discovered by suing the State Department of the United States in a 2012 suit pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. (Two requests made by us under FOIA had earlier gone unanswered.)

The basis on which Jordan's Court of Cassation - the kingdom's most senior appellate court - relied is not some inherent flaw in the treaty. It pointed instead to a flaw created by Jordan itself. It's a flaw that relates to the ratification of the treaty, an essential step in the treaty-making process for both sides.

The United States has been clear at all stages that the treaty was ratified by Jordan and that Jordan communicated that ratification to Jordan. But even if that's wrong (and the evidence plainly shows that it's not wrong), Jordan has had more than a quarter century to fix the alleged flaw. In fact, it's a flaw only Jordan can fix but has chosen not to fix. That said, it's not too late: everything that needed to be done to render the 1995 treaty valid and binding under Jordanian law could be done this afternoon. Or tomorrow.

For obvious reasons, that isn't going to happen.

Jordan's leaders needed the long-standing treaty to be non-biding on them once the hot-potato Tamimi case landed on their desks. The court ruling gives them an easy way out of a difficult bind. Tamimi is hugely popular in Jordan ["24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers"] and the idea of Jordan handing her over to US law enforcement officials, which is what they have done time and again when facing previous American extradition requests, is hard to do.

We said the court ruling made things easy for Jordan's leadership. But that's only true because the US has shown incomprehensible patience with its Jordanian ally. In the years since the charges were handed down in 2013 by a US Federal court, there is not a single instance of any US official publicly calling on the Jordanians to honor their treaty obligation. This is unprecedented.

Given the importance of the US-Jordan relationship and the heinous nature of the crime for which Tamimi faces charges, the US Congress should years ago have insisted that the Administrations (first Obama, then Trump, then Biden) remind Jordan of its treaty obligation to extradict Tamimi. The fugitive terrorist, murderer of innocent Americans, must be sent to American justice. Congress and the White House should do it today. But they haven't and they don't.

For its part, Jordan has failed to take any steps to rectify this situation, despite the obvious harm it causes to the victims and their families. Jordan continues to flout its obligations with impunity right up until today.

As the parents of one of the American children murdered there that day, we have repeatedly - and fruitlessly - called on US politicians, diplomats and officials to act. It's been an agonizing process.

By failing to act as it has since 2017 when the charges and Jordan's disgraceful recalcitrance became part of the public record, the US Congress has been derelict in conveying a vital message: that the lives of American citizens are precious and neither treaty obligations nor justice are matters for cheap political posturing by the Jordanians.

If there is another way of looking at this, no senior American public figure has stated it. The United States must take action to ensure justice is served for the victims of this heinous crime. The Jordanian government, which receives more foreign aid than any other country, must be held to account for its shameful breach of the 1995 treaty.

It is already years late. But not too late for members of the US Congress to finally stand up for US justice. Nothing can justify allowing Jordan to dishonor its legal and treaty obligations in the Tamimi case and for there to be no US push-back. The dishonor and the disgrace have gotten a blind US eye for far too long.

Please consider expressing your support for justice in this searing case by signing the petition at change.org/ExtraditeTamimi.

09-Feb-23: Do America's Jewish communities have the leaders they deserve?

2023-02-09T12:41:00.006+02:00

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"

A version of the post below originally appeared on Frimet Roth's blog "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly" under the title "Don't we deserve better than this lamentable leadership?"

Here's the full text of a February 2, 2023 Jewish Insider report about a Washington gathering of high-profile individuals day.

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.

A prominent article in a Hashemite-Kingdom-controlled Jordanian newspaper covers the same event. As often happens in the Jordanian media, no Jews are named or quoted. Here's its full text:

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah on Thursday met with representatives of international and US Jewish organisations in Washington, DC, and stressed the importance of these organisations supporting efforts to achieve just and comprehensive peace.

King Abdullah stressed the need to step up efforts to push towards restoring calm and de-escalation in the Palestinian Territories, while ceasing all unilateral measures that would lead to instability and undermine peace prospects, according to a Royal Court statement.

His Majesty said Jordan will continue efforts to safeguard Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, under the Hashemite Custodianship.

Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Director of the Office of His Majesty Jafar Hassan, and Jordan’s Ambassador in Washington, DC, Dina Kawar attended the meeting.

It's become an annual tradition. Executives 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:

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.

US Department of Justice "Most Wanted Terrorist" poster seeking the arrest of our child's killer

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 that 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.

27-Dec-22: Suspect held in November's twin Jerusalem Arab-on-Israeli bombings

2022-12-27T22:52:00.003+02:00

The two Israelis murdered in the twin bombing attacks last month

The authorities here cleared for publication earlier today that a suspect in the November 23, 2022 twin-bombings in Jerusalem ["23-Nov-22: In Jerusalem, twin bomb blasts put terror in the spotlight again"] has been in the hands of Israeli law enforcement officials for a month. He was detained by Israeli security forces six days after those lethal attacks on innocent commuters standing at bus-stops.

The news came in the form of a statement issued jointly by Israel Police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service.

According to one report, ["Israel announces arrest last month of Jerusalem bombing suspect", i24NEWS, today], the suspected bomber is a mechanical engineer, Aslam Faroh, 26, described as "an Israeli resident who was living in Kafr 'Aqab in east Jerusalem and Ramallah in the West Bank." (His name is spelled in different ways in English reports.)

