14-Apr-21: Israel's Memorial Day and a message of justice

Yom Hazikaron, Israel's official Memorial Day when Israel stops to honor the fallen of its several wars, underwent a significant redefinition when it was extended by government resolution passed on February 5, 1997 [see the Knesset's English language explanation] to become, in addition, the country's "Memorial Day for Victims of Hostile Acts".

In plain terms, the day on which the nation remembers the lives taken by terrorists who target civilians of, in and beyond Israel. 

Arnold Roth was interviewed on i24NEWS' new "Global Eye with Natasha Kirtchuk" show during the evening hours of Tuesday April 13, 2021. A video of the segment (hosted on YouTube) is below, posted here with the kind permission of i24NEWS.

16-Mar-21: I remember shedding tears that day: Four years later

The article below is cross-posted from Frimet Roth's The Good, The Bad, The Ugly blog and was authored by Frimet. 

It was published there on March 15, 2021 under the heading A call to President Biden. Please check out the video clip at the bottom; we produced this - with the help of talented friends - to mark the anniversary about which Frimet writes.

---

Exactly four years ago, during the evening hours of March 14, 2017, Department of Justice and FBI officials invited my husband and me to a meeting in a Jerusalem hotel.

There they shared with us news that we believed would herald the arrest and trial of our child's murderer. Ahlam Tamimi had by then been enjoying freedom and security in Amman for five and a half years. In October 2011, she had been released in the lop-sided Shalit Deal with the terror organization Hamas.

The moment she landed in her native country Jordan, she began boasting of the terror bombing attack she had masterminded on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001. The eatery had been packed with families that hot summer afternoon. The number of victims reached 15, including 8 children, among them our Malki.

Tamimi repeatedly urged her admirers to follow in her footsteps from the platform of a weekly talk show she hosted on the global Arabic-language Al Quds TV station. She also addressed live audiences both in Jordan and in several neighboring Arab countries to which she travelled during those years with ease.

On that March 2017 evening - it happens to have been my birthday - those US officials told us charges against Tamimi, the existence of which we knew nothing about until that moment, had just been unsealed. And her extradition to the US for trial had been demanded of Jordan pursuant to the 1995 Extradition Treaty between the two countries.

I remember shedding tears that day as I sat at the table across from those officials. I had little doubt that this monster would soon be where she belongs - behind bars in a US Federal penitentiary, this time until her last day on earth.

But here we are in 2021 and we are no closer to justice now than we were then. 

King Abdullah's regime steadfastly refuses to honor the extradition treaty that Jordan signed and ratified with the US in 1995. 

Jordan receives generous financial aid from the US as well as praise and adulation from the White House and from numerous individual members of Congress.

My husband and I are incredibly disturbed by the apparent passivity on the part of the US in the face of Jordan's brazen contempt for the rule of law.

It often seems to us that Jordan is the tail wagging the dog in this much lauded "partnership".

We truly hope that you, President Biden, will impress on Jordan that the existential support lavished on the Hashemite Kingdom is contingent on this evil woman being brought to justice.

We produced the video below with friends to mark the fourth anniversary this past weekend. It's also accessible via YouTube.

11-Mar-21: Interpol and justice

Trying to bring the central figure in our daughter's murder to justice has been one of the hardest and most painful things my wife and I have ever had to do.

That person, a Jordanian woman called Ahlam Tamimi, should have been put on trial in Washington under US law a long time ago. The charges against her were unsealed by senior Department of Justice officials almost exactly four years ago to the day, on March 14, 2017. We had already planned to mark that somber anniversary with a renewed call to the US government for meaningful pressure to be brought to bear on its ally and treaty partner, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

It is inexplicable to us that Jordan, which signed a treaty with the US more than a quarter century ago for the mutual extradition of fugitives like Tamimi, remains in flagrant breach of that treaty even while it continues to be a recipient of colossal sums in US foreign aid each year.

Today we learned of a further reversal: the blunt and unwelcome announcement by Interpol on March 8, 2021 that it has succumbed to pressure from the fugitive's family, lawyers and clan in Jordan and has cancelled the Red Notice which operated until now to encourage member governments to arrest her if she enters their jurisdiction. 

We learned about this via the Arabic-language media and are trying to get clarification from the US justice system.

My wife and I will not give up in our efforts to see this loathsome person - the embodiment of murderous bigotry - eventually brought to justice to answer for her crimes.

