04-Dec-20: An editorial and Jordanian deception

There's an editorial in today's Jerusalem Post under the heading "Jordan is Israel's essential, and often neglected, partner | Israel and Jordan are on the same side on these issues, but clearly, Israel has not invested enough in the relationship".

No one's name is attached to it so it appears to be, as in fact it describes itself, as "By JPOST EDITORIAL". 

A brief extract

Jordan has a historic relationship with Israel and signed a peace treaty in 1994 but the peace has grown cold. Part of this may be personal, and speaks to the relationship between King Abdullah and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who seemingly do not get along. While Jordan-Israel ties are said to be good when it comes to regional security issues, publicly there is almost no manifestation of the peace deal between the countries. This is unfortunate, because...

During the visit to Jerusalem two weeks ago of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, we ran a large display advertisement on the newspaper's front page [described here: "19-Nov-20: Putting justice back on the agenda"] Not only did we get no response of any sort from Pompeo, but no one in his substantial entourage or in the press pool accompanying him commented publicly on our fairly prominent message. That most of them (at least) saw it is highly likely. 

Call us disappointed - though by no means surprised given the history of obtuseness and silence by officials and (to a surprisingly large extent) media in three countries - the US, Jordan and Israel - since the US Federal charges against Jordanian fugitive Ahlam Tamimi were unsealed nearly four years ago ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"].

We were disappointed again when the Jerusalem Post published an exclusive interview with Pompeo the next day. Tamimi and extradition were not mentioned.

That's relevant background to why we posted this message on the Jerusalem Post's website this morning after seeing the editorial we just mentioned. Here's what we wrote;

An unobjectionable editorial line. There are obviously multiple sides to this not-so-simple issue. 

But it's hard for me as the father of an Israeli child (a handful of us here in Israel can make the very same statement) murdered by a woman who today enjoys massive acclaim and support among Jordanians, to overlook how the vexed matter of Jordan illicitly refusing to extradite Ahlam Tamimi to Washington is missing from the analysis.  

Tamimi, a fugitive from US justice who has never been in hiding for a day in Jordan where she lives, is wanted in the US to answer to US terrorism charges. And the extradition treaty between the US and Jordan is utterly clear: the US wants her and Jordan has to hand her over. 

But Jordan has put out a smokescreen of deception that has enabled it to escape the burden of handing her over. 

Editorials like this one that carefully step around the Ahlam Tamimi issue - actually that conceal it - are a not-insignificant part of how the Jordanians keep getting away with it. 

The issues that pain me in this are not legal or political or even journalistic. They're moral.

Arnold Roth
thisongoingwar.blogspot.com

If we get any sharable response, we will publish it here. 

30-Nov-20: A long-obstructed step towards justice: Norway is extraditing a Jordanian fugitive to Paris

Undated photo of the Goldenberg restaurant in Paris' Marais Quarter

This is about a murderous attack nearly four decades ago on people seated in a Parisian restaurant. Why are we writing about it now?

The answer comes in a report that Norway's government said Friday it is going to extradite to France a man suspected of taking part in the carnage. 

For people like us who are fighting to see the confessed bomber of a pizzeria filled with children - who happily boasts that this was her personal doing - and who has astoundingly lived the life of a princess in total freedom for the past nine years, this is an important development. 

It's also inspirational. And it ought to be a big deal for everyone concerned with justice.  

First the background: Around noon on August 9, 1982, a gang of Islamist terrorists threw a grenade into the dining room of Chez Jo Goldenberg, a Paris restaurant packed with about fifty lunch-hour patrons. They then directed their machine gun fire point blank at the innocent patrons guilty of being seated at the tables of an eatery known for its Jewish cuisine. They murdered six people - four French nationals and two American tourists - and injured 22 others. 

The atrocity was completed in some three minutes. At the time, it was called "the heaviest toll suffered by Jews in France since World War II". The killers were not found, according to the police. In fact years went by before there was a break in the case.

Because there are both parallels to and lessons for our efforts to see Jordan arrest and extradite our child's killer - the unspeakable Sbarro Massacre Monster, it's a case in which we are vitally interested We have written about the hunt for the perpetrators before. See

• 20-Jun-14: Does Europe face the most serious terror threat ever? At CNN, they say yes and explain (poorly) why
• 13-Feb-16: Three decades after a terror attack on a Paris restaurant, some things remain just as they were
• 30-May-19: Paris, Amman, Washington: Extradition and what it can reveal about governments and terror

Here's what Reuters reported on Friday ["Norway to extradite suspect in 1982 attack on Paris Jewish restaurant"] in a news story datelined Oslo:

Norway will extradite a man to France who is suspected of taking part in an attack that killed six people in a Jewish restaurant in Paris 38 years ago, the government said on Friday. At least 20 others were wounded in the bombing and shooting assault on the Jo Goldenberg restaurant in the Marais quarter in August 1982. In 2015, arrest warrants were issued against three former members of the Abu Nidal Organization, a splinter group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), a source told Reuters at the time. The suspects were identified long after the attacks because of statements from other former members of the Abu Nidal group under a French judicial process that maintained their anonymity, the source said. One of the men, named as Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, lives in Norway, where he moved in the 1990s. Norwegian authorities rejected an original 2015 extradition request for him on grounds that, in most cases, it would not extradite its own citizens. Norway recently adopted new pan-European regulations on arrests, leading French prosecutors to seek extradition of the suspect for a second time, and he was arrested in September. The Ministry of Justice cleared Abu Zayed for extradition to France on Nov. 12 but the decision was later appealed to the full Norwegian cabinet. “The appeal was unsuccessful and today the decision was final,” a spokeswoman for the justice ministry said in an email to Reuters. Now in his early 60s, Abu Zayed has denied any involvement in the case. In 2015, he told the Norwegian daily VG he had never been to Paris. The Jo Goldenberg bloodshed, at the time, marked the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in France since World War Two and came amid a wave of violence involving Palestinian militants.

