27-Aug-21: Peace, terror and Jordan's under-reported attachment to anti-Jewish bigotry

Jordan's King Abdullah is received in President Joseph R. Biden's Oval Office, July 19, 2021

We anticipated the fawning reception King Abdullah II of Jordan would receive during his three week tour of the US in July. 

We were ready for the high-intensity five days of meetings he had with President Joseph R. Biden in the Oval Office, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and with a long list of Washington insiders both in the Congress and around it, very few of whom have shown the smallest interest in engaging with us. (Details to follow.)

Everything was more or less predictable,

Less expected and seriously unwelcome was how the Washington media remained, almost entirely without exception, docile to the point of self-parody, lacking all desire to seize on the obvious issues thrown up by the King Abdullah royal tour. 

This was noted in a critical comment over at MediaIte.com. See: "White House Press Corps Whiffs By Not Asking Biden About Jordan Harboring a Wanted Terrorist During King Abdubllah’s WH Visit" [Jackson Richman, July 19, 2021] 

The issues from which the intrepid reporters shy away as they have for years are dramatic, involving murdered American young women, a killer who boasts of the lives she destroyed, and brazen efforts to evade a long-standing treaty obligation. 

It's startling to us how wide a consensus there appears to be among reporters and their editors in America's news industry that Jordan's role in harboring the admitted bomber of a busy pizzeria filled with children (and targeted for that very reason) is untouchable. 

Turkish news report from 2016

We hoped right to the end that the Ahlam Tamimi case would get some degree of analytical attention in the public parts of July's unusually long and extensively reported Royal Hashemite state visit. But it got approximately none.

Those factors among others are behind an opinion piece Arnold Roth co-wrote with Dr Sharon S. Nazarian of the Anti-Defamation League that is published today on the Forward website ["Jordan has a public antisemitism problem. Why isn’t the U.S. holding them accountable?"].

It's hard for us (Frimet and Arnold Roth) to deny our perspective is subjective and affected by our personal experiences. We are the parents of one of the two American nationals murdered by Jordanian terrorist Ahlam Tamimi in the Sbarro massacre. Starting in 2012, we pressed for the fugitive to be charged under US law. And once that happened, we kept asking the US to explain to Jordan what it needed to do next; to extradite Tamimi to stand trial on those charges in Washington as the 1995 Jordan/US treaty requires.

This process has put us on a steep learning curve. 

Once Jordan - a country of 10 million inhabitants of whom almost none are Jewish - defied the US extradition request ["23-Mar-17: Looking for justice in Jordan, Jerusalem and Washington"], we began being treated to a long line of senior officials in three US administrations - Obama, Trump, Biden - practically falling over themselves to keep the whole mess under wraps. 

No less troubling, a strangely uncurious media failed - and continues to fail - to question what was going on. The failure is on show and damning right up until today. 

Being treated contemptibly by powerful officials, finding that all our questions go unanswered or get mechanical, thoroughly meaningless mantra-like responses has been for us a chilling experience.

Meanwhile we, a bereaved couple armed with few tanks and even fewer battleships, felt we were perceived, and still are, as some kind of hostile force. 

We recognize the principles of realpolitik that underlie the US-Jordan relationship. But what we understand a lot less well is why those charged with pretending they don't exist think that they alone can see the big picture that eludes grieving parents. We tried making that point in July as Jordan's king sailed through Washington's halls of power ["25-Jul-21: What we said in the media about King Abdullah's visit"]

But there's a flip side. The diplomatic seers seem blinded to a companion reality that is all too apparent to us and it's this: Jordan, despite the peace treaty with Israel, remains a hotbed of vicious Jew-hatred.

To be clear: Like most of our neighbors and friends, we want to see good and better relations with Jordan. It's a goal with which we totally identify. But justice is a powerful goal too. And it's clear to us Jordan has for decades been in the grip of a powerful hatred that will define the future unless its leadership takes determined steps to change direction. 

We have searched and we would welcome bring told how wrong we are. But there is simply no evidence that King Abdullah either intends those changes or has ever acknowledged the vast problem exists.

So we will be blunt. The ongoing Tamimi travesty illustrates Jordan's continued commitment to a culture of deep bigotry towards Jews. Its brazen breach of a strategic treaty with its most important ally and supporter is not a special case but an example of a much broader mind-set and systemic policy failure. 

Here are three more.

► Making serious trouble on the Temple Mount

Jordan secretly maintains its own “incitement force” on the Old City of Jerusalem's Temple Mount as part of a kingdom-driven policy of Israel-focused calculated violence and overt trouble-making. This emerges from a research paper published August 6, 2021 by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (known as the BESA Center), a think tank doing policy-relevant research on Middle Eastern and global strategic affairs and based at Israel's Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. 

In "Jordan’s “Incitement Force” on the Temple Mount", the author, Dr. Edy Cohen, an Israel intelligence service veteran, quotes Jordan's current Minister of Religions revealing that some 850 Jordanians are working at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on behalf of Jordan’s Ministry of Religion. 

Here's why this is startling. Jordan is an economic basket case that is the world's third-largest recipient of US foreign aid amounting to billions of dollars in US tax-payer-funded contributions each year. Yet it manages to find some NIS 56 million (roughly US $17.5 million) annually to keep this ugly strategy going, according to the BESA analysis. 

What underpins this madness is the little-publicized rivalry between Hashemite Jordan and Saudi Arabia which rules the desert kingdom from which the Hashemites were forced to flee a century ago. The Saudi/Jordanian rivalry centers on Jerusalem's sacred Islamic sites as a kind of counter-balance to the control the hold the Saudis have over Mecca and Medina as their 'guardians'. 

