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

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

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

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

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

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

Source: YouTube screen capture

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

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

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

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

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

A Personal Betrayal

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

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

Our spirits were dramatically raised. 

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

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

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

Congress must help

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

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

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

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

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

A Moral Imperative

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

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

• • •

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