So with this development, people now know this Abu Zayed has lived a quiet and comfortable post-massacre life in Scandinavia for two decades. But what became of the other terrorists? 

We know what's happened to at least one of them. He's sheltered by a friendly Arab government that brazenly refuses to hand him over and, of course, has zero interest in bringing him to any kind of local justice in its own courts. Given our focus here on how our child's murderer has lived a charmed life for the past nine years, this sounds like Jordan, right? 

Right.

Goldenberg's right after the 1982 atrocity

In 2015, a year after those anonymous Abu Nidal terror group informants tipped off the police in France (and we're guessing that one or more of them were members of the same gang), Marc Trévidic, an examining magistrate at the Tribunal de grande instance de Paris, specializing in fighting terrorism. issued arrest warrants for several suspects. 

One was Nizar Tawfiq Mussa Hamada, a Jordanian. 

The other, reputedly the mastermind behind the attack and also a Jordanian, was Souhair Mouhamed Hassan Khalid al-Abassi, known in crime circles as Amjad Atta.

Ben Cohen writing for Algemeiner last year ["Jordanian Refusal to Extradite Paris Kosher Restaurant Killer to France Renews Concern Over Amman’s Terrorism Policy"] takes up the narrative, explaining that France turned to the Jordanian authorities asking for them to honor the France/Jordan extradition treaty that, by no coincidence, had been signed in the middle of 2015. 

The Jordanians rebuffed them. Ben goes on to refer to how 

France is not the only country to have been turned down by Jordan after submitting an extradition request in connection with terrorism. In March 2017, the US Department of Justice issued a criminal complaint against Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who ferried a Palestinian suicide bomber to the Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, in her car. In the subsequent bombing attack, 15 people lost their lives, including two US nationals. US Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary B. McCord described al-Tamimi as “an unrepentant terrorist who admitted to her role in a deadly terrorist bombing that injured and killed numerous innocent victims.” A $5 million reward has been offered by the Justice Department for information leading to the arrest of Al-Tamimi, whose name can also be found on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. So far, however, Jordan has refused to extradite al-Tamimi, who has lived openly in Amman since she was released in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Hamas on October 28, 2011, to the US.

Jordanian Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed at his court hearing in Oslo 

[Image Source]

The article goes on to quote some comments that put Jordan's shameful evasions into context:

“The thwarted Jo Goldenberg extradition shows that you can either have healthy bilateral relations based on justice, openness, and honesty,  or you can pander to the pro-terror forces inside Jordan,” [Arnold] Roth said in an email. “You cannot hope to have both.”

Roth, who has been advocating with his wife Frimet for al-Tamimi’s extradition to the US, said that the Jordanians were being given a pass by Western allies eager not to jolt the kingdom’s political stability.

“There seems to be a sense that Jordan’s dear friends in the West need to cut the country some slack, not press too hard and do what needs to be done, so that its widely admired anti-terrorist monarch, King Abdullah II, can get on with the job of building a stable, prosperous Western-facing state,” Roth remarked.

At the same time, Roth said, al-Tamimi had been turned “into a pan-Arab hero from her safe perch in Amman, Jordan’s capital.”

Through her TV and internet appearances, Roth said, al-Tamimi had “become an inspiration to the powerful and very large forces inside the kingdom (and far beyond it) who want more bloodshed and conflict, more killing of Israelis and Jews.”

We stand firmly by what we said. If anything, what we have learned in the past year reinforces our views even more strongly.

Jordan continues to be given an absurdly generous pass by its Western allies. This is self-defeating and encourages the very strong forces at work in the kingdom that want more bloodshed, more conflict, more killing of Israelis and Jews. The groundswell of support for Ahlam Tamimi ("Ahlam we hear your voice") since October 1, 2020 when her husband was expelled by Jordan's authorities ["04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments"] is one clear and public expression of how that works.

As for the fugitive mastermind, al-Abassi/Amjad Atta, an Agence France Pess report some years ago said an Interpol Red Notice had been issued against him directed at Jordan's police. Said to be 62 years old at the time and an "elderly man who works as a construction worker", he was born in Zarqa, a Jordanian city located 30 km east of Amman and home to "one of the largest camps for Palestinian refugees in Jordan". AFP notes it's also "known to be the hometown of Jordanian Abu Musab Al-Zarqaoui, the late leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq".

They fail to mention that Zarqa is also where Ahlam Tamimi, the Sbarro bombing monster who murdered a larger number of innocent Jews than Amjad Atta did, was born in 1980. 

A year after his arrest, according to an AFP report at the time, Jordan's judicial system ruled that Amjad Atta could not be handed over to the French for trial because 

"at the time of his arrest an extradition deal between Jordan and France had not entered into force, the source says. The deal was signed in 2011 but became effective only in July last year, after Abassi, also known as Amjad Atta, was released on bail. Jordan has also refused to hand over a second suspect, Nizar Tawfiq Hamada, 54, because the statute of limitations concerning the criminal allegations against him expired, the source says."

Jordan's contemptuous disdain for the war against terror and terrorists, for its relations with allies and for the law of extradition all get far too little international attention. People ought to know.

29-Nov-20: After years of embracing terror against Israelis, what will it take for Jordan to extradite the Sbarro bomber to Washington?

"Ahlam Tamimi, your voice is loud": The viral Jordanian
response to the confessed bomber of a Jerusalem pizzeria
being silenced on a radio talk-show [Image Source]

A slightly modified version of the article below, authored by Gregg Mashberg and Arnold Roth, originally appeared on the Times of Israel website on November 8, 2020. 

Could Jordan’s celebrity terrorist finally face justice in the US?

King Abdullah II has tolerated, and even capitalized, on the hatred and extreme violence that Ahlam Tamimi personifies; is he finally leading his people away from all that?