Jordan is known to fear moves that might end its term as guardian of the Jerusalem sites. The kingdom's minister of religion, Dr. Muhammad Khalaila, told a parliamentary committee that those 850 workers are registered as employees of Jordan's Ministry of Religion. Dr Cohen notes that this strikes an odd note for people tuned in to events in the Old City: 

"As anyone visiting the mosque can attest, no more than a few dozen Jordanian Waqf security guards are visible—not hundreds, and certainly nowhere near 850. So who are the others, where are they, and what are they doing? The most likely hypothesis is that those workers are used as mercenaries of a sort in times of crisis. Many significant gatherings have sprung up almost instantly on the Temple Mount in recent years whenever the site deteriorated into violence—during the recent Gaza war, during the magnetometer riots (July 2017), during the Mercy Gate crisis (March 2019), and in many other violent outbursts. The Jordanian workers might serve as a “rapid incitement force” that increases the volume of the event, stirs up the crowd, and stimulates it to conduct riots, or joins with the crowd to create a sense of “togetherness” against the “occupation.” If each of those Jordanians brings along one or two young men, in a short time thousands of rioters can be expected. This allows the organizers of the riots to put tremendous pressure on the Israeli authorities and render it difficult for them to calm the situation. The road from there to surrender is short."

Given the current fog of confusion and doubt that characterizes Israel's Jordan relations, the worrying questions these revelations throw up are unlikely to get any useful answers.

► Antisemitism in Jordanian Textbooks?

A carefully-argued report by the Anti Defamation League published four months ago (and almost totally ignored by the media) says that an ADL review of Jordanian middle school and high school textbooks finds the kingdom's textbooks fuel and foster antisemitism. Those books are official parts of today's educational curriculum.

The report's author, David Andrew Weinberg, ADL’s Washington Director for International Affairs, focuses his research and writing on antisemitic incitement in the Middle East. 

Among the messages injected into the minds of Jordanian school-children, he quotes these:

• "The Israelites who did not believe in Jesus, peace be upon him, wanted to be rid of him and eliminate his call, so they tried to kill him" but because of a divine intervention "they grabbed someone who resembled him from among the people, and they killed and crucified the lookalike..."
• A textbook that teaches “the historical roots of the Palestinian issue” presents an array of civilizations that inhabited the area but makes no mention of Jews or Israelites until the 19th century, at which point it notes the emergence of “Zionist greed in Palestine,” in league with imperialist powers.  
• The Zionist movement is defined as “a racist, settler political movement aimed at establishing a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine, founded on historical claims without basis in truth.” 
• Jewish links to Jerusalem are “founded on historical and religious claims without any actual grounds on which to base them”.
• Treachery is a characteristic Jewish trait,
• The deadly riots of 1929 were because of Jewish actions and religious claims. The riots “broke out because of the Zionists’ claim that the Buraq Wall [better known as the Kotel or Western Wall] led to "transgression on the Islamic holy sites, so they [the Arabs] attacked groups of participating Jews at the Buraq Wall”
• Totally inverting the 1969 attempted arson attack by a mentally-unwell Australia Christian visitor on an Islamic holy site on the Temple Mount, a Jordanian text says "Israelis had the audacity to burn the al-Aqsa Mosque". The unsuccessful arson attack is listed under "Israeli Occupation assaults on the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque". 
• It teaches that current Israeli archeological sites “seek to link everything discovered to fake Talmudic narratives... to claim that they have extended historical roots in Jerusalem and Palestine” and therefore to “forge historical facts.” 
• Israeli excavations in Jerusalem "intentionally aim" to harm the Arab economy and to “secure the Jewish settlers who come to Jerusalem to practice their Talmudic rituals.”  
• Treason and the breaking of pacts are among the characteristics of the Jews and the hypocrites.

There's a special irony in how the breaking of pacts is ascribed to Jews. Since March 2017, it has been Jordan itself ["26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions"] that spins a disingenuous tale about a narrow and highly technical flaw in the way its 1995 extradition treaty with the US. That alleged flaw is the sole basis on which Jordan fails to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, who confesses to the the bombing massacre of the Sbarro pizzeria where our daughter's life ended. Jordan argues it isn't a breach at all because the treaty was never ratified, We now hold documentary proof that that this is untrue. 

The US has very quietly continued since 2017 to say the treaty is valid and in force. Throughout the years since then, it has incomprehensibly failed to make a single public call for Jordan to honor it.

The author of the ADL report in a summing up that to us sounds remarkably restrained says that

if Jordan keeps publishing official textbooks that demonize Israel, Jews, and Judaism in such a manner, the next generation may be less likely to support this relationship, nor the desirability of peace with Israel more generally. 

► Jordan is a hotbed of seriously antisemitic views. What if anything is its government doing to change that?

Some findings again from the ADL. No one comes close to its statistics-driven insights into the current state of antisemitic sentiment worldwide and the dynamics behind that make it possible. And while it's certainly an issue that deserves careful thought and wide attention, it's the Jordan aspect that we feel the need to highlight here and now.

On a published index they call the ADL GLOBAL 100: AN INDEX OF ANTI-SEMITISM®, the ADL's researchers ascribe a score to most of the world's countries. Their methodology is laid out in clear terms. It's a respected analysis.

Jordan, the last time the study was done there in 2014, weighs in with an index score of 81%. This isn't something to ignore. For comparison purposes, that puts Jordanians - relative to other Muslim and Arab countries - as more antisemitic than Morocco, Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran. 

If you don't find this startling, you might not realize how much support Jordan gets in Washington.

Jordanians as a society are also substantially more antisemitic than the Middle East and North African countries taken as a whole (average index score of 74%). 

And Jordanians are between two and three times more antisemitic than (ranking them in order from most antisemitic to least) Eastern Europe, then Sub-Saharan Africa, then Asia as a whole, then the Americas and finally Oceania.

This blog post isn't meant to encourage hatred or criticism of Jordan or Jordanians. 

Source

But when its ruler spends most of the month of July traveling around the United States, being received with uncommon courtesy and often with striking enthusiasm by political leaders at the very highest level - and certainly including America's Jewish leaders - we wish they would pause before they launch into gushing praise. Something is seriously wrong with the current reality.