Arnold Roth
Jerusalem
thisongoingwar@gmail.com 

22-Feb-21: On pursuing justice: A Merseyside perspective

Mr Cohen's article as it appears in the Jewish Telegraph

The following is an op ed by Johnny Cohen of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. Mr Cohen is a respected pillar - and veteran leader - of the city's Jewish community and currently serves as president of the Merseyside Jewish Representative Council.

His article is published under the title “Arnold’s anger over the release of woman who murdered daughter” in this past weekend’s Jewish Telegraph in the United Kingdom. 

Their online edition does not include this welcome piece. So with Mr Cohen’s permission, we are grateful to reprint it here.

* * *

In March 2014, the Liverpool Jewish Forum hosted a special visitor from Israel, Arnold Roth.

He and wife Frimet, parents of a profoundly disabled daughter Haya, had set up the Malki Foundation following the brutal murder in 2001 in the Sbarro Pizzeria massacre in Jerusalem of their older 15 year-old daughter Malki, one of two US nationals among 15 civilians, including 7 children and a pregnant woman, who were killed. 130 others were injured, many severely.

The Foundation, Keren Malki, enables families in Israel to provide quality care at home for children with disabilities, and later I spent a few years as a Trustee, until I found that time pressures did not allow me to do justice to that position.

Arnold’s talk concentrated on the foundation and on Malki herself, not on her murder. But he did express anger and disappointment that the woman who directed Malki’s murder, Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, was one of more than 1,000 Israeli-held security prisoners who had planned/perpetrated various terror attacks against Israeli targets, but were released from prison in exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011.

Liverpool, March 2014:

Johnny Cohen (L) and Arnold Roth (R) listen intently

as Nicole Gordon of Malki Foundation UK describes

the foundation's work

Tamimi, the first woman ever to be admitted to the ranks of Hamas terrorists, had pleaded guilty in an Israeli court in 2003, did not express remorse for her role, and had received 16 consecutive life sentences and an additional 15 years in prison.

Legislation has existed for years empowering the US to arrest, try and convict terrorists in US courts under US law if they kill a US national anywhere. Malki was a citizen of the United States and also of Australia and Israel. Another victim of Tamimi’s Sbarro bombing, a young mother who is also an American national, remains comatose 20 years after the bombing.

In 1995, an extradition treaty was signed and ratified between the US and Jordan, accepted as valid by both countries. But in 2017, a Jordanian court ruled that Tamimi could not be extradited, because the treaty was never approved by the Jordanian parliament. Yet, back in 1995, Jordan had permitted U.S. agents to enter the country to arrest Eyad Ismail, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing.

Jordan refuses to allow Tamimi’s extradition.

* * *

In 2013, the Obama administration issued a formal criminal complaint against Tamimi for “Conspiring to use and using a weapon of mass destruction against a US national outside the US resulting in death and aiding and abetting and causing an act to be done,” but never made this public.

Only in March 2017, did the Trump administration unseal it, saying “The charges unsealed today serve as a reminder that when terrorists target Americans anywhere in the world, we will never forget – and we will continue to seek to ensure that they are held accountable.” The Justice Department formally notified Jordan of its request that she be extradited to face trial in Washington.

In 2018, the Trump administration offered a $5 million reward for the capture of the only woman on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list.

Arnold and Frimet Roth have campaigned since 2012 for the United States firmly to urge compliance by Jordan to bring Tamimi to justice. As a result, in December 2019, President Trump signed into law a powerful sanction that potentially will stop U.S. foreign aid to Jordan because of its treaty breach.

Liverpool, March 2014:

Arnold Roth describes the Malki Foundation's

work to a student assembly at the King David School

Also, in April 2020, seven Congressional lawmakers wrote to Jordan’s Ambassador in Washington, noting how the sanction reflects “the deep concern of the Congress, the Administration and the American people” and affirming that “it is of the highest importance to US/Jordan relations that an outcome is found that honours Jordanian law while ensuring this unrepentant terrorist and murderer of innocent Americans is brought to US justice.”

Back in 2014, I did not imagine that Tamimi would remain free until today in Jordan, protected from justice by King Abdullah II, a ruler who Arnold now describes as “coddled by both the United States and Israel.”

Tamimi hosted a TV programme from Amman for 5 years, shown in America and elsewhere, and has given lectures and made numerous public appearances extolling the bombing. She has boasted that two of the factors leading her to pick the pizzeria as a bombing target were the crowds that gathered there during lunch hour and that she ‘knew there was a Jewish religious school nearby.’