BY GREGG M. MASHBERG AND ARNOLD ROTH

Are we perhaps — just perhaps — seeing the beginning of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan finally purging itself of FBI Most Wanted Terrorist Ahlam Tamimi?

You may remember the massive terrorist bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in central Jerusalem during the deadly summer of 2001. The attack killed 15 people, including eight children, and approximately 130 were wounded, many grievously.

Tamimi, the Hamas operative who selected the busy restaurant for unspeakable carnage, went on record afterwards saying it was all about the children. Her goal was to kill as many of them as possible.

Tamimi delivered the human bomb, a young Islamist zealot with a guitar case slung across his shoulder filled with explosives encased in nails to magnify the flesh-ripping effect, to the target site. She chose Sbarro precisely because she knew it would be filled with kids having lunch.

The spearhead of the massacre, Tamimi was 21 at the time, Jordanian by birth and upbringing, and a student at a Palestinian Authority university with a night job reading the news on camera at a Palestinian Authority TV station. As police and rescuers thronged the smoking remains of the pizzeria, helping survivors and tending to the maimed and murdered, she made it back to the Ramallah studio in time to present that evening’s bulletin. For perhaps the first time in the annals of journalism, the horrific crime that opened the program was the work of the person icily delivering the news report.

What’s extraordinary about the events that followed is how Jordan has kept the Sbarro mastermind safe, famous, comfortable and influential in the most toxic sense of the word for the past nine years. 

The presenters of the Jordanian talk-radio show
on Melody-FM cut off Tamimi in mid-sentence, sparking
a nation-wide tumult 

This goes on despite a formal US demand that the Hashemite Kingdom arrest the fugitive who has a $5M reward on her head and extradite her to Washington where she faces terror charges. Two of her Sbarro victims were American nationals. David Horovitz’s epic May 2020 account gives the context: “Failed by Israel, Malki Roth’s parents hope US can extradite her gloating killer” [Times of Israel].

Under a treaty between the two countries signed in 1995, Jordan has handed over a string of fugitive terrorists who are now incarcerated in American prisons. But not Tamimi.

Little reported in the US media, Jordanians — with no apparent sign of dissent — have embraced Tamimi as a hero and inspiration. But now there are signs that Jordan’s King Abdullah II, whose government has spent most of the past decade shielding Tamimi from American justice, may finally be looking to bring her nine-year Jordanian honeymoon to an end.

Upon her release from an Israeli prison in 2011 as part of a prisoner deal, Tamimi received a tumultuous welcome back in her native Jordan. Within weeks, she was hosting a TV program of her own. With its dreamy title, “Breezes of the Free” was a Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood production, beamed by satellite from Jordan every week to Arabic-speaking audiences the world over, promoting the cause of Palestinian Arab terror.

Wanted: The US Department of Justice unsealed terrorism

charges against Ahlam Tamimi in March 2017. Jordan

refuses to hand her over despite the extradition treaty

by which it has been bound since 1995.

In the summer of 2012, Tamimi married a cousin from her Tamimi clan, Nizar Tamimi — himself a convicted murder whom, like her, Israel released, despite having sentenced him to life. Their festive wedding was covered live by several Arab TV stations.

She has gone on to develop a high profile in Jordan and, via a series of speaking tours in the region, beyond its borders and in the Arabic media. Despite numerous take-down actions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, she has continued to advance her social media brand.

Ahlam Tamimi’s triumphant career in the public eye has sent a profound message. The Tamimi juggernaut tells Jordanians and her fans everywhere that terror is not terror when its victims are Israelis. Israeli children, infants included, are fair targets for atrocities. Imprisoned terrorists are not prisoners but mere detainees and captives, victims of injustice who await the breezes that freed her from 16 life terms in an Israeli cell.

On March 14, 2017, the US Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint charging Tamimi with murdering two American nationals by means of a weapon of mass destruction. DOJ had kept the complaint under seal since 2013, as it attempted to extradite her to the US. The Jordanians refused and American diplomats apparently viewed themselves as helpless in the face of Jordanian intransigence.

Late last year, however, Congress provided authority, if not a mandate, to stop bankrolling Jordan to the tune of approximately $1.5 billion per year if it continues to dishonor its extradition obligation.

And just this past June, the State Department seemed to take heed. The new US Ambassador to Jordan, Henry Wooster, said during his confirmation process that “all options were on the table” to pressure Jordan to extradite Tamimi, presumably including a US funding cutoff. Confirmed by the Senate, Wooster arrived in Amman to take up his post in September 2020.

Then something startling happened.

Just days later, and with no media coverage, Jordan notified Nizar Tamimi that his residence visa was ending and would not be extended. On October 1, Nizar Tamimi, who unlike his wife is not a Jordanian citizen, left for Qatar, declaring he had been deported.

Ahlam Tamimi, outraged, promptly launched a public relations campaign claiming Jordan had violated her human rights by depriving her of the company of her husband.

Emphatically playing the victim card, she publicly beseeched the king to reunite the loving couple, proclaiming that no matter how distraught, she will not move to Qatar for fear of being arrested there or en route by Interpol. (Qatar and the US do not have an extradition treaty.)

Cashing in on years of Jordanian protection, coddling and celebration, she is now at the heart of a campaign urging Jordanians to declare “We Are All Ahlam Tamimi.”

During October, Tamimi phoned in to several Jordanian radio stations delivering appeals to the public to stand by her and press King Abdullah II to restore the husband to his rightful place in Jordan.

One of those calls was to Melody FM, a high-profile talk-radio station in Amman. Live video from the studio captured how the hosts quietly signaled to the control booth to cut her off as soon as they realized who was calling and that she had just invoked the name of King Abdullah II. The call ended as Tamimi was in mid-stream.