They could and should ask the man who owns and runs the Hashemite Kingdom. In our words:

Your Majesty, is this the way to bring peace? When will you acknowledge publicly that the devotion to hatred and violent extremism (by which we of course mean terrorism) among your subjects and institutions at every level of the society over which you preside is an embarrassment and a serious impediment to everything your friends want to help you achieve?

Ahlam Tamimi needs to be extradited now as the treaty made by the father of today's king with his American allies in 1995 demands. 

Changing course, handing her over to US law enforcement without further unconscionable delay, will be one step, but an important one, in the direction of addressing issues that sadly and avoidably push peace further away rather than draw it closer.

28-Jul-20: How do Jordanians view the efforts to bring the Sbarro bomber to justice?

Triumphant Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi in a May 2020 video clip published
(in Arabic) by Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, Turkey's national 

public broadcaster [Image Source]

It doesn't matter which Arab publication carried the article below. Or the identity or credentials of the person who wrote it. Or that person's religious, ideological or political alignment.

Those are among the lesser aspects that ought to be on people's minds as they consider its contents.

We have read tens of such articles emanating mostly from Jordan but also from other parts of the Arab world since May 2020. (Some of them are here: "14-May-20: In Jordan, they stand with confessed bomber Tamimi. And they're worried...")

That's when the Arab world awoke to the reality that the US government has Jordan-centric sanctions on its mind and is serious about them. (See "05-May-20: From Congress, concern about how Jordanians deal with the fugitive terrorist in their midst")

Some years ago, we started scanning online Arabic-language news media daily with the help of online translation tools like Bing and Google Translate. In all that time, we have not uncovered even a single published article dealing with the cold-blooded 2001 bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria because of the children inside that criticizes the bomber.

And if we're wrong and such articles exist, please send us a link or a copy. Trust us, we will be glad to give it all the prominence it deserves.

Ahlam Tamimi is the central figure in the pizzeria bombing horror. A Jordanian student who was 21 when she selected the crowded fast food shop as her target for her Hamas superiors, she personally planted the bomb - a human being with an explosives-laden guitar case on his back that included a large quantity of nails for their flesh-ripping feature - at the central Jerusalem site, a pizzeria of the US-based Sbarro chain.

Today Tamimi is a fugitive from US justice. There's a $5 million State Department reward for her capture and conviction on US Federal charges. In January 2020, Fox News called her the most wanted female fugitive in the world.

Tamimi, a member of an ultra-violent, publicity-craving clan of the same name ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"], has emerged as an Arab icon, a genuine pan-Arab celebrity who for nearly five years was the presenter of her own weekly TV show devoted to showcasing her views about terror (she's strongly in favor) and the need to stand in support of terror directed at Israelis. Her show, "Breezes of the Free", was beamed by satellite to homes throughout the world - wherever Arabic-speaking audiences could be found, which is everywhere.

The article below appeared about a month ago. Published in Arabic (and the trannslation into English is ours and far from perfect), it's not special and not so different from numerous others. In fact, it's very much like most of them and that's what's so chilling. Our comments are interspersed in the text.

What is behind American pressure on Jordan?
اقرأ المزيد من اليوم الثامن | Taj Al-Din Abdel-Haq
Al-Youm 8 | Friday 26 June 2020

If it is proven that American threats to impose sanctions on Jordan, against the background of demanding the extradition of the Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin, Ahlam Al-Tamimi, accused of a bombing in Jerusalem in 2001 that caused the deaths of two Americans, turn out to be true, we will be facing a precedent in American-Jordanian relations we have not witnessed before.

Our comment: From the outset let it be clear. While the focus here is a woman who confesses publicly and repeatedly to bombing a restaurant filled with children, and who faces the likelihood of a lifetime sentence if she is ever put on trial in Washington DC, the author of this op ed is concerned with what this says about the view the United States has of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The fugitive killer and what she did raises not a single word of criticism in what follows. There is a victim in this narrative according to the pundit who write this. That victim is Jordan. 

Any stage of such threats, even during American preparations for the second Gulf War in 1990, and then during the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 when Jordan adopted a position contrary to that of many countries in the region, especially those traditionally allied to the US.

Our comment: The mention of Iraq and the Gulf War ought to have triggered a comment about how Iraq's late dictator Saddam Hussein Altakriti was viewed by Jordanians. Here's a taste: "If the topic of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq comes up in Jordan, Jordanians will usually describe the late leader as a "dahiyyeh" (victim). In the collective mind of the Jordanian street, Hussein was both omnipotent and tragically sympathetic—the model for Arab development and governmental beneficence, while also the tragic hero of a Western plot..." ["Saddam Hussein's "Rosy" Legacy in Jordan", The National Interest, August 2014] And years before that, this: "Jordan has carefully nurtured a reputation as the most consistently pro-Western Arab state. Thus, it came as a shock to many to find most Jordanians taking the side of President Saddam Hussein in the gulf crisis, and Western leaders are disturbed by King Hussein's reluctance to join forces against the Iraqi ruler." ["Jordan and the Gulf Crisis", Foreign Affairs, Winter 1990/1991]  

The American demand from Jordan this time is greater than its capacity. It is impossible to comply with it, even if that means paying the price of the annual economic and military aid that Jordan receives from the United States directly or from countries that see the relationship between Washington and Amman as a factor that encourages the providing of other aid and grants. We mention here such countries as Japan, South Korea, some European countries that link their international aid to indirect US blessing.

Our comment: US economic and military aid to Jordan is quite a tale. A June 2020 Congressional Research Service monograph [here] says "The United States has provided economic and military aid to Jordan since 1951 and 1957, respectively. Total bilateral U.S. aid (overseen by the Departments of State and Defense) to Jordan through FY2018 amounted to approximately $22 billion... [and] has nearly quadrupled in historical terms over the last 15 years." Based on 2020 data, Jordan is the world's third-largest recipient of US aid. The US is Jordan's largest provider of aid - by far.