He had fled the scene of the morning rush-hour attacks on a motorbike, and was hiding out in a cave in the Judean desert. A search there turned up an additional explosive device secreted in the cave.

The theory is he acted alone "after planning the attack for an extended period of time."

A statement naming him Froukh and attributed to the Shin Bet says the attacker acted alone "out of Salafi-jihadi ideology identified with the Islamic State (ISIS) terror organization" and that he used how-to guides viewable on the Internet to learn to make the bombs used in the attack.

A chilling postscript reports something we had not known earlier;

"Israeli police also revealed that a third explosive device had been found at the bus stop where the first bombing occurred. A mechanical failure prevented its detonation, which had been timed to take place thirty minutes after the initial explosion."

A delayed explosion would indicate that the bomber intended to inflict injuries and death on rescue workers and police at the scene.

Two Israelis were killed in the bombings. Aryeh Shechopek, a 16-year-old student, died at the scene of the earlier of the two explosions at a bustling bus stop (the "trampiada") at the entrance to Jerusalem on Highway One. A second victim, Tadasa Tashume Ben Ma'ada, 50, died three days later in hospital from injuries suffered in the same attack. Some twenty other people suffered injuries.

A Times of Israel report ["Arab Israeli with Islamic State ties arrested for bombings at Jerusalem bus stops"], where his name is rendered as Eslam Froukh, says

"Security forces located the site [near Ramallah] where Froukh allegedly tested his explosive devices. The Shin Bet said troops seized explosive materials, a makeshift sub-machine gun and a primed bomb similar to the ones used in the Jerusalem attack. The agency said it suspected Froukh planned to commit another attack using the explosive device and the weapon. Several other suspects were arrested in the days following the bombing, but were all released. Prosecutors are expected to file an indictment against Froukh in the coming days, which will include murder and other terror charges."

Froukh was reportedly unknown to security authorities until now.

His posts on social media (quoted here) show that his engineering studies were done at the well-regarded Azrieli College of Engineering in Jerusalem. Azrieli's comprehensive website includes an Arabic language edition reflecting its engagement with Arab students. A 2017 article ("Fulfilling Arab Startup Dreams in Jerusalem") sheds light on Azrieli's efforts to bring young Arab professionals into Israel's start-up culture.

ISIS connection?

An analysis published by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) gives some context to the claim that this terrorist was aligned with the jihadists of the Islamic State. Though Israel has never been the site of much ISIS activity, its terrorists have laid claim to a handful of attacks over the years.

Two terror attacks in late March 2022 were perpetrated by ISIS supporters. An attack involving a car-ramming and stabbings in Beer Sheba, killing four Israeli civilians and was perpetrated by Muhammad Abu Al-Qi'an who had been in prison for trying to join ISIS in Syria. A shooting in the Israeli city of Hadera killed two border guards and injured twelve Israelis and was carried out by cousins Ayman and Ibrahim Ighbariyeh, the latter of whom had also tried to travel to Syria to join ISIS. ISIS sources threatened in the wake of these killings that "the unbelieving Jews should know that our promises [to attack them] will reach them sooner or later, Allah willing."[7]

MEMRI suggested in May 2022 that ISIS has gone through a shift in focus

and now sees masterminding attacks against Israel as a greater priority than it previously did. However, it is more likely that the perpetrators of these recent attacks acted on their own and that ISIS leadership is not facilitating operations against Israel, other than inciting to them periodically, generally when tensions are high between Israel and Palestinian factions. Thus, it seems probable that ISIS... attacks against Israel will remain at a minimum. At the same time, there are still ISIS supporters living in Israel and the Palestinian territories, who may decide, under the influence of ISIS propaganda, to instigate attacks in the name of the jihadi organization, which views Israelis and Jews as enemies whom it is meritorious to target, provided that the attack is carried out for the sake of Allah and not out of nationalistic motives. [Quoted from The Evolution Of Islamic State (ISIS) Views On Attacking The State Of Israel, May 20, 2022]

23-Nov-22: In Jerusalem, twin bomb blasts put terror in the spotlight again

2022-11-23T23:20:00.019+02:00

Screen grab from live TV news coverage of the Ramot Junction

bus stop and the shrapnel-damaged commuter bus

Today was a hard day here in Jerusalem.

Two bombs, evidently placed by a single terrorist group at two separate bus-stop locations in Jerusalem, exploded during the morning rush hour. The results were awful as they are when terror strikes.

A first explosion, around 7:10 am Wednesday morning, happened at a bustling hitchhike-and-bus stop at Jerusalem's main entrance/exit opposite the Givat Sha'ul quarter.

The location is a very high visibility one on the main road, Highway 1, that leads to the coastal plain, Ben Gurion airport and Tel Aviv.

The second, shortly after 7:30 am, happened at another bus stop a few minutes drive away at the bustling Ramot Junction.

Times of Israel reports that

A 16-year-old yeshiva student, Aryeh Schupak, was killed and 22 people were hurt in the two attacks, including one listed as critical and another three in serious-moderate condition, according to medical officials. Schupak, who was killed in the first bombing, was a Canadian national as well as an Israeli citizen, according to Canada’s ambassador to Israel.