Ahlam Tamimi has never made a secret of how much she wanted

to murder Jewish children

Jordanians were enraged. The video went viral and on October 10 the interrupted call drove the highest trending hashtag on Jordanian Twitter. Melody FM has become the target of a commercial boycott. The talk show (“You and We”) is canceled and its two hosts are publicly at each other’s throats over which of them was more disrespectful to Tamimi.

It is too soon to understand fully what we’re seeing. Is Jordan merely throwing a bone to the US by shooing Nizar out of the country, expecting that will be enough to placate the Americans? Is the US finally saying, “enough is enough,” and pressing Jordan to begin getting rid of Tamimi?

Or — perhaps, in the wake of the Abraham Accords — does King Abdullah see normalization with Israelis as the wave of the future and Tamimi as an impediment?

Yet despite the hopeful signs, is the Sbarro monster right when she proclaims that Jordanians “are all Ahlam Tamimi”? Will Jordanians rally to protect her? If so, is King Abdullah II finally prepared to show leadership and lead his people away from the hatred and extreme violence that Tamimi personifies, rather than tolerating and even capitalizing on it?

There’s only one decent next step which is to load her on to a non-stop flight to Washington, DC where US justice awaits her. That is the way Jordan and its ruler can begin living up to the ideals they otherwise espouse as an ally of America and a force for moderation. King Abdullah II, Jordan, and the region would be the better for it.

—

Gregg M. Mashberg, a lawyer in New York, has represented the Roths pro bono since 2012, in connection with the effort to extradite Tamimi to the US. Arnold Roth produces the blogs on this site together with his wife Frimet.

27-Nov-20: Are Australian news reports whitewashing who the Iranian prisoners freed by Thailand really are?

Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert in an Iranian news clip [Image Source]

There's been a major development in a long-running battle to save an innocent female hostage from the malevolent rulers of Iran. 

This is from Australia's national broadcaster:

British-Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert is now departing Iran after spending more than 800 days in prison. Two videos released by Iranian state television showed the Melbourne University Middle East specialist in transit, with the latest video showing her boarding what appears to be an Australian Government-chartered jet. Dr Moore-Gilbert was sent to Tehran's Evin Prison in September 2018 and sentenced to 10 years on espionage charges — which she has always denied. International pressure on Iran to secure Dr Moore-Gilbert's release escalated in recent months, following reports that her health was deteriorating during long stretches of solitary confinement and that she had been transferred to the notorious Qarchak Prison, east of Tehran... "Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released in exchange for three Iranian men — who are they?"

Since this came out, Dr Moore-Gilbert has thankfully arrived home safely ["Kylie Moore-Gilbert arrives in Australia after being released from Iranian prison", ABC, November 26, 2020]

 

According to a BBC news report last night:

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison described her release as a miracle, saying she seemed in good spirits when he spoke to her. "The injustice of her detention and her conviction, Australia has always rejected, and I'm just so pleased that Kylie's coming home," he told local network Nine. Mr Morrison declined to comment on whether a swap had taken place, but said no-one had been released in Australia. His government has been silent on the circumstances surrounding the deal, and some observers have said it could encourage Iran, which is accused of "hostage diplomacy". According to Thai authorities, the three Iranians were not exchanged with anyone.

But there's a problem - one that has familiar echoes to it.

Mainstream Australian media reports like the one in Melbourne's The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald have answered the ABC headline's question ("Kylie Moore-Gilbert has been released in exchange for three Iranian men — who are they?"). But in doing so, they significantly mischaracterize who the three Iranians imprisoned by Thailand, and now released, actually were and are. 

The Australian dailies report that the three Iranian convicted terrorists, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, Saeid Moradi and Mohammad Khazaei

"were all detained in Thailand on charges of having planned to bomb the capital, Bangkok, in 2012 that authorities said was intended to target Israeli diplomats... News of the exchange was first broken by Iran's Young Journalist Club, a news website affiliated to state television in Iran, which trumpeted the release of the three men who faced "baseless charges" and were "exchanged for a dual national spy named Kylie Moore-Gilbert, who worked for the Zionist regime".

Detained? Horse manure. 

Far from just being detained, those Iranians were arrested, tried, convicted on terrorism charges and imprisoned by Thailand. See Reuters, August 22, 2013. 

Prior to their convictions but after they were arrested, we wrote here nearly eight years ago about the terrorism for which they had been taken into custody: "16-Feb-12: Bangkok: So what actually happened there on Tuesday?"

"Detained" is what the Arabic-language media mischievously say about fugitive Sbarro bomber Ahlam Tamimi constantly ["16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world"]. It conceals the reality that she confessed and was tried and convicted of terrorism and in due course sentenced to sixteen consecutive terms of life imprisonment. 

Their systematic concealing of incontrovertible reality lets them get away with murder.

It's now plausible, at least to us, that this week's multi-party deal is the reason why Dr Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British academic who lectures in Islamic studies at University of Melbourne, was taken prisoner and held hostage by Iran in the first place. 

23-Nov-20: Four Arab-on-Israeli terror attempts; close to zero media attention

Qalandiya Crossing, the pedestrian part - seen in a 2019 photo
[Image Source]

No one was hurt. But that was surely not the intention of the perpetrators behind four terror attacks directed against Israelis in the past few days. 

In four separate attempts this past weekend, terrorists sought to carry out lethal attacks directed at Israelis targeted at random. 

Two happened on the edges of the capital, Jerusalem, a third in the country's south and the fourth in the Samaria District. None of them individually got much attention, and we don't see any media saying that four in the space of a single weekend means something.