From the political point of view, America's request of Jordan is a car bomb request.

Our comment: What he calls a 'car bomb' is a formal request that Jordan hands over a terrorist as required under a strategically-important treaty signed into effect by Jordan's King Hussein, the father of the present king, and the Clinton Administration in 1995. Watch now as a bilateral, mutual obligation that has been in force for the past 25 years and that, according to the State Department, is still certainly in force is deformed into what he absurdly calls a 'car bomb'. 

The first element of that bombing is that it affects a Jordanian citizen. Jordanian law does not allow - as is the case with the laws of many countries of the world - extradition to another country not to mention that there is no extradition agreement between Washington and Amman.

Our comment: Does not allow extradition? Really? Jordan, according to its own data, has signed mutually binding extradition agreements with multiple Arab states as well as (among others) with Australia, Ukraine, France, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan as well as the United States. As for "there is no extradition agreement between Washington and Amman", that's both untrue and misleading. First and most importantly, the US State Department's authoritative Treaties in Force [online here] lists the treaty with Jordan as current and in effect. It's described on page 244 where this text appears: "Extradition treaty. Signed at Washington March 28, 1995. Entered into force July 29, 1995."] The only semi-positive thing that can be said about the invented claim that there's no US/Jordan extradition treaty is that it's consistent with something Jordan's foreign minister Ayman H. Safadi said for the record last year: "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." Easy to say, especially to a home-town crowd who want to hear it, but why does no reporter or analyst challenge the Jordanian official on this invention? It's one of many puzzles in the Tamimi Extradition saga.

Even if we accept America's characterization and consider Ahlam al-Tamimi a criminal, the United States is addressing crimes that occurred on non-American soil. In the “Tamimi” case involving a bombing in Jerusalem, it [?] issued a court ruling and she was deported to Jordan in a prisoner exchange deal with Israel.

Our comment: Tamimi being a criminal is hardly an American characterization. The woman herself openly, repeatedly, proudly confesses to the crime, as she did to an Israeli court in 2003, with a broad smile on her face. But if the writer - who plainly knows little about the laws of the United States and of Jordan - sees himself as a legal expert, someone should explain to him how that works. Under US law, the US can and must pursue a terrorist where the act of terror was executed outside the territory of the US and where a US national was killed: See 18 U.S. Code § 2332a. Making big bold statements with no factual basis certainly works in some places, and - in the form of speeches and op ed articles - they are very much part of the current Arab discourse about the Tamimi extradition. What puzzles us is - where are the many Western journalists who report from Amman? And what frightens them?   

The most dangerous thing is that the American request contains a threat to Jordanian national unity. Extraditing Al-Tamimi may be used to detonate internal disputes in Jordan, threatening its spirit of citizenship and the country's stability, re-invigorating a dormant fitna, to divide the social component on the basis of origins and principles, which is a kind of sedition that Jordan greatly strives to eradicate...

Our comment: No mention of justice, of moral repugnance, of the stain of Jordan harboring, shielding, celebrating a woman famous only because of the children she blew up. The real danger says our expert, "the most dangerous thing", is the threat to "Jordan's national unity". That's shameful. Jordan claims to be a leading player in the war against terrorism. Its ruler makes speeches about this routinely. For instance (from among many): "King Abdullah II of Jordan said Sunday that Jordan will continue the fight against terrorism... In a meeting of the national policies council, the king said Jordan will fight the outlaws without any mercy and with all resolves and strengths.. The king stressed on the need to fight radical ideology and extremism, paying tribute to the efforts of the security forces." ["Jordan's king vows to continue fighting against terrorism", August 12, 2018, Xinhuanet] So either Tamimi, who confesses gleefully to mounting a bomb attack on a pizzeria and the children inside, is not a terrorist. Or else Jordan, when it talks about fighting terrorism, is working from a definition that makes no sense. Either way, neither its king nor the writer of the self-pitying column on which we're commenting should be believed. 

American economic sanctions do not make life easy for a country that suffers from a lack of resources, debt burden, living crises, and unemployment that it has no capacity to face and to deal with their effects.

Pressure of this kind is not an abstract economic crisis but a political crisis as well. The stressful living conditions in Jordan are a thunderbolt triggering various political and social crises. Most probably, this is the [Trojan] “horse” of the expected American pressure on Jordan, in order to force it to surrender Ahlam Al-Tamimi - making it nothing more than an excuse to achieve other goals.

Our comment: Calling on a treaty partner and beneficiary of lavish foreign aid to live up to its legal obligations might not be palatable or easy, especially when the terrorist at the heart of the request has wide Jordanian support and adoration. That doesn't make the request a Trojan horse or an attempt to bring Jordan to its knees.

Had this excuse been true, Washington could have originally objected to the prisoner exchange agreement between Jordan and Israel, according to which the Jordanian prisoner was freed and released. This would have been easier and more secure, especially since the United States has a presence [embassy?] in Tel Aviv that allows it to object to any agreements that might affect American interests.

Our comment: A prisoner exchange agreement between Israel and Jordan? He presumably means the Hamas deal with Israel for the freedom of Gilad Shalit, a hostage held illegally and in breach of the laws of war by Hamas for more than five years. Should the Americans have objected to that agreement on the basis that it affects American interests? Yes. For what it's worth, the US ambassador to Israel told us personally years after the fact that his office did object before the Shalit Deal was done, and had Tamimi in mind when they did. 

If we exclude this pretext from the reckoning, the Jordanian position regarding the American project known as the Deal of the Century about which Jordan was clear and serious in rejecting, and even threatening to confront it, remains before us.

Our comment: Does the treaty obligation to hand over Tamimi to US law enforcement have anything to do with the Arab obsession with a deal of the century? Did that deal even exist when Jordan's highest court ruled that the 1995 treaty with the US was unenforceable and had been invalid and unenforceable since the day it was signed? No and no. 