How ironic that “tamimi” in Hebrew means innocent or unblemished, especially given that last weekend’s Torah portion Mishpatim, dealing with civil law, clearly specifies death as the penalty for murder.

* * *

We should remember that our Rabbis said that pursuit of justice is the cornerstone of Judaism, with which the Torah begins and ends. We cannot consider ourselves pious Jews without a firm commitment to making the world a more just and righteous place. When injustice stares us in the face, when Mishpat Tzedek (Justice and Righteousness) are being abused and forsaken, as Arnold argues forcefully, we must have the courage to stand up and speak out in pursuit of the ultimate tzedek to ensure that people are judged fairly.

Furthermore, our rabbis tell us that although 'you are not required to complete the task, neither are you at liberty to abstain from it.' So Arnold’s correct first step is to seek from the United States, Israel and Jordan acknowledgement of a gross injustice.

In this, he is surely exercising his rights under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which recognised human rights to be the foundation for freedom, justice and peace. Article 3 grants everyone the right to life and to live in freedom and safety, Article 8 the right to seek justice and Article 28 the right to a social and international order where the rights in the Declaration can be fully realised

* * *

What follows is based on an online talk by Arnold Roth last week “Terrorism: Seeking Justice for Its Victims” [YouTube].

Although the US insists that the extradition treaty is valid, little evident pressure has been, or is being, exerted by the US to elicit Jordanian compliance. Nothing has materialised from the 2019 legislation which created the powerful sanction to withdraw the significant aid given annually to Jordan. Referring to the billions of dollars of both financial and military aid, Roth suggests that “if the US administration insisted, there’s no way the Jordanians could refuse a request to hand over Tamimi.” He says that his repeated requests to discuss the issue with State Department officials have been “essentially ignored.”

There has been no concrete development since Henry Wooster became the Ambassador of the United States to Jordan in August 2020, despite his statement then that “all options are on the table.” The Office for Victims of Overseas Terrorism, a Justice Department agency tasked with assisting terror victims and their families, has also declined to comment.

Although Arnold made visits to, and had considerable dealings with, Jordan pre-2001, he has never received any concrete responses from the Jordanian Embassy in Washington to justify why Jordan's regime has been honouring, sheltering and celebrating a self-confessed, proud murderer of Jews since 2011. Or why the Jordanian parliament will not ratify the valid extradition treaty. He has not been granted a single interview to examine the issues.

The media, especially in the US, have failed to address jihadist hatred and barbarism and the FBI’s “most wanted terrorist.” Indeed media outlets have glorified Tamimi’s hateful ideologies, rather than focus on peace efforts. The influential BBC showed its hand from the outset during the week of shivah, mourning, for Malki in 2001. BBC Radio 4’s Today programme wanted to interview Arnold, but only together with a parent of a Palestinian suicide bomber. The BBC equated Arnold’s loss of a child as a victim of terror with the death of a “martyr” knowingly targeting terror.

Although Roth was at one time Israel’s representative at the UN re terrorism, nobody from the Israeli Government has openly analysed the issues or engaged with him since the Shalit exchange.

An Interpol ‘Red Notice’ (a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest an individual pending extradition) was issued in 2016, but with no development.

* * *

Johnny Cohen

[Image Source: Jewish Chronicle]

So what can we do?

If we have any contacts/influence, direct or indirect, especially in the USA, Jordan or Israel, call for Tamimi to be brought to justice to face Federal terrorism charges in a Washington DC court,

• Sign the petition on change.org/ExtraditeTamimi
• Publicise the issue especially on social media
• Pray for Malki and the Roth family.

We must not let the Roth family down.

In the words of the prophet (“Isaiah 1:27): "Zion will be redeemed through Justice”

05-Feb-21: The Sbarro savagery: The on-air apology BBC Arabic broadcast to its viewers [Video]

This screen cap comes from the October 8, 2020 edition of BBC Arabic's hugely popular, five-nights-a-week news and analysis show, Trending. This edition contained a segment of about 6 minutes devoted to explaining the 'predicament' of FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, a boastful bomber of children including ours, whose husband, it was claimed, had been forcibly deported from Jordan on October 1, 2020. Outrage against the BBC's judgement soon followed.

In October 2020, we (Frimet and Arnold Roth who write this blog) protested what we see as the inexcusably disgraceful way the BBC's BBC Arabic unit aired a fawning and - in our view - completely misleading news segment about the Jordanian woman who killed our daughter Malki.