It's reported ["Explosives placed by terrorists near Jerusalem over weekend" | Jerusalem Post. November 22, 2020] that at the Qalandiya Crossing on Jerusalem's north-eastern entrance, two explosive packages were concealed Friday night close to where vehicles drive through. One exploded but failed to cause injury or damage. Witnesses spotted two suspects arriving at the crossing, placing the explosives and fleeing from the scene. A chase ensued with Border Police eventually arresting two under-age suspects in a nearby convenience store. This Arab source names them as Khaled Salim and Ismail Abu Zaidiya, both residents of the Qalandiya "refugee camp".

It didn't end there. In taking the prisoners away, the security people were confronted by dozens of Palestinian Arabs hurling rocks at them. Riot dispersal measures were used and the melee - which could easily have become the story - ended with no injuries.

The second attempt, on Friday night at the ancient Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem, was thwarted when a lookout spotted a suspect placing an explosive close to the walled complex and running away from the scene. He was pursued by Border Police who caught up with him and placed him under arrest. He is an 18-year-old male from a so-called refugee camp in the Bethlehem area. His explosive failed to detonate.

IDF forces apprehending a terror suspect this past weekend.
No one was hurt which - being Israelis - was the intention.
[Image Source]

A media release quoted in the Jerusalem Post report says "Border Police are working in the Jerusalem Envelope area to strengthen deterrence and thwart terrorism while increasing the deployment of forces in sensitive places where there have been recent attempts to harm civilians and security forces."

Then Saturday night around 9:30 pm, a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip into Israel set off the Tzeva Adom (Color Red) missile attack sirens in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon, according to a Ynet report. The resulting explosion caused damage to a warehouse in an industrial zone of the city. But fortunately no injuries - and to state the obvious (whenever missiles are fired into cities by malevolents totally indifferent to outcomes) this could have been a far more troubling event.

Then on Sunday morning in a third hidden explosives incident reported by Jerusalem Post - making it the fourth terror event of this weekend - IDF combat soldiers carrying out routine searches uncovered camouflaged explosives placed just outside the village of al-Mughayyir, south of Jenin. The military assessment is the intention of those who planted the explosives was to harm Israeli soldiers.

Seems a good time to mention that, for the Palestinian Authority, "...rewarding terrorists is not about social welfare. It is about incentivizing and rewarding terror and murder. “Pay for slay” is an abomination that should enjoy universal condemnation." Those sentiments, which are easy to agree with, come from "Lies, damn lies and Palestinian Authority’s ‘pay for slay’ policy", an op ed published by Jewish News Syndicate four days ago. It's authored by Maurice Hirsch who served in past years as director of the IDF Military Prosecution for Judea and Samaria. 

He's the kind of hands-on expert who can be expected to have some well-founded sense of what foreign aid funding achieves once it's handed over to the terror-addicted kleptocrats of the PA.

As it happens, Yossi Kuperwasser of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a former Director General of the Israel Ministry of Strategic Affairs and past head of the Research Division of IDF Military Intelligence, released a brief the same day as the Hirsch piece. It's called "Will the Palestinian Authority Stop Paying Terrorists? End the “Pay to Slay” Program?" and he leaves readers with the impression that no they won't. 

With predictable consequences.

20-Nov-20: I wish Malki were here to encourage me

Malki was three years old when we celebrated
Israel's Independence Day for the first time in our
Jerusalem home after making aliya a year before

Frimet Roth's op ed below originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post edition of August 12, 2020, the week that marked nineteen years since the massacre at the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. That's where the life of our daughter Malki, just 15, ended. And so did fifteen additional lives did too - 14 of them absolutely and immediately. And one more, the life of a young mother who was in the fast food place with her toddler daughter and has been in a a vegetative state ever since.

We're reposting it here now for a number of reasons, among them for the benefit of the members of Secretary of State Pompeo's entourage who have been here in Jerusalem since Wednesday and are flying out today. 

We would have very much wanted to discuss the Tamimi case with them - their strange and inexplicable silence in the face of Jordanian recalcitrance in particular. And their office's passivity. Perhaps next time.

Why is Ahlam Tamimi still free, 19 years after the Sbarro bombing?

The US has demanded her extradition from Jordan, Yet Jordan’s King Abdullah II refuses to accede to that demand.

By Frimet Roth | August 12, 2020 | The Jerusalem Post  

Nineteen years ago, our angel Malki was snatched from us in the Sbarro terror bombing.

Some may wonder how a pain can linger, oppress, ache and resist comfort for so long. Well, let me assure you, it can. And it does.

Sometimes, it feels more heart-wrenching to remember her life than it did when she was first murdered. There are so many family experiences and events from which she missed out.

The bombing that took her life and those of 14 other innocent Jews was uniquely horrific. It has spawned numerous “miracle” legends about lucky people who came eerily close to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has even inspired a minor writer to fabricate an entire interview with me which he included in his published memoir as well as in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.

It is often the only one of many bloody attacks mentioned when the Second Intifada is revisited. Photographs of the site minutes after the explosion - it is the busiest intersection in Jerusalem’s city center – are often reprinted. The sight of baby carriages and strewn body parts is emphasized.

But for some reason what doesn’t attract press coverage is the travesty of justice that ensued.

To the bafflement of my husband and me, despite our years of effort to achieve justice for our Malki and the other victims, there’s remarkably little concern about how the mastermind, the main perpetrator of the Sbarro terror attack, is today a free woman.

Jordanian Ahlam Tamimi scouted Jerusalem’s streets during the summer of 2001 for a target that would offer the greatest possible number of Orthodox Jewish children. Having traveled with him by public transport from Ramallah, she escorted her “weapon,” a suicide bomber called al-Masri, on foot from East Jerusalem to the Sbarro location.

She boasts of how she spoke English to him during their walk in order to pass as tourists. Police were at that very hour combing the city’s streets for a terrorist about whom they had been alerted.

After instructing him to wait ten minutes before detonating so that she could escape unharmed, she fled back to Ramallah. There she calmly reported the attack on the nightly Arab language news program where she worked as the on-camera presenter.