The remotely detonated devices were packed with nails to maximize casualties, according to police officials.

Due to the nature of the attack with two near-identical bombs exploding within half an hour of each other at two bus stops, Deputy Commissioner Sigal Bar Zvi said police suspected an organized cell was behind it, rather than just one person...

She added that there were no specific warnings about Wednesday’s attack, but there had been intelligence pointing to planned attacks in general. Police also raised their level of alert following the attack, according to Bar Zvi...

There were no immediate claims of responsibility, but the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror groups hailed the attacks.

A poster near our home expressing condolences

in the name of the Jerusalem municipality

(The murdered youngster's surname appears in other media reports today as Shechopek and Shchupak. In Hebrew, שצ'ופק.)

The Jerusalem Post reports that hundreds of people attended Aryeh's funeral. The atmosphere was heart-breaking.

This evening in an interview with Calev Ben David on his daily i24NEWS current affairs program The Rundown, Arnold Roth was asked to comment from the perspective of families who have endured the loss of a child in similar terror attacks.

They discussed what happened and how Jerusalemites might view the re-emergence of terrorist bombings in the city.

(The video above is posted with the permission of i24NEWS.)

22-Nov-22 Abu Akleh: What the Washington Post said and what it didn't

2022-11-22T16:46:00.008+02:00

A few days ago in his Twitter account, Arnold Roth posted a response to a problematic - and to us, painful - editorial in a major daily newspaper two days earlier.

Here's the comment he offered:

@WashingtonPost's editorial on Tuesday [https://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/15/shireen-abu-akleh-journalist-death-accountability/] passionately backs @TheJusticeDept in probing the Abu Akleh death. I could change a handful of their words and make this about my daughter, murdered by an Arab reporter. Anyone think it would then get published?

He was reacting to a Washington Post opinion piece published in the name of its Editorial Board under the title "Opinion | Accountability is justified — and needed — in a U.S. reporter’s death".

His tweet included this extract from the published editorial:

And here's what the Washington Post editors could have said but of course did not.

There are no signs that accountability (meaning of course its absence) in the Tamimi case troubles the Washington Post's editors in even the smallest way.

We have some additional things to say about the Abu Akleh case, how it's being championed and weaponized. And how totally different its impact has been on Washington and on America's media, as compared with the long-thwarted prosecution of another Arab reporter in the news: Ahlam Tamimi, the journalist who remains free in Jordan despite the federal terrorism charges pending against her in a US federal court since 2013.

Stay tuned.

31-Oct-22: Honoring a much-too-short life [VIDEO]

2022-10-31T11:15:00.004+02:00

[The following post first appeared, in a modified form, on the Malki Foundation blog site under the title "Israel's IDF pays tribute to Malki's life"]

Over on the YouTube page of the Israel Defense Forces, there's a new video, just 5 minutes long, that was published in August to coincide with the 21st anniversary of the awful events at a Jerusalem pizzeria in 2001.

Entitled "The Sbarro Massacre: The Value of Life over Violence", it comes with this summary prepared, we imagine, by the documentary film maker soldiers in the office of the IDF Spokesperson's Unit:

After losing his daughter Malki in the Sbarro Massacre 21 years ago, Arnold Roth and his family chose to take the example she showed in life and share it with others. For the terrorists who killed her—and thousands of others over the years—violence and murder is their end goal. For us, life is precious and we do everything to protect, preserve and sanctify it in every way possible. http://www.kerenmalki.org/

We identify with every word.

And we're proud and pleased that the work of the Malki Foundation, along with the very difficult circumstances that led to its establishment, have gotten this kind of recognition.

The video, which is also posted on YouTube under the title "The Sbarro Massacre: The Value of Life over Violence", has attracted more than 6,400 views so far.

Here's the English language version:

There are separate versions with French subtitles and Spanish subtitles. Please share them with your friends and help us reach wider audiences who need to know about Malki's life and the good work done in her name.

16-Sep-22: Speaking of Malki, her legacy and her murder on Jewish Insider's podcast (AUDIO)

2022-09-16T15:04:00.005+03:00

Earlier this month, Rich Goldberg and Jarrod Bernstein, the co-hosts of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast”, invited Arnold Roth to join them in a conversation conducted via video conference and then published via their podcast.

Limited Liability Podcast is a new weekly podcast for readers of Jewish Insider. Hear from the key players generating buzz and making headlines in conversation with two top political operatives, Jarrod Bernstein and Rich Goldberg. One Democrat, one Republican. Both hosts have extensive experience in the political arena and a deep rolodex to match. It’s Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff brought to life. [Source]

This was an opportunity for Arnold to speak about our daughter Malki: her life, her death in a massacre at a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with children. And about our family’s efforts to hold the murderers - in particular the Jordanian woman who spearheaded the atrocity - accountable.

The program, produced in Washington DC, went to air on September 5, 2022 and can be heard on demand via this link to the Jewish Insider site or through Stitcher, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and these additional streaming sites.

Here, by courtesy of Jewish Insider, some excerpts from the conversation.