The details are laid out in these earlier reports (listed chronologically):

• 04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem? [Our blog]
• BBC refused request by father of teen terror victim to address staff over interview with her killer [Jewish Chronicle UK, December 24, 2020]
• 15-Nov-20: On SKY Australia, Arnold Roth says what he thinks about the BBC promoting Tamimi [Our blog]
• 22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism? [Our blog]
• BBC World Service boss: Giving mass murderer airtime was a ‘lapse in standards’ [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]
• ‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]
• Why does BBC‏ ‏promote my daughter’s murderer? [Palestinian Media Watch, October 13, 3030]

How the BBC handled the Ahlam Tamimi matter is also the subject of a front-page expose (photo on the right) in the current (February 3, 2021) edition of the London-based Jewish Chronicle

• Shame of BBC Arabic as systematic bias revealed | A JC investigation shows a pattern of anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies"

It's also at the heart of an incisive column, "Terrorism, Malki Roth’s murder and questions to answer for the BBC’s Arabic service" by Chris Blackhurst, published in Reaction. We have an extract from it below.

We mentioned in our February 4, 2021 post that BBC management, responding to the public outrage over what the clever people at BBC Arabic did when they sympathetically showcased the world's most wanted female fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, arranged for one of the BBC Arabic Trending program's presenters to deliver an on-air apology. This was broadcast on October 29, 2020.

There's much criticism we want to share about the apology's content and style. (To understand how we feel about what's said - and how it's presented - we urge you to pause now and read our previous post: "04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem?")

One of the puzzling aspects was that the apology itself was not stored away as video-on-demand on any of the BBC's media platforms. In other words, if you didn't see it in real time, there was no way to review it or draw your own conclusions afterwards. Once delivered, the apology immediately disappeared. (A few more words about that below.)

So this week, we asked BBC management to allow us to republish their highly problematic October 29, 2020 apology here on our blog. To their great credit, they didn't hesitate to give their explicit permission. 

Here it is:

As you see, it comes with no English sub-titles. But in sharing the on-air apology video with us, the BBC also sent us their translation of the Arabic. 

Here it is below - unedited, unchanged. The speaker is BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar; one of Trending’s regular presenters since it got started in 2017.

On 8 October, BBC Arabic’s Trending programme item on social media reactions to a phone call made by Ahlam Tamimi to a Jordanian radio station. Trending then broadcast a short clip recorded with Tamimi.

This item was in breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. Tamimi was convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to multiple life sentences in Israel for an attack that killed 15 civilians including eight children, she is on the FBI’s most wanted terrorist list and is a member of an organisation proscribed by the UK and  several international governments.

Therefore, any contact with her should have been approved in advance by senior editors in the BBC, as per our editorial guidelines. That approval was not sought and would certainly not have been given.

This item should not have been shown.  It was a clear breach of our editorial guidelines and we apologise for it.

As we wrote in our February 4 post, this apology has some troubling features. 

• It’s devoid of any on-screen headline. There is no photo of Tamimi or of the massacre or of anything else that would catch a viewer's attention. In fact, there's no visual link to convey that this is important. All that the audience experiences is the rapidly spoken flat-toned speechlet of the cold-faced presenter herself saying that it’s about Tamimi. There's simply no indication that this has any special significance.
• On the positive side, it’s delivered by the same journalist who was the program’s presenter when they showcased the Sbarro monster a few weeks earlier. That on its own is important. But her tone is monotonous and uninflected, and her brief recitation lasts just a minute. 

Arnold Roth showed the BBC’s transcript along with the video clip to an expert Arabic-to-English translator who pointed out some problems. The biggest was in the opening words. 

On screen, the Trending presenter, Rania ‘Attar, speaking Arabic says this:

“Our viewers, I read you a message from the BBC”.

The transcript that the BBC gave us does not have those words or anything like them.

The omission leaves us feeling that the non-Arabic speakers at the world’s most important broadcast enterprise, including senior BBC management, don’t realize that this (using our words and not hers) is what their audience actually heard from Trending’s presenter:

“Friends, what I’m about to say is not me speaking but something the BBC people have obliged me to say. So here goes. We’ll get this out of the way in a minute and get back to our show.”

Image source: REACTION screen cap

And one more important thing to know about this on-air apology.