In front of cameras, Tamimi has smiled to learn how many children she murdered and expressed dismay that the number wasn’t higher. She has urged audiences on Hamas TV and on social media to emulate her deeds. The depths of her evil are apparent to all.

My husband and I are astounded. Why is it that she is still free? Why does this not disturb people more than it appears?

The US has demanded her extradition from Jordan. It has an extradition treaty with Jordan that was signed and ratified by both countries and has been valid since 1995. Yet Jordan’s King Abdullah II – the totalitarian ruler of his kingdom – refuses to accede to that demand.
Nonetheless, the US State Department, the White House and US Congressmen from both sides of the aisle persist in praising “His Majesty” as they are wont to call him. The reverential tone they adopt when addressing him or referring to him is utterly cringe-worthy.

It is impossible to relate this outrage and omit our own leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While he is now a footnote in the sequence of events, it cannot be overlooked that Tamimi is free in Jordan because he chose to send her there. The several pleas that my husband and I published, circulated and delivered to Netanyahu to remove Tamimi from the list of freed murderers included in the infamous Shalit Deal, were all in vain. He never responded to us at any stage or in any form.

What he did do was tell the press that he sent letters of apology to all victims after the Schalit Deal. His staff personally told me when I called his bureau in the weeks after the Schalit Deal that hundreds of such letters were mailed out.

That is a lie. None were mailed out.

And so the travesty endures. I would note that a faint glimmer of light at the tunnel’s end now uplifts us. Several US politicians, global celebrities and major Jewish organizations have joined us in demanding that the US pressure Jordan to extradite Tamimi by withholding the generous annual financial aid it receives from the US A new law empowering such a sanction was passed in December 2019.

Prior legislation entitles the US Department of Justice to arrest and try suspects for offenses committed against US citizens overseas. Malki was, as I am, a US citizen. That US law specifies that a suspect can and must be pursued by US law enforcement and brought to trial in the United States. Jordan has raised a single objection, which American authorities have told us is spurious. But the fact is she is still in Amman with her family and not in a Washington courtroom.

Malki left behind a detailed diary recording the events of the last year of her life. It makes for a painful read, not to mention an eye-straining one since she wrote it in microscopic script. She clearly wanted to pack in the maximum.

Each year as her yahrzeit approaches, I read a few more entries and publicize one of them:

“February 4, 2001: There was a mortar firing in Netzarim [Gaza Strip] and truly miraculously nobody was hurt. There was a one year old baby lying at the site where it fell! A miracle! A person from Karmei Tzur was killed on his way home, a father of small children... We had a talk about Kever Rachel [Rachel’s Tomb]... then communal singing. I cried a bit and it was hard for me to start singing so Shira and I just hugged and that really helped me. At the end we had a talk by Rav Elisha Aviner. He was simply amazing! He encouraged us so much about the situation in Israel.”

I wish Malki were here to encourage me.

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

Today's Jerusalem Post

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That’s our role.

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

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

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

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

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

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

- O -

Here below is the advertisement as published this morning on the front page of the Jerusalem Post's paper edition:

Click to enlarge.

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

16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world

Jordan's foreign minister speaks: We quote him in this post

We track Jordan's Arabic-language media closer than many outside observers. Still, we missed the exchange below until it was highlighted in an Arabic-language Twitter post [here]. Now we're catching up.

The tweet itself is dated October 6, 2020, a few days after Jordan forcibly expelled Nizar Tamimi to another country (evidently Qatar) with very little advance notice. We'll get to him in a moment. 

The tweet refers to a scene that played out in what appears to be a conference room of the Foreign Ministry of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Amman, the capital. A 50 second long video (here) captures the interaction. Here's the brief dialogue in Arabic-to-English translation arranged by us:

Unidentified Jordanian journalist: 

“Regarding the freed detainee Ahlam Tamimi, there are American pressures on Jordan...”

Ayman H. Safadi, Foreign Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: 

Once more, sir, we are a country which respects the law. Jordanian law does not allow handing over a Jordanian citizen to a third country unless there are agreements. There is no agreement between Jordan and the US to hand over Ahlam Tamimi. Consequently there is no legal basis for handing her over as we adhere to the law in this case. There were requests from several parties in America to hand her over since there is a pending lawsuit against her. We say, because we act according to law, the law does not permit us to hand her over and consequently we shall not hand her over.”

Our Arabic-to-English translator thinks this was "some kind of periodical briefing. Both the flags at the foreign minister's sides are Jordanian. So it's unlikely this exchange was part of a formal visit of, say, some foreign dignitary. But it's hard to be certain."

The journalist who posed the question

Keep the foreign minister's assertion in mind - that Jordan, in safeguarding a confessed terrorist bomber, keeping her out of the reach of US justice, Federal criminal charges and a date in court, is acting in accordance with "the law" - while we expand the discussion.

This happens not to be the first time he has said this. We wrote about it almost exactly a year ago in an open letter to Mr Safadi ["13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"] based on a report we spotted on the popular Jordanian news-site JO24. That, in our view, was the first-ever public statement by any Jordanian government official that the kingdom will not hand over to US law enforcement the woman who spearheaded the Sbarro massacre.

And if you're wondering: no, of course he gave no response to our November 2019 open letter. In the bitter reality of our experience, no Jordanian government official has ever responded to any of the communications we have directed at them in the wake of our daughter's murder. 

Our Malki, in case the narrative in unfamiliar to you, was one of many Jewish children blown up in the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with Jewish children. 

The Jordanian terrorist who selected the target site, who brought the bomb, a human bomb, to the door of the pizzeria, who fled the scene after telling him to wait with detonating his exploding guitar case until she was safely distant, and refers publicly to what she did as "my operation" and to the Jewish children inside as the reason she selected Sbarro Jerusalem for destruction, is today living in Jordan. She was born and educated there and is sheltered by Jordan today. She had her own made-in-Jordan TV show for five years until September 2016 and has lectured throughout Jordan and the Arab world for years, spreading a message of support for terror and lethal bigotry. (There's a great deal more background in an epic David Horovitz article that appeared in Times of Israel earlier this year.)