*****

Roth: Malki was the youngest of the four children that we brought with us from Australia when we moved to Israel in the summer of 1988, she was just 2 ½ years old. [In] 2001 she had just finished 10th grade, had acquired the leadership of a group of girls through a youth group and had proven herself to be terrifically good at this, and was an advocate for change in her own circle in the school, in the social setting, for children with disabilities. I mentioned that, because the youngest of our children, who lives with us today and who was born 10 years after Malki, is catastrophically disabled. And Malki was somebody who just looked right past that and saw a sibling, a sister whom she adored. That was actually a large part of her personality. She was always smiling and very engaged with other people, just a wonderful human being to be around.

*****

Bernstein: Twenty years ago seems like a long time, but in many ways, it’s like yesterday. So many of us came of age in that time; I remember the Sbarro bombing pretty vividly. Take us back to that day and the days that followed.

Roth: At around 2 o’clock I got back from lunch, my wife was on the phone, and she was shrieking into the phone, something I’m not at all used to, and she said that there had been a “פיגוע” — a terror attack — in the center of Jerusalem. She knew that because she was on the floor with our youngest child watching CNN, and her message was, “I can’t reach the children,” and then she hung up. Naturally, like everybody else in Jerusalem, I reached for my phone and called all of my children one after the other… And I found very quickly that the cell network had gone down…An hour later, I still hadn’t reached Malki and I had spoken to the other children. And from there it was just a movie plot that just got darker and blacker and more awful…

Around 5 o’clock, 5:30 that afternoon, this is the ninth of August 2001, and the downstairs neighbor, [a] lovely lady who’s no longer alive, came up the stairs with an awful look that I’ll never forget on her face, and she said, “Michal is dead.” Michal was our daughter’s best friend and we knew that they were together, and we hadn’t had any status update. Well, the television had provided the first status update, so we knew we were in something that was more worrying, more catastrophic than anything that I think we were prepared for. And so it went until 2 in the morning. Two in the morning, our two oldest sons had been accompanied by a social worker, they went down to the government forensic center in Yaffo near Tel Aviv, and at roughly 2 o’clock they phoned home from there and they said they had found Malki. And that was, as you can imagine, just one of those moments you never forget.

*****

Roth: We didn’t know who the people were behind the label “Hamas” until several weeks later. And then, as has been the case from that day pretty much until today, everything we learned came through the news. So, we learned through the news that a woman had been arrested and charged, and that several men had been arrested and charged, and in the fullness of time they were put on trial. And when the trials happened, we learned about that through the news. We learned about what they said and what the court said and what the verdict was, through the news, and eventually we learned that they’d been sentenced.

In the case of Ahlam Tamimi, the woman who as we now know and certainly did not know at the time, had found the site, sought it out because of the large number of Jewish children in a strictly kosher pizzeria in the center of town on a school holiday. She has been, in effect the poster child, for the redemptive value of murdering Jewish children…She was arrested, charged, convicted and sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment…with a strong recommendation by the panel of three judges, that there be no circumstances under which should ever be released or have a shortened sentence.

Of course, that’s not the way it played out. In 2011, with the euphoria around the release of [kidnapped IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit and a government deal between Israel and Hamas, she walked free against our deeply, deeply bitter opposition to her being released. But it was useless, no one was interested, no one listened, and we were really talking, in addition to talking to the international media, we were talking to the wall. She went back to Jordan, which is where she came from — she was a Jordanian citizen born and bred, her father served in the Jordanian army — and she arrived back in Jordan as a genuine, certifiable VIP. She was very quickly caught up in public appearances all over the kingdom, and then later throughout the Arab world. And starting in February 2012, so we’re talking now, three months, three or four months after she was given back her life through the Shalit deal, she began a TV career as a presenter of her own program.

*****

Bernstein: What is the Jordanian position, given the [1995 U.S.-Jordan extradition] treaty given that the facts here really aren’t in dispute in any way, shape or form?

Roth: The Jordanian position was articulated six days after the charges were unsealed in March 2017, so that on the 20th of March, the highest court for this purpose…in Jordan, pretty much out of the blue from the point of view of the American Embassy and me, handed down a ruling that the 1995 extradition treaties entered into between Jordan and the United States, or more particularly King Hussein, the father of today’s King [Abdullah II], and the Clinton administration, was invalid…

To jump to the bottom line, it’s been so infuriating to us [to] not get support and the shoulder-to-shoulder that I was talking about before, that we actually litigated. We filed an application under the Freedom of Information Act in the United States asking the State Department to hand over the documents that related to that extradition treaty of 1995, which, by the way, the United States continues to regard as being valid, and we were ignored. We filed papers a second time, and we were ignored. And then we decided we’re going to sue the U.S. government. And we did, and we got a settlement almost immediately, almost as if they were waiting for us to do this, but by this time it had taken us several years, and then we got the documents…And the most key of the key documents is a document of ratification of the treaty signed in the personal hand of King Hussein, who talks about God ensuring that no one will ever come to undermine the treaty in the future…

The bottom line of all of this is that Jordan is telling whoppers when they say they don’t have to hand her over. But the much more worrying thing, because in the end I don’t really care what the Jordanians say, is that the United States government seems to be perfectly OK with saying in a very quiet voice, “We’re asking for the extradition to happen and that’s the law,” and in a much larger voice saying, “Hey, the Jordanians, they are our buddies in the Middle East.” President Biden, and he’s not the only one in this story whom I’m going to invoke as president of the United States. I could say the same about Obama and about Trump, almost word for word, but President Biden has now taken several opportunities to say, “King Abdullah is a loyal friend in a tough neighborhood.” And I’m sorry, but I’m fed up to the back teeth with that kind of empty throwing around of slogans. Talk about tough friends when they’ve handed over the people they’re obliged to hand over under bilateral treaties. That’s not what’s happened.