As CAMERA Arabic points out [here in Arabic] all of the Trending program's segments for October 29, 2020 were stored on the BBC website for some time after they went to air. But not the apology. 

If you go now to BBC Arabic's YouTube channel, you can still see all of those October 29, 2020 Trending segments today. But (and we hope BBC senior management see these words) you will not see the apology that went to air the same night. It alone is missing. 

As we noted above, Chris Blackurst, who served as editor of the UK's The Independent in the recent past, published a powerful takedown today in his first column for Reaction (background here). Since his excellent comments are behind a paywall, here's a brief extract:

Even though [Malki] died 20 years ago, [Arnold Roth's] pain at her loss is obvious and still raw. It does not diminish. Imagine, then, in October last year, him turning on theBBC Arabic TV programme, Trending, to watch the mastermind of her deathbeing interviewed and treated respectfully... 

Listening to Roth and observing his anger and hurt, you do wonder. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter and all that... This isn’t about IRA versus Britain or Palestine versus Israel; it is about grief and torment. Here, there was not even an attempt at balance, no account of what happened, and Tamimi’s role. That one-sidedness was then compounded by the robotic, distanced apology.

Perish the thought that the BBC’s Arabic service is pursuing a political agenda at the expense of the Corporation’s mission statement: “To act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain.”

Shame on you, BBC.

[From "Terrorism, Malki Roth’s murder and questions to answer for the BBC’s Arabic service", Reaction, February 6, 2021]. 

As we keep saying, and as respected voices like Mr Blackhurts's are reiterating, there is a serious problem here. Arnold Roth expressed it this way in his interview this week with the Jewish Chronicle:

There's a toxic culture at BBC Arabic... This isn’t journalism. It’s the advocacy of pushing their own hateful views. She confessed to all the charges in court and is unabashedly proud of what she has done. Yet BBC Arabic wants to treat her like Joan of Arc. I believe in senior management’s good faith but fear they don’t fully grasp the BBC Arabic agenda. The language barrier leads, I suspect, to the Arabic producers and reporters playing BBC senior people for fools.[Jewish Chronicle. February 4, 2021]

Since you are here at our blog, you likely know that we are in the midst of a years-long battle to see justice done. We want the woman who boasts - boasts! - of killing the children inside the pizzeria brought to justice in Washington. We believe the US Department of Justice wants to see her stand trial and we are doing all we can to expose the obstacles (about which we have never been explicit) and get them removed. 

What the BBC allowed to be done in shamefully platforming Tamimi and what she stands for is a microcosm of what we personally have encountered over and over again. And still do. 

The media part of this is particularly painful. Faced with a news story involving pure unadulterated evil in a very specific political setting, a broad spectrum of editors, reporters and commentators prefer to stay silent. 

Or, as the BBC did in October, put lipstick on a pig rather than deal with the crucial matters (of terrorism, justice, malfeasance, cover-up) at hand. 

Tamimi's years of illicit freedom and the fact that Jordan breaches its own extradition treaty with its most powerful and important ally in order to keep her safe and out of the reach of law enforcement is a time bomb. Failing to deal with terrorism, with those who do it and with those who ensure it endures and thrives has real consequences. 

And so does lethal journalism.

UPDATE February 9, 2021: And another valuable contribution on holding the BBC to account comes today from Jake Wallis-Simons in The Spectator: "What’s the problem with BBC Arabic?". A brief extract:

...it should come as a cause for concern – if not necessarily surprise – that a Jewish Chronicle investigation has uncovered evidence of shameful and systematic bias at the channel. The idea for the investigation came after a conversation with an Australian-born Israeli called Arnold Roth, 69, whose teenage daughter Malki was one of 15 people killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 2001. The female terrorist who masterminded the attack, Ahlam Tamimi, was released from jail in a prisoner exchange in 2011 and went to live in Jordan, where she became a celebrated media personality.

Last year, BBC Arabic broadcast a fawning interview with the convicted terrorist. Incensed, Roth complained and won an apology from Jamie Angus, head of the World Service. Roth suspected, however, that this was not an aberration but a symptom of a rotten culture at the heart of the licence-fee-funded Arabic channel.

The investigation appears to confirm this view.

We're waiting to see where, if at all, this attention goes and who steps up to propose actual next steps. 

17-Dec-20: Message from Australia: The killer of the innocents is not forgotten, not forgiven

Questions asked in Australia's Senate [Image Source]

Malki, our daughter, was born in Australia. She was the youngest of our children, not quite three years old, when we came to Jerusalem. 