Back to the Jordanian politician. 

Mr Safadi is a figure of some significance. He has held the portfolio of foreign minister since early 2017. To judge by the fact that he has kept it through a succession of recent governments that have briefly come and gone, he has the king's confidence. He is also Jordan's current deputy prime minister. 

US-educated Safadi's claim, at least in the form it was published last year, is untrue. What he said then is that "several US authorities asked Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam Al-Tamimi" and that "Jordan respects and abides by the law" and "the law does not allow it... Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country and there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi." 

The truth is Jordan not only does allow extradition; it has in fact extradited Jordanians repeatedly to the United States. 

Like most nations, Jordan has treaties that regulate how this is done. It has one with the United States that was signed in 1995 and that the United States says is valid, in effect and binding. 

This is made clear (though it was never in serious doubt) by an announcement of the State Department that we quoted here a year ago: "12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria". It s also listed in a public document with the eminently appropriate name "Treaties in Force". The 2020 edition of TIF lists the Jordan/US treaty at page 245. There it records that it was signed on March 28, 1995 and entered into force on July 29, 1995. For purposes of American law, the TIF is authoritative.

Less than a year after that November 2019 clarification, the US re-stated somewhat more forcefully its official view on the validity of the Jordan treaty. It did this on June 24, 2020 using language that people in the know have told us was intended to send a clear message.

Here's some background to that. 

Every year, the Bureau of Counterterrorism at the US State Department issues a public document called Country Reports on Terrorism. This is done by way of complying with a Federal law ["22 U.S. Code § 2656f - Annual country reports on terrorism"]. The annual reports are meant to give Congress a detailed, country-by-country yearly update on how global efforts to defeat terror are faring. 

The 2020 edition of the Country Reports [online here] addresses Jordan and its years-long thwarting of the Ahlam Tamimi extradition. Here's what it says:

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.

People sensitive to the lexicon of diplomacy say the choice of words indicates the US is communicating that it has gotten fed up with Jordan's baseless claim that “there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi”. It wants the Tamimi extradition to happen. 

Some more background:

In the summer of 2019, we entered into correspondence with State Department officials about the Tamimi extradition and the slightly bizarre biting-the-hand-that-feeds-you game Jordan plays. 

We reminded them of how Jordan's highest court, the Court of Cassation, had handed down its ruling in the Tamimi case less than a week after the US announced charges against her ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The kingdom's senior jurists decided the treaty was invalid, basing that on one ground: that it ought to have been ratified by the parliament. And wasn't.

In addressing the State Department, we were conscious of how the Jordanian jurists could have said but did not that (a) there were additional grounds for invalidating the treaty. In fact, they referred to just one. And (b) that additional legal claims - such as the doctrine of double jeopardy - applied and would operate to prevent Jordan from handing over Tamimi. They referred to none.

Double jeopardy comes up from time to time as a reason not to extradite when it's raised by Jordanian reporters with no legal training. Also by Jordanian diplomats in private, but never public, statements about which we have been briefed. Not one of the several experts on the law of extradition whom we have consulted sees double jeopardy as having any relevance at all in the Tamimi case. It has no relevance to the Jordan/US treaty. It's been explained to us that the treaty itself indicates the doctrine has no application.

Some additional dimensions to consider:

• The treaty could have been ratified that very day. Or the day after. Or any other day in the quarter of a century since it was signed and put into effect. 
• The US believes every i was dotted and every t crossed - that all the technical requirements were complied with and satisfied. But even if there had been some parliamentary lapse, the ratification could have been dealt with after the fact. Where there's a will etc. 
• Jordan's relationship with the US is super important for Jordan. It's arguably far more important than say Jordan's ties with Ukraine. The Jordan/Ukraine extradition treaty is treated by both sides as a valid legal obligation. In fact, we asked Jordan's ambassador in Washington about it by email last year. She ignored the points we made. She ignored us. She ignored a letter [the JTA's syndicated report, and our blog post] from seven US law-makers who raised similar issues. (To us, something is seriously wrong when the official representative of a purportedly-close ally on the payroll of US taxpayers treats respectful and important questions with disdain.) The judges did not turn their minds to this aspect. But we should. And so should friends of Jordan. 
• The US is by far Jordan's largest supplier of funding. Jordan is the third-largest recipient of US aid in the world. A reasonable person might imagine that in such circumstances, Jordan would make really serious efforts to honor its obligations to the US. It appears a reasonable person would be wrong. And the judges made no mention of the issue. One might argue it’s not their job. But the same certainly cannot be said about Jordan’s parliament, not to mention its king. 
• Jordan has numerous extradition treaties with countries other than the US. Were those treaties all ratified before they were put into effect? From our research, the answer is definitively no. The judges didn't ask but it is a matter that would surely trouble anyone concerned with the "rule of law" aspect of long-thwarted Tamimi extradition.

• 

  The October 2020 media event at the Jordanian Foreign Ministry
  

  Now this important observation: Just because the Jordanian court was told that no ratification was done, it still might not be true. As we describe below, the truth appears to be that there was indeed an act of ratification. Or more precisely, that Jordan may have been able to give the US what are called "instruments of ratification" - and no one cares to talk about it. 
• In fact, we were told by a US Department of Justice source that the US was neither asked to advise on this; nor was it raised in the very brief Jordanian court hearing. It appears no representative of the United States was present in court when the Court of Cassation handed down a ruling on the validity of a vital agreement between the two countries. We of course weren't there, know nothing about Jordanian rules of procedure and are left to rely on what US administration officials with knowledge of the matter say. And that's what we heard from them. Call us surprised. 
• No one is going to argue that Jordan is one of the world's paragons of democratic practice. Its media is famously unfree. The king appoints the prime minister and may dismiss him or accept his resignation. He has the sole power to appoint senior military leaders, justices of the constitutional court, all 75 members of the senate, cabinet ministers, dissolve both houses of parliament. The king must approve laws before they take effect and can issue royal decrees which are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny. He commands the armed forces, declares war and ratifies treaties [Source: Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations, Congressional Research Service, Updated to June 18, 2020]. To state the obvious, in Jordan, what the Hashemite king says, goes. In any tension between constitution and realpolitik, no one should be in doubt about how the Jordanian outcome is determined.