*****

Roth: This has not weakened in the smallest way, my devotion or that of my wife and our family to Zionism. We know why we’re living in Israel…we came here to raise our children in Israel, and we love what’s happened, we are happy, and we have children and grandchildren living here…So, it has not changed our connection to Israel in the smallest way. But it has sharpened, I would use the word contempt, the contempt that I personally feel towards politicians in multiple places and multiple levels of seniority.

*****

Malki was a talented classical flautist

Bonus — Malki’s favorite things:

Roth: “Malki loved music. She was terrifically talented, she played in the Jerusalem Youth Orchestra briefly. She was a classical flutist, and after she was already gone, and in the shiva house when we were sitting in our home with many guests coming to comfort us, we learned that she had written a song. That song is on the website of the Malki Foundation…

“The most meaningful way that we have found for, a) dealing with the profound pain of losing Malki and, b) forcing people to remember her life, has been by creating a charity in her name, which is really very active today…

“Malki loved music. She had this wonderful song which has now gone to every part of the world and has different versions of it, but the musical spirit that she carried with her is something that really sustains us…I want people to know about the happy side of Malki’s life. She wasn’t an unhappy person, she left behind unhappy people, her parents, but that she was really an uplifting, inspiring kind of person, and the Malki Foundation really carries on the spirit of inspiration, the wonderful things that she did for children with disabilities.”

*****

During the podcast' episode's last minute, they play a sample of Shir Lismoach (Malki’s Song), written by Malki and (in this particular arrangement - and there are many) is performed by members of the Ezra Zionist Youth Movement in Jerusalem.

Learn more about the Malki Foundation and listen to multiple versions of Malki’s song on the Keren Malki website.

14-Sep-22: Seeking justice: A conversation with Jason Greenblatt (AUDIO)

2022-09-14T12:25:00.007+03:00

Jordan's King Abdullah II (center) sits with White House adviser Jared Kushner
(4th from left) and US special envoy Jason Greenblatt (3rd from left) in Amman
on May 29, 2019 [Image Source: Royal Palace/Handout via Reuters]

There's a podcast audio below we hope you will find the time to listen to. But first...

If you follow this blog, you will know how careful we are to explain how, throughout the years of battling with unresponsive officials to get our child's Jordanian killer - the FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi - brought to trial in Washington, we are frustrated and disappointed equally by both sides of American politics, the Democrats and the Republicans.

We have been open here, as well as in published speeches and opinion articles, that nothing of what we experienced in the years of the Trump presidency gave us a reason to change those views.

One good illustration among too many: "19-Nov-20: Putting justice back on the agenda" about our utter-waste-of-time efforts with former Secretary of State Pompeo.

A July 2022 backgrounder in Jewish Insider, written in connection with a newly-released Jason Greenblatt book, throws some light on the significant role he had in the Trump administration:

Opining about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a cottage industry in Washington, D.C. There are analysts galore, academics, former peace negotiators, think tankers — many appearing as talking heads on TV and writing sharp op-eds on how to resolve the intractable conflict.
And then there was Jason Greenblatt, fresh from the Trump Organization’s legal team and with no political experience recruited by former President Donald Trump to help bring peace to the Middle East. Now, the ultimate outsider, who served for almost three years as Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, has gotten the last word over Beltway experts in the form of a new memoir, which hits bookstores today.
Unlike other Trump memoirs packed with lurid details about a sometimes chaotic administration, In the Path of Abraham: How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East — and How to Stop Joe Biden from Unmaking It describes a level-headed policy process and skips juicy anecdotes for a reasoned explanation of Trump’s decisions...

Against that background, Arnold Roth accepted Jason Greenblatt's recent invitation to discuss the Tamimi/Jordan issues with him for his podcast on the Newsweek platform.

The Diplomat, hosted by Jason Greenblatt, is inspired by his work in foreign affairs with the intent of fostering candid conversations on a wide set of global and domestic issues. The Diplomat will veer away from personality-driven political disputes and instead bring nuance and depth to hot topics. Using his diplomatic skills, Greenblatt aims to get at the root of the issues and attempt to find common ground where it exists, rather than sow further division.