The result in terms of her identity was that while she acquired Israeli citizenship in accordance with the law, she arrived here as a dual US/Australian national.

That, and the fact that her father was born in Melbourne, meant that there was and continues to be more than the average degree of interest in Australia about the circumstances in which she died at the age of fifteen - murdered in a terror attack on a pizzeria filled with children - and about what subsequently happened to the confessed killer.

We've written numerous times about how deeply embittering it has been for us to see political and communal leaders avert their gaze when we come to speak with them about helping us bring the bomber to justice. (She lives in Jordan and she's not behind bars. She also had her own television program there, beamed throughout the world, for five years. It promoted terrorism.) But the way the news industry has buried the unusual circumstances of the killer's ongoing freedom is, years after we lost Malki, right at the top of things that trouble us deeply.

That's just one of the reasons why it's so welcome to see a prominent Jewish community leader in Melbourne publish an op ed today in the newspaper of record in Australia's national capital about how and why justice needs to be done in the wake of the Sbarro massacre.

The core question in Jeremy Leibler's cogent article ["Australia has a role to play in seeking justice for murdered teen", Canberra Times, December 17, 2020 and archived] is what can the Australian government do to obtain justice for the murder of Malki Roth, our greatly missed oldest daughter. (Mr Leibler is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.)

From the Canberra Times

But it's also a road map for how we wish people genuinely motivated by justice, no matter where they are, would look at the vexed issue at the center of our lives since 2011.

For an Australian readership, Leibler carefully lays out the background: the massacre at the pizzeria which he correctly says was "orchestrated by Jordanian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi"; the murder of Australian-born Malki and the many other innocents; Tamimi's subsequent release as part of a prisoner exchange that saw hundreds of terrorists released in exchange for a young Israeli soldier abducted and held hostage by the terrorists of Hamas. 

Then this:

In the years since her release, Tamimi has been living freely in Jordan and has become quite the celebrity, the host of a popular television program that she uses as a platform for continuing to boast about how many Jewish children she has murdered. Tamimi appears on the FBI's list of "most wanted terrorists" and the US Department of State has issued a $US5 million reward for information leading to her arrest. 

But Jordan has so far refused to co-operate, despite having an extradition treaty with the US and despite having just this year deported Tamimi's husband, Nizar al-Tamimi, in an apparent and so far unsuccessful effort to encourage Ahlam to leave of her own volition.

The only explanation Jordan has offered for its non-cooperation is to question the validity of the extradition treaty. In reality, the obstruction is assumed to be based less on technicalities of international law and more on the political maneuvering of the nation's all-powerful King Abdullah II.

In a country where more than half the population is Palestinian, there is little doubt that a decision to hand over a Palestinian-Jordanian killer of Jews to the US would prove unpopular...

Jordan's King Abdullah II talks with Australian Prime Minister Scott 

Morrison on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Sep 2019

[Image Source]

He points out that, unlike the United States, Australia has no bilateral extradition treaty with the Hashemite Kingdom. But this does not mean Australia is without options:

...We can and should support the US in its efforts. We can and should take every opportunity to advise the Jordanian government that we have neither forgotten nor forgiven the murderer of an Australian child.

And let's be clear that Australia's intervention would make a difference. It would make it easier for Jordan to comply with America's request to extradite Tamimi, citing increased international pressure. It would also encourage the incoming Biden administration to maintain pressure from their end.

He goes on to refer to questions asked in Australia's Senate about whether Australia's foreign ministry - the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - has conveyed to the Jordanian government

...our concern that Ahlam Tamimi is feted for her role in killing 15 people in Jerusalem, including an Australian national, and if not, why not and will it do so in the future?

We encourage you to click on the source and read the brief Canberra Times article in full. 

To his great credit, Jeremy Leibler has framed in common sense terms an approach that any public official or community organization anywhere can and ought to emulate. 

They can help those who make decisions in the Kingdom of Jordan see that there are pressing and serious questions about the troubling immorality of Jordan's harboring, sheltering, megaphoning and empowering of the savage who killed the children in the pizzeria. 

And they ought to be answered.

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. 

UPDATE January 12, 2021: No response. The editors at the Jerusalem Post stay silent.

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, in particular its newspapers, are 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 - for instance, the forced expulsion of Tamimi's husband, Nizar Tamimi from Jordan just six weeks ago ["04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments"]. We mentioned him at the start of this post.

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 also 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.