The US realizes Jordan has a central role in any political settlement it seeks to impose in the region. In addition to the special historical dimensions that linked Jordan to the Palestinian issue, the geographical dimension that links the Jordanian entity to the occupied Palestinian lands, and the demographic dimension represented by Jordan hosting millions of internally displaced and Palestinian refugees, there is a political reality that cannot be overcome and the imposition of a political settlement on it.

Our comment: It's unhelpful to see a discussion about justice get subverted by claims about "political reality". But if they're going to do that, let the Jordanians be open on the matter. Every rational person knows handing Tamimi over to American justice is a thorny political issue for them. They don't see her as a terrorist; she's one of their national icons. All the nonsense talk about Jordan never extraditing simply exposes some of Jordan's most important officials as dishonorable liars. If their view of political expediency is the reason they endanger their relations - and the indispensable aid they get from generous US taxpayers - with the US, then let that be the basis of the discussion. The issues would be a lot clearer to everyone. And so would the obvious solution. 

Any settlement imposed on Jordan by the US is actually closer to political suicide. It may end up destabilizing the Jordanian entity from the ground up because economic or political pressure - aimed at forcing it to accept the draft Deal of the Century, or silence Israel’s plans to annex the Jordan Valley and Israeli settlements, and accept Jerusalem as the capital Israel - will necessarily eliminate all elements of the Jordanian role in any settlement.

Our comment: If it's political suicide for Jordan to arrest and extradite the confessed terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, isn't that a good reason for the US Congress and Administration to critically review the basis of American financial and military support of the Jordanian government? We think it does. Let Americans decide if they want to be the backstop for the Jordanian passion for terror and loathsome bigotry.

In addition, it will empty Hashemite jurisdiction over Islamic and Christian holy sites in the Holy City from any real content. Jordan today, in the face of unprecedented pressures threatening its existence, is working to resist the threats to its central role in the region.

Our comment: Unbelievably, it may be true that Jordan's "central role in the region" and its "jurisdiction" over holy sites in Jerusalem are threatened by the notion that its government is obliged to hand the terrorist over for trial. We're glad the statement is out there for non-Jordanians to think about. In fact, we hope someone does a better job of turning this piece of his into English and getting it some real exposure - not because it's a special article but quite the opposite - because there are so many like it in the Arabic-language media. This may also be a good moment to mention how the "moderate" Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is rated by the most authoritative experts in the field as deeply antisemitic. In a country in which the number of Jewish residents making their home is and always has been zero, its population was rated as 81% antisemitic. (Among Jordanians aged 50 and up, the number was 88%. Among all Jordanian males, it was 86%.) For comparison, the average across the Middle East and North African (“MENA”) region was a shocking 74 percent. (For comparison: Eastern Europe 34%; Western Europe 24%; Sub-Saharan Africa 23%; Asia 22%; The Americas 19%) Jordan's antisemitism rating - are any reporters paying attention? - makes it one the world's top ten most antisemitic countries. This counts for something.

Although the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has faced many serious challenges in the past, this time it faces a challenge by a great power that, in the eyes of many, was the umbrella that protected Jordan, preserved its role, and secured its stability in front of the various challenges it faced or those that passed through the region.

Our comment: This self-pitying Arabic op ed, bewailing ahead of time the fate of Jordan (which despite the dramatic assessment remains intact and undamaged so far at least) at the hands of its "umbrella", is morally pathetic - and also deeply revealing. Lacking even a single word of reflection on what it means for an entire society - from the royal palace of its majestic ruler to its lowliest field worker - to be in thrall to a woman who radiates pride and happiness at the thought of the children she murdered, this article is sadly consistent with every other op ed we have seen about the thwarted Tamimi extradition in the Arabic-language media. Jordan has no moral compass worth speaking of, and the same ought to be said for those who stand with it and against the extradition of Tamimi.

And finally (this is us again, Frimet and Arnold Roth):

We're saying these things because we want to see justice done, And because we know it will only be done when the American authorities raise their voices. There's no intent on our part to channel criticism at the Jordanians for any reason other than the appalling way they stand in solidarity with a mass murdering savage and against their most important ally.

There's no politics in the usual sense involved. And frankly, we think people who stand firmly on the side of the Arabs or the Muslims or the Jordanians or the Palestinians ought to see how demeaning it is to their cause and how damaging to their own value systems that they regard Ahlam Tamimi, the most wanted female terrorist in the world, as their hero.

03-Dec-19: Tuesday morning on Israel's Jordan border

Israeli visitors undergo inspection by Jordanian border officials
this morning. Image Source: David Ben-Zion, Israel Hayom

Another instance today of the ugly petty bigotry that characterizes a great deal of the daily contact Israelis have with Jordan: 

Hamodia | Jordan to Israeli Deputy Mayors: No Kippot, Tzitzis Allowed | Dov Benovadia | Tuesday, December 3, 2019
A large group of Israeli deputy mayors, mostly from religious and chareidi communities, were prevented from entering Jordan Tuesday morning – because some were wearing tzitzis. Entry would not be allowed until the tzitzis were removed, the members of the group were told. The Foreign Ministry said it was “examining” the incident.
The incident occurred at about 7:30 a.m., Yisrael Hayom reported, when the group gathered at the crossing point into Jordan at the border between Israel and Jordan east of Eilat. On the Jordanian side of the Gulf of Eilat is the city of Aqaba, with the Israeli group intending to visit Petra. Members of the delegation had been told in advance to wear hats or caps to hide their kippot – for security purposes, of course – but were shocked to discover that they were refused entry because some were wearing tzitzis.
The presence of the tzitzis set off the Jordanian security guards, witnesses told the newspaper. The guards forced all members of the group to go through a security check three times, and also forced all of them to remove their clothing. “They did this to all of us, even those who could not be suspected of wearing tzitzis – there were deputy mayors from Abu Ghosh and other Arab towns here,” one member of the delegation said. “The feeling was one of abuse and an effort to make us suffer. It appeared to be a strongly anti-Semitic act. All the other groups – Ukranians, Koreans, and more – went in without even one security check.
“There is supposed to be a peace agreement with Jordan, but I know of no other country where Jews are treated like this for their religious practices,” the delegation member told the newspaper. “The demand that we take off tzitzis in order to enter Jordan is nothing less than anti-Semitic, and another sign of how real the ‘peace’ we have with them is. I can only imagine how the Israeli Foreign Ministry would fall all over itself apologizing if something was done that was perceived to be anti-Christian or anti-Muslim,” he added.