Their conversation went to air on September 7, 2022 via Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Twitter. Click below to hear the 33-minute audio:

Here's how the conversation is described over on the podcast's home page:

His Daughter Was Murdered in Jerusalem. Now, He's Seeking Justice (featuring Arnold Roth) | Jason speaks with Arnold Roth about his daughter, Malki Chana Roth who, at age 15, was murdered in an act of terrorism in the heart of Jerusalem. Fourteen others died in the attack, but one of the masterminds of the Sbarro Massacre still walks free in Jordan. | Connect with Arnold Roth: https://twitter.com/arnoldroth | Connect with The Malki Foundation: https://twitter.com/MalkiFoundation

Three quotes from Arnold Roth's part of the discussion to highlight:

"If weak leaders like King Abdullah in Jordan are allowed to be the tail that wags the dog, much as the South Vietnamese were in the mid 1970's as they dragged America deeper and deeper into the quagmire... they are constantly saying "catch me because I am going to fall"...
"I actually have nothing to say to the Jordanians... I have been ignored by every conceivable level of Jordanian official to the point where not a single one has ever engaged, not a single one has ever said a thing to me. It doesn't matter to me. Jordan is not an actor in any of this. It's entirely the United States. Jordan cannot survive a day after the point at which the United States says "We want her on the four o'clock flight this afternoon and we will not take any questions." That would be the end of all of this. It would produce an immediate result...
"Jordan has much more antisemitism than gravity and physics would serve to justify... Why is that an issue? Because I don't know a single thing that [Jordan's] king has done to ameliorate, to in any way modify, the enthusiastic embrace of antisemitism of his people. And this I don't understand... [Jordan's] king does not deserve in my view the kind of deference he gets from the American political system."

Again, we hope you will give it some attention. It's a good podcast.

12-Sep-22: What, officially, does Jordan hear from the US embassy about the Tamimi extradition?

2022-09-12T23:17:00.006+03:00

Source: Yesterday's Jordan Times

There are reports in the Jordanian media today about a Congressional Delegation ("a CoDel") visit to the royal palace in Amman yesterday.

The only Congressional name that appears in any of the numerous news items we saw is that of Senator Michael Rounds, a Republican and the junior senator from South Dakota. He sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

He was accompanied by the American ambassador, Henry Wooster. Other American-looking visitors (possibly staffers) are seen in the accompanying news video but the Jordanian reports don't name any of them.

The visit was clearly appreciated by the hosts. That's evident from seeing which Jordanians participated. King Abdullah II; his son Crown Prince Hussein; Jordan's Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, Ayman Safadi; and the director of the king's office, Jafar Hassan. There may have been others.

As we have said in previous posts, official American delegations to Jordan's sumptuous Al Husseiniya Palace raise thorny, even disturbing, questions about how the United States views the Hashemite Kingdom's years-long breach of the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

See for instance

among others.

The 1995 treaty we mentioned is the one invoked by the US Department of Justice when it filed a criminal complaint on July 15, 2013 against the Jordanian woman charged with bringing a powerful and very deadly bomb - an exploding human being, a human bomb - to a central Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria thronged with a lunch-hour crowd of families and children. The children. as we learned later from the mouth of the monster who made the decision, were the target.

Our daughter Malki, 15, was one of the children murdered there that day.

No official account reports what happened after the charges were signed off by Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

But from several sources, our understanding is that the DOJ promptly (we think in mid-2013) notified its Jordanian counterparts of the court order. And then delivered a request that the fugitive bomber be extradited under the treaty as other Jordanian fugitives had been extradited by the Jordanians before her each time Jordan was formally requested to do so by the Americans.

In the specific case of the Sbarro bomber - and on more than one occasion - Jordan rejected the request.

* * *

Let's now fast-forward almost four years. The criminal complaint against the Jordanian woman, a Hamas agent named Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, was eventually made public on March 14, 2017. It had been kept secret under seal until then.

Did the US make energetic efforts to get Tamimi extradited under the treaty through all those years? There's no way to know for sure. But the answer is almost certainly yes.

Then, just six days after the unsealing and the formal announcement [see Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans] of the terrorism charges against Tamimi, Jordan's highest court sprang into action. In a stunning and brief ruling, it said Jordan had no obligation to hand her to the Americans because the then-22-year-old bilateral agreement suffered from flaws.

On closer examination, it was clear they meant flaws created by Jordan, flaws that only Jordan could fix if -- and it's a large if -- they were indeed real.

The Al-Husseiniya Palace in Amman

But no one was giving their ruling closer examination. And no news report at the time cast any doubt at all on the soundness of the Jordanian judges' argument. That's a shame because to us it's clearly built on deception and inaccuracies. (We choose not to use blunter words.)

Tamimi herself, by then an icon in her homeland, was triumphantly hugged to Jordan's breast.

Some excerpts from an Associated Press article under the by-lines of Karin Laub (AP's then Jordan bureau chief) and Mohammed Daraghmeh:

A Hamas activist on the FBI’s list of “most wanted terrorists” said she is relieved Jordan’s highest court has blocked her extradition to the U.S., where she faces charges in a suicide bombing that killed 15 people, including two Americans, at a crowded Jerusalem pizzeria.
Ahlam al-Tamimi, 37, who chose the target of the 2001 attack and guided the bomber there, told The Associated Press that she “lived in fear” for her life until this week’s high court ruling, in part because she had received threats, including from U.S. citizens, on social media. She said she can’t leave her native Jordan for fear of arrest if she travels abroad.
Al-Tamimi has been unapologetic about her role in one of the deadliest of scores of Hamas suicide bombings during the second Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule. She said Palestinians have a right to resist by any means, including with such attacks, against what she portrayed as a brutal military occupation.
“We are an oppressed people defending ourselves,” al-Tamimi said in an interview this week in her home in the Jordanian capital, Amman. “We want Israel to leave our land so we can live in quiet.”
Asked about her role in the killing of civilians, including children, she said: “I don’t target children, but when the bomb goes off, it goes everywhere.”
The blast at the Sbarro restaurant in downtown Jerusalem went off on the afternoon of Aug. 9, 2001. The assailant detonated explosives hidden in a guitar case packed with nails. Fifteen people were killed, including seven between the ages of two and 16, and scores of people were wounded.
Al-Tamimi was arrested by Israel several weeks after the bombing and sentenced to 16 life terms. She was released in a 2011 Israel-Hamas prisoner swap.
Since then, she has been a familiar media presence, including at one point hosting a talk show on a Beirut-based Hamas-run TV station about Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
She has also spoken repeatedly about the attack, saying she was pleased with the high death toll.
On Monday, Jordan’s high court ruled that al-Tamimi cannot be extradited from Jordan to the United States because the two countries don’t have an extradition treaty.
[Source: "Jordan planner of 2001 blast relieved US extradition blocked", AP, March 23, 2017 - originally posted here and now archived]