But what if there were documentary evidence that the ratification did in fact happen at the relevant time? What if the claims made by (and perhaps to) the judges of the Court of Cassation and on which their decision was based are factually incorrect?

The following quote resulted from one of those email exchanges between us and a State Department official who we understand was authoritative in the context of US/Jordan relations. That official told us

In the specific case of Ahlam Tamimi, we continue to advocate that the Government of Jordan arrest her and agree to extradite her to the United States. To date, the Government of Jordan has been unwilling to accede to our requests because they have claimed the bilateral extradition treaty we signed in 1995 is null. We continue to dispute the Jordanian government’s claim, as we exchanged instruments of ratification, bringing the treaty into force on July 29, 1995, and the treaty has not been terminated. I hope the information I provided above answers your question. Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

We asked whether this statement could be quoted publicly. Yes was the answer.

This week, November 14, 2020, to be specific, marked the 85th birthday of King Abdullah II's widely respected father, King Hussein. The Arabic media - both conventional and social media - are replete even now, two days later, with tributes to the older king's nobility, leadership and so on. We have been thinking about all of that this weekend as we ponder the misleading and mostly unchallenged assertion by one of Jordan's most influential figures that the treaty is a nullity. 

Front page of New York Times, August 4, 1995

The New York Times in an August 4, 1995 article on Jordan tracks the pursuit of one of the plotters of the first lethal attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, the one carried out in 1993. 

That was when a rented truck filled with explosives was driven into the complex's underground parking garage and "killed 6 people, injured more than 1,000 and shook America's sense of immunity from foreign terrorism" ["Suspect Is Said to Be Longtime Friend of Bombing Mastermind"]. 

Eyad Ismoil, a Palestinian immigrant working in a grocery store in Dallas, was the driver. The Times report says Ismoil fled to Jordan on a Royal Jordanian Airlines flight that same day, a few hours after the bombing, "prompting a two-and-a-half-year manhunt". He was eventually tracked to a "refugee camp" 30 miles north of Amman and though "the F.B.I. knew his whereabouts last winter, the Americans could not arrest him until King Hussein of Jordan signed a new extradition treaty with the United States last week... Local authorities in Jordan arrested Mr. Ismoil on Sunday as he left a class at a university, and they turned him over to F.B.I agents at a military airfield on Wednesday night." He was promptly flown to New York City, tried, convicted and three years later sentenced to a term of 280 years in prison. He remains behind US bars.

So now, some speculation. 

If he were alive today, what would King Hussein, who died in 1999, say to the way his kingdom has put arguably the most strategic of its strategic foreign relations at risk? 

Jordan has done that by (a) denying that a milestone treaty personally championed by him is now being impugned by his successors and (b) standing in appalling, incomprehensible solidarity with a woman, arguably the most wanted female fugitive now alive, who is a celebrity chiefly because of the bombing she carried out in order to kill as many children as possible.

When we say "at risk", we're thinking of a December 2019 law enacted by the US Congress and immediately signed into law by the President of the US. Sarah N. Stern's fine analysis in the Israel Hayom newspaper that same month ["A long-awaited holiday gift for terror victims"] cogently lays out the issues. 

In effect, that sanction law says Jordan's demeaning of its treaty with the US puts at meaningful risk the massive foreign aid it has gotten annually over recent years from the US - amounting to some $7.3 Billion for the period 2016-2020. As little as most American news-readers know about this (since there has been virtual no media coverage in the West), the story is widely followed in the Arab world where it's considered alarming.

Is there a realistic chance of the sanction being applied, given the transition now underway in Washington? It was not applied last year; it has not been applied so far this year either. The prospects for next year are unknown but probably low..

But there are other signs - the forced expulsion of Tamimi's husband, Nizar Tamimi - we mentioned him at the start - from Jordan just six weeks ago ["04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments"]. These suggest Washington has an interest in seeing Jordan confront its inner demons that somehow make it acceptable to safeguard and even celebrate a woman famous principally for the Jewish children she boasts of killing.

With due respect to Jordan's foreign minister, the rule of law is not a simple matter of adhering to parliamentary procedure and protocol. It is about the moral and ethical precepts that a nation's laws are intended to implement. 

 

Malki at the heart of a family celebration some weeks before
the end of her life. She never reached her 16th birthday.

Given where we have been these past several years, we don't expect to find justice waiting at the door, though of course we remain quietly optimistic. We would be more optimistic if the news industry showed some small degree of interest in our pursuit of justice. But the de facto embargo on most reporting of Ahlam Tamimi's incredible career - her charmed life in Jordan, the way a strategic ally of the United States sticks its finger in American eyes - is a painful reality in our lives and in our efforts. 

We believe we would have seen Tamimi in leg-chains and orange overalls in a Federal court house long ago if not for Jordan's tail-wagging-the-dog determination to keep her safe and famous. Ask yourself, having gotten this far into our post, if you already knew any of these details from mainstream news sources.

We're determined to press forward. The right way to view our efforts is as a quest by bereaved parents in search of justice following their child's murder. It is not at all a political crusade. Nor does it stem for any appetite for vengeance. Meanwhile watch this space and please sign our petition.