And this tweet:

תקרית במעבר ירדן - עשרות סגני ראשי ערים דתיים וחרדים התבקשו להוריד ציציות וכיפות כדי להיכנס למדינה, לאחר שסירבו בתוקף - הירדנים אסרו את כניסתם. pic.twitter.com/DFWrGRMKap

— איציק אוחנה (@ok125125) December 3, 2019

Our translation:

An incident at the crossing with Jordan: Tens of religious and Haredi deputy mayors were asked to remove their tzitziyot [ritual fringes prescribed by halacha - Jewish religious law] and their kippot in order to enter Jordan. They refused heatedly and the Jordanians prohibited their entry. Itzik Ohana.

And this from Israel Hayom:

For security reasons, they had agreed to replace their skullcaps with hats for the duration of the visit, but when they arrived at the Jordanian side of the border, they were refused entry over the fact that some of them were wearing a tzitzit – the specially knotted ritual fringes – under their clothes...
"During the first security check, we were told [by Jordanian border security] to take off our kippot and put hats on instead," Givatayim Deputy Mayor Moshe Goldstein told Israel Hayom. "When the security screening was over, they stop us again because they realized some in the group were wearing a tzitzit. They even took aside the women and made then undress." "After the second inspection, they still weren't pleased and asked the entire group to wait for a third security screening. At this point, our guide said that they [border security] contacted Amman for approval and that we had to sign something saying we were only going to visit Petra and nothing else.
"At that point, we just decided to go back to Eilat. The atmosphere was harsh and alienating and our religious friends were greatly offended," he said.
The fact that the group was denied entry and the multiple security screenings are especially odd given that the tzitzit is not a visible religious garment. According to Goldstein, the group included Arab deputy mayors as well. "The whole thing just felt like harassment. It felt like anti-Semitism."
David Ben-Zion, deputy head of the Samaria Regional Council, said, "The whole experience was humiliating – it felt like a national humiliation. Even the secular members of the group were furious about it," he said.

05-Nov-17: "Watching the Moon at Night", the documentary film Swedish TV has suppressed, is being screened in Israel

Video grab from "Watching the Moon at Night"

We have written about “Watching the Moon at Night” several times (the links are listed at the foot of this post) in the last two years.

It's a fine, made-for-TV documentary film the leading US Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum described as “an intellectually informative, visually compelling, emotionally moving and highly disturbing exploration of the phenomena of terrorism in our time”. 

The film's co-director, the acclaimed Swedish film-maker Bo Persson, will be the special guest at two Israeli screenings during November. 

Tel Aviv Cinematheque: Wednesday November 8, 2017 - screening at 9:00 pm in Cinema 4 | The Tel Aviv Cinematheque is at Shprinzak 2, Tel Aviv | Purchasing tickets online via the Tel Aviv Cinematheque online booking screen is not the simplest process (and seems not to be working at all right now). Call the box office on 03-606-0800 or email them at service@cinema.co.il

Jerusalem Cinematheque: Monday November 13, 2017 - screening at 7:00 pm | The Jerusalem Cinematheque is at Derech Hevron 11, Jerusalem | To purchase tickets online, click here | Tickets can also be bought by phone on 02-565-4333, or dial *9377 | They offer this email address: contact@jer-cin.org.il

The film was shown last year in the European Parliament and the Swedish parliament, at many international film festivals and in front of audiences in the United States and Europe. But it won't be shown to Swedish television viewers because of some outrageous politically-motivated manipulation.

Marianne Ahrne, a prominent writer, film director and observer of Sweden´s cultural life, wrote last month ["Television, terror and Swedish funding"] about the deeply disturbing fate of Persson’s film:

“I approved the funding of their film while working as a commissioner at the Swedish Film Institute. Since then, I have followed its destiny, seeing it praised at festivals and by several of the foremost global experts in the fields that it tackles - terrorism and anti-Semitism. But Sveriges Television (SVT), our country’s national public TV broadcaster, has, for some obscure reason and despite the fact it originally signed on to co-produce it, refused to screen it. And continues to refuse.”

It doesn't take much effort (we wrote a while back) for people with a deep respect for the open sharing and discussion of important ideas to share her fury.

“What's at work here is a brazen betrayal of principles. Sveriges Television, Sweden's dominant television network, is thwarting - silencing is a better word - the screening of an important, thoughtful film that happens to have been created by some of the most admirable minds at work in that country. The scandal is hardly a secret but it has gotten scant media attention.”

The film-makers [Image Source]

Filmed in six countries, "Watching the Moon at Night" juxtaposes contemporary terrorism, anti-Semitism and the experiences of their victims with the articulate – and often very moving – views of noted experts in these fields. Its exam­in­at­ion of these powerful themes goes far beyond the stereotypes. 

Persson and his creative partner Joanna Helander co-directed the film which was produced by Kino Koszyk HB with support from Sweden’s Film i Väst and the Swedish Film Institute.

The late French writer and philosopher André Glucksmann, the late historian of anti-Semitism, Robert S. Wistrich, and the eminent historian Walter Laqueur, who left his native Breslau for Palestine on the day before Kristallnacht 1938 and is one of the inspirations behind the production, are among the film’s pre-eminent on-screen commentators. Arnold Roth, whose daughter was murdered in the Hamas attack on the Jerusalem Sbarro in 2001, and Dan Alon, one of the surviving Israeli athletes from the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, are important voices in the film.