There's much more to be said about whether the Jordan/US treaty is valid including very significant information we (Frimet and Arnold Roth) obtained when we sued the US government under the Freedom of Information Act. Note: sued. Simply applying under the FOIA law got us nowhere.

The US, at least for the record, has consistently said the 1995 treaty is as valid today as it was when new, and remains binding on the parties and in full effect. The treaty is listed in the State Department official online Treaties in Force compendium.

In the course of many consultations and discussions we have had with officials of the US government and legal experts, not one of them has contradicted that or brought it into question.

On the other hand, getting US officials to state the obvious has proven incredibly frustrating. To say it plainly, if the treaty is valid, then the failure by Jordan to comply with its treaty obligation in the Tamimi case is a breach. And if it's a breach, why is no one saying so? The simple answer, friends and neighbors, and there is one, is that it's all about politics.

Meanwhile, Tamimi lives free as a bird in Jordan as the Department of Justice prosecutors in Washington and the FBI agents charged with delivering her to US law enforcement cool their heels.

It's been 2,008 days of that as of today.

* * *

Henry T. Wooster, a career diplomat, was nominated in November 2019 to become the US ambassador to Jordan, a position that had remained unfilled since Alice Wells departed in March 2017. (A Foreign Policy article at the time said that soon after taking office, "President Donald Trump pushed out the US ambassador to Jordan after complaints from the country’s king, even though there was no evidence the diplomat had misrepresented Washington’s policies.")

The nomination was made by the Trump White House.

US ambassadors need to be confirmed before their appointments are official. The confirmation process involves public hearings in the US Senate.

Our focus now shifts to what Mr Wooster said when going through that process in a video conference session of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on May 13, 2020 presided over by Hon. John Barrasso, (Republican, Wyoming). The candidate, according to the chairperson's introduction in the official protocol, is:

a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Minister-Counselor. Mr. Wooster is currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Maghreb and—or Egypt in the Bureau of Northeastern Affairs. He has previously worked as the Deputy Chief of Mission and then Charge´s d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Jordan. Mr. Wooster has also served as Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in France.

The years Mr Wooster previously served in America's Jordan embassy evidently warmed him to the charms of the kingdom. He underscored this in answering a question about the possible impact on Jordanian feelings if the US were to cut back its financial support refugees:

Well, Senator, no one knows this better than the Jordanians—no one is a better friend to Jordan than the United States is. And we can say that with integrity. And I can look you in the virtual eye and say it. And that is true by orders of magnitude. It is not simply a debating distinction. It is true if you look at the record. And the record shows, again and again and again, and with orders of magnitude, there is no friend that is better to the Hashemite Kingdom than the United States. So, we do not want these people to be beleaguered, and we do not want them left out in the dark. I mean, these are allies and strategic partners, and we are going to stand by them. We are going to make sure that they are not left with a deal that is bad for Jordan, too. [Source: The official protocol]

Diplomats as effusive as Mr Wooster aren't all that common.

But let's compare that now with what happened in the non-face-to-face part of the confirmation hearing when questions for the record are submitted ahead of time by the Senators and the candidate responds after taking some time to prepare a written answer. This doesn't always happen - but it happened in the Wooster confirmation.

In the protocol, the exchange that follows is headed "RESPONSES TO ADDITIONAL QUESTIONS FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED TO HENRY T. WOOSTER BY SENATOR TED CRUZ".

Question. Please describe the extent to which Jordan’s refusal to extradite Tamimi has affected U.S.-Jordanian relations?
Answer. We continue to ask that the Government of Jordan arrest Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi and agree to extradite her to the United States. The Government of Jordan has been unwilling to accede to our request due to the Court of Cassation’s ruling that our bilateral extradition treaty is not valid. We continue to dispute the court’s claim, as we exchanged instruments of ratification that brought the treaty into force on July 29, 1995 and the treaty has not been terminated. We continue to raise this issue at the highest levels in order to reach a satisfactory solution.
Question. What options and leverage does the United States have to secure Tamimi, including potentially withholding assistance to the Government of Jordan?
Answer. The United States has multiple options and different types of leverage to secure Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi’s extradition. We will continue to engage Jordanian officials at all levels not only on this issue, but also on the extradition treaty more broadly. U.S. generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing as well as economic support and other assistance is carefully calibrated to protect and advance the range of U.S. interests in Jordan and in the region.
Question. Can you commit to using those options and leverage to secure Tamimi’s extradition?
Answer. If confirmed, I would explore all options to bring Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi to justice, secure her extradition, and address the broader issues associated with the extradition treaty.