It also incorporates personal experiences of terror victims from Algeria, Spain, France, Moscow, Israel, New York, Colombia, Munich, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Creative camerawork, inspiring music and Polish Nobel laureate Wislawa Szymborska, who reads her own poetry in the film all add to the “personal and emotional” perspective, as Agnieszka Holland, chair of the European Film Academy, described it. She called it a production that “shows the common ground shared by victims the world over and the similarities between the perpetrators. In the film, there is no simplifying thesis, no ‘political correctness’… The film truly makes you think.”

Following the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem film screenings, Bo Persson will lead a discussion (in English) on the issues raised by the production and its audience.

You can see the film's trailer here. There is additional info and several reviews at the film's official website. For past posts of ours, see

• 07-Sep-17: A deplorable Swedish reaction when terror intersects with antisemitism
• 22-Jul-16: Heavy-handed Swedish efforts to silence an important documentary on terrorism and antisemitism
• 21-Jun-16: An important documentary film on terrorism and antisemitism and the Swedish effort to silence it
• 28-Mar-16: Upcoming premiere screenings (NYC, Washington) of an important documentary on terrorism and antisemitism
• 13-Jan-15: Terrorism: watching its victims, trying to understand their experiences

22-Jul-16: Heavy-handed Swedish efforts to silence an important documentary on terrorism and antisemitism

In "Watching the Moon at Night", Clara Rojas, freed from FARC 
captivity in Colombia, describes her years of suffering at the hands 
of the terrorists

A really fine piece of documentary cinema made by acclaimed Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander was recently screened in the European Parliament. 

Prior to that it had been shown in the Swedish parliament, at a prestigious list of international film festivals and in front of selected private audiences in the United States and Europe.

Called "Watching the Moon at Night", the 90-minute-long documentary addresses in a lyrical and insightful way the intertwined issues of terrorism and antisemitism. (There's a trailer here.)

We don't do this often but 

we are asking readers (for the second time) to please sign an important and meaningful petition that relates to what is being done to the film and its authore. You can read more and sign on the GoPetitions site. We blogged about it in previous posts: "13-Jan-15: Terrorism: watching its victims, trying to understand their experiences" and "28-Mar-16: Upcoming premiere screenings (NYC, Washington) of an important documentary on terrorism and antisemitism".

We know from the directors that the project was inspired by some of the world's most eminent authorities in those two fields. They included Walter Laqueur, and the late André Glucksmann and the late Robert S. Wistrich. 

What distinguishes it from similar-seeming undertakings is the sensitive and enlightening role it gives to the voices of the victims. They (and we are in it) speak, in apolitical terms, of awful personal experiences of terror in a variety of places including Algeria, Spain, France, Moscow, Israel, New York, Colombia, Munich, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

This film began as a co-production of the producers Kino Koszyk HB; Film i Väst, a regional Swedish film fund; and Sveriges Television; along with important support from the Swedish Film Institute.

Subsequently, Sveriges Television officials shockingly refused to allow it to be screened on TV in its home country.

Several reports in the mainstream Swedish and Danish media in the wake of that decision refer to political correctness and to a concern about a backlash (for showing a television documentary!) from certain corners. How hard to guess which? Not very.

Prominent Swedish commentators have called for this unconscionable decision to be reversed. In these fraught and dangerous times, terrorism and antisemitism threaten the institutions of democracy everywhere. Attempting to hide this reality and distorting the public debate is the worst way to confront these threats when we should instead stand up for human rights and European values.

From "Watching the Moon at Night"

We are joining the call by distinguished Scandinavians and a growing circle of concerned Europeans to require the management of Sveriges Television to reverse its gagging of this important film, and to immediately schedule it for the widest possible television exposure in Sweden.

The silencing of this fine film (full disclosure: as mentioned above, we play a small role in it, testifying to our experience) is an outrageous abuse of bureaucratic power, an act of thuggery dictated by unspoken and shameful motivations.

There's a petition calling for the film to be shown in Sweden and drawing attention to the politically-aligned decision to silence the voice of the film's makers. If you did not already respond to our earlier request, please now go to the GoPetitions site and sign.

And please help us get the word out. (We are working on a longer piece. Hopefully we will get it out soon.)

21-Jun-16: An important documentary film on terrorism and antisemitism and the Swedish effort to silence it

In "Watching the Moon at Night", Clara Rojas, freed from FARC captivity,
describes her years of suffering at the hands of the terrorists

A really fine piece of documentary cinema made by acclaimed Swedish filmmakers Bo Persson and Joanna Helander is about to be screened in the European Parliament.

Prior to that it had been shown in the Swedish parliament, at a prestigious list of international film festivals and before selected private audiences in the United States and Europe.

Called "Watching the Moon at Night", the 90-minute-long documentary addresses in a lyrical and insightful way the intertwined issues of terrorism and antisemitism. (There's a trailer here.)

We don't do this often but we are asking readers (for the second time) to please sign an important and meaningful petition that relates to what is being done to the film and its authore. You can read more and sign on the GoPetitions site.

We blogged about it in previous posts: "13-Jan-15: Terrorism: watching its victims, trying to understand their experiences" and "28-Mar-16: Upcoming premiere screenings (NYC, Washington) of an important documentary on terrorism and antisemitism".

We know from the directors that the project was inspired by some of the world's most eminent authorities in those two fields. They included Walter Laqueur, and the late André Glucksmann and the late Robert S. Wistrich. What distinguishes it from similar-seeming undertakings is the sensitive and enlightening role it gives to the voices of the victims. They (and we are in it) speak, in apolitical terms, of awful personal experiences of terror in a variety of places including Algeria, Spain, France, Moscow, Israel, New York, Colombia, Munich, Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

This film began as a co-production of the producers Kino Koszyk HB; Film i Väst, a regional Swedish film fund; and Sveriges Television with important support from the Swedish Film Institute.

Subsequently, Sveriges Television officials shockingly refused to allow it to be screened on TV in its home country. Several reports in the mainstream Swedish and Danish media in the wake of that decision refer to political correctness and to a concern about a backlash (for showing a television documenary!) from certain corners.

Prominent Swedish commentators have called for this awful decision to be reversed. In these fraught and dangerous times, terrorism and antisemitism threaten the institutions of democracy everywhere. Attempting to hide this reality and distorting the public debate is the worst way to confront these threats when we should instead stand up for human rights and European values.

From "Watching the Moon at Night"

We are joining the call by distinguished Scandinavians and a growing circle of concerned Europeans to require the management of Sveriges Television to reverse its gagging of this important film, and to immediately schedule it for the widest possible television exposure in Sweden.

The silencing of this fine film (full disclosure: as mentioned above, we play a small role in it, testifying to our experience) is an outrageous abuse of bureaucratic power, an act of thuggery dictated by unspoken and shameful motivations.

There's a petition calling for the film to be shown in Sweden and drawing attention to the politically-aligned decision to silence the voice of the film's makers. Please now go to the GoPetitions site and sign.

And please help us get the word out. (We are working on a longer piece. Hopefully we will get it out soon.)

01-May-16: Hatred of the Jews - and the Leftist Problem

A thinking person is likely to learn a great deal from understanding
the impact made on various populations, some of them Arab (as in this 2001
news image of celebrations in Lebanon) and others Americana or British,
by the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria

National Review currently features a useful and well-framed short essay ["Israel and the Jewish diaspora make progressive pieties look silly", April 29, 2016] by Kevin D. Williamson. The journal's roving correspondent, he covers "the intersection of economics, culture, and politics". His bio says he also serves as director of the William F. Buckley Jr. Fellowship in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.

The subtitle of this highly recommended piece gets right down to the question Williamson addresses: "Why does the Left hate the Jews?"

Hatred of that sort is, of course, hardly news. But we seem to be at one of those moments (again) where, as it periodically does, it's making waves. 

Williamson is writing against a background in which a recent Lord Mayor of London, a man with his own pungent record of public antisemitic statements, has been suspended by his party for things he said (that involved bracketing Zionism and Hitler) while speaking up for a British Labor MP who had suggested the conflict in the Middle East could be solved by liquidating Israel and getting the Jews to re-settle, voluntarily or not, in the United States. The party leader, playing the role of disciplinarian, is himself a controversial figure who has famously called the blood-lusting Jew-hating jihadists of Hamas and Hezbollah his "friends". There's not much sign he especially wants to call these Israel-bashers to order.

The Williamson piece is short and well-crafted. We hope it gets plenty of pass-along attention. Here are two brief extracts:

The Israeli Jews commit the double crime of insisting upon being Jews and refusing to be sacrificial victims. They were okay, in the Left’s estimate, for about five minutes, back when Israel’s future was assumed to be one of low-impact kibbutz socialism. History went in a different direction, and today Israel has one of the world’s most sophisticated economies. For the Jew-hater, this is maddening: Throw the Jews out of Spain, and they thrive abroad. Send them to the poorest slums in New York, and those slums stop being slums. Keep them out of the Ivy League and watch NYU become a world-class institution inspired by men such as Jonas Salk, son of largely uneducated Polish immigrants. Put the Jewish state in a desert wasteland and watch it bloom, first with produce and then with technology. Israel today has more companies listed on NASDAQ than any other country except the United States and China. The economy under Palestinian management? Olives and handicrafts, and a GDP per capita that barely exceeds that of Sudan.

Mangled baby carriages removed from the scene of the Sbarro
human-bomb attack, August 9, 2001

And this, which touches on an aspect where we have an uncommon degree of familiarity: 

The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done. And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.

It's an uncomfortably toxic image he conjures up, of courageous Islamist resistance fighters launching a middle-of-the-day school-holidays armed attack on a pizzeria filled with Zionistic children and young mothers with Jewish babies. 

But while invoking the Battle of Sbarro will sound to some like a cynical, perhaps over the top, slap at the murderous bigotry of Hamas and its friends (who, by his own admission, include Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the UK's second-largest political party), there are prominent individuals who actually believe in it with genteel sincerity and religious conviction, and they don't all live in the Islamic world.

An example, from among numerous candidates, and one that especially sticks in our craw, is a man counted among the most influential figures in the world of American Christian public affairs, James M. Wall. An ordained minister in the United Methodist Church and a laureate of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, he served for decades as editor, president and a senior contributor to Christian Century magazine, "the flagship magazine of U.S. mainline Protestantism" [source]. He's evidently still contributing there. The reverend Mr Wall got our attention ["23-Aug-12: Theology and sociopaths" and "16-Dec-14: Anti-semites, lone-wolves, killers of school-children, and the people who appreciate and understand them"] with an essay romanticizing the principal engineer of the Sbarro massacre, the killer of our daughter Malki. 

In focusing his Christian charity on the notorious 2011 Shalit Deal in which 1,027 terrorists, most of them convicted of homicide, were released in a massive Israeli capitulation to Hamas extortion, Mr Wall was moved to address the sad way in which

The Western public saw and read virtually nothing about the 477 Palestinians who were released from Israeli prisons [in phase 1 of the deal], except for those stories that reminded the public that many of the prisoners, to use the term so popular among Israeli politicians, had “blood on their hands”. This bias against Palestinians was so blatant that Jewish activist Noam Chomsky was moved to accuse the media of treating the released Palestinian prisoners as “unpeople”. It is time to tell their stories, and to do so without apology. [The Rev. Mr. Wall's blog, October 29, 2011]

To understand why people with James M. Wall's mindset, or for that matter the political views of certain British public figures now in the news, find apologies superfluous, we suggest to go back and read once again the subtitle of Kevin D. Williamson's short National Review essay.