It's the kind of forthright response a well-prepared ambassador ought to give. But we're left wondering how closely His Excellency Henry T. Wooster, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (as he has been since August 27, 2020), hews to the approach he outlined to the Senate.

* * *

As of today, Tamimi is still free and still making public appearances replete with messages encouraging terror.

As for Jordan, its senior officials (with the notable exception of Foreign Minister Safadi) have maintained a policy by which they carefully avoid making public statements about the treaty even as they hold tight to the kingdom's celebrity terrorist. The principal principle seems to be: just don't get into spats with the Americans.

The United States through three administrations (Obama, Trump, Biden) takes a reciprocal approach and is sticking to it. And justice be damned.

The exception to the game-plan is Safadi. We have published two blog posts reporting how, on two occasions a year apart, he has asserted publicly in Arabic to domestic audiences that refusing to hand over the mass-murderer as required by the treaty is actually evidence Jordan respects the law: see "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister" and "16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world".

(We haven't yet written about the numerous occasions on which Jordan's king, speaking off the record in what are often closed-door meetings in the US, offers a range of near-plausible explanations for his Tamimi strategy.)

2001 The site of the Sbarro massacre (Peter Dejong, AP)

If Mr Wooster were the kind of person who answers letters, we would want to pose some questions to him based on what he placed on the record.

For instance,

Has he or his staff in the Amman embassy explored all options to bring Tamimi to justice? Is there a plan to start exploring this at some point in the foreseeable future?
Can he outline for us what "all options" might look like?
Those "broader issues associated with the extradition treaty" - can we get a preview of what they are?
Can we count on them getting public exposure even as the FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist is hosted by Jordan?
In continuing to dispute the Jordanian court’s claim about the validity and applicability of the treaty, and raising the issue "at the highest levels in order to reach a satisfactory solution", is there progress? It's been years, Your Excellency. Can we get some teeny tiny indication of how the process is going?
And where the sticking points are?
Would the Ambassador like to know a little about our murdered daughter Malki? About her beautiful life and about the really fine non-sectarian, apolitical and tremendously constructive work done in her memory via the Malki Foundation?

From experience, we fear each of our questions would get the same answer.

01-Sep-22: "If there's a problem with the treaty, it's technical and Jordan which created it can fix it any time it wants." [VIDEO]

2022-09-01T20:43:00.021+03:00

Image extracted from the Jordan page of State Department's authoritative online
compendium Treaties in Force, current edition

This post is about a recent webinar hosted by EMET in which Sarah Stern who heads that fine organization discussed with Arnold Roth how our search for justice is progressing.

* * *

Since 1995, a treaty made between Jordan and the US has served as the legal basis on which multiple Jordanian fugitives have been extradited from Jordan and prosecuted in the United States under US law in American courts for terrorism offences.

All of that changed when Jordan claimed, via a March 20, 2017 declaration of its highest appellate court ["21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan..."], that the treaty is invalid.

The US State Department, aware of the Jordanian claim, states that the treaty is valid and effective. Nonetheless Jordan persists in standing by what it's judges said and refuses to extradite the fugitive Sbarro bomber, Ahlam Ahmad Aref Al-Tamimi, to Washington where criminal prosecutors are waiting to try her.

Jordan was formally asked to do this when US federal charges against Tamimi were made public for the first time on March 20, 2017. In fact, we understand it had been asked long before - years before - in off-the-record meetings. Tamimi was indicted on July 15, 2013. Though no US official has said so publicly, our understanding is that serious efforts were made from that date onwards - even though the charges were sealed, meaning confidential and unreported - to get Jordan's co-operation in handing Tamimi over to US law enforcement officials. These US efforts failed.

To underscore this: six days after those 2013 charges against the Jordanian terrorist were finally announced to the world, Jordan in effect said "no sir, we don't have to."

Without making any public statement at the time, Jordan let it beknown that it refused ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. And it has continued to refuse, ensuring Tamimi can live unharmed, unfettered, undeterred as a free Jordanian citizen under the protection of the Hashemite Kingdom.

So Tamimi faces trial in the US and, if convicted, imprisonment. Obviously none of this will happen if she stays shielded by US ally Jordan.

The charges Tamimi faces are laid out in this Department of Justice media announcement: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans".

Arnold Roth was recently the guest of Sarah Stern, the dynamic head of Endowment for Middle East Truth, in a video interview. The August 10, 2022 event was part of its Weekly EMET Webinars series. The date came a day after the 21st anniversary of the Sbarro massacre.

A collection of previous EMET webinar videos is hosted on YouTube.

Arnold's responses, as he wrote in a Tweet, focused less on bombs and more on the painful ongoing failures in Washington and among US Jewish organizational leadership.

Founded in 2005, The Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) is a Washington, D.C. based think tank and policy center with an unabashedly pro-America and pro-Israel stance. EMET, which means truth in Hebrew, prides itself on challenging the falsehoods and misrepresentations that abound in US Middle East policy.