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.

13-Apr-13: Struggling to keep a daughter's memory alive

Yom Hazikaron 2012 at the Kotel [Image Source]

Algemeiner published this Yom Hazikaron tribute on Friday, written by Frimet Roth.

After a child’s murder, a search for justice

FRIMET ROTH

It has been a struggle to keep my daughter’s memory alive. Israeli society prefers to forget terror attacks and forge ahead. Foreign journalists marvel at the haste with which every trace of carnage left at a site is removed; at the quick return of traffic and normality. But for 24 hours each year, we lift the lid on our grief and let the tears flow.

My precious Malki died at the age of fifteen in the terror attack that has come to symbolize the Second Intifada: the bombing of the Jerusalem's Sbarro Restaurant in August, 2001. That massacre snuffed out the lives of fifteen Jews, among them eight children, the youngest of whom was two.

I suggest we focus this Remembrance Day on the 129 Israeli children killed by Palestinian terrorists during the past thirteen years. The world is preoccupied with mourning Palestinian children and has forgotten the atrocities committed against Jewish children. We must remind them.

Malki left us only her writings and her art. They offer a glimpse into the soul of a sensitive, religious, idealistic, artistic and talented Israeli teen.

Malki's diary entry from February 2001

She kept a diary between September 2000 and June 2001. There, interspersed with long, involved accounts of school, Ezra (a youth organization in which she was a young leader) and family activities are the details of each terror attack perpetrated during those 10 months.

On April 29, she wrote:

“I woke at 10. Levona and I went first to R.L. [a teacher] whose mother passed away last week (it is very sad because she is an only child, unmarried and has no father. She sat shiva alone!) She was in a very good state. Spoke a lot, told about her mother. Then we went to the Gerard Behar Center Library. We spent 6 hours there without food or drink!!! We finished biology. In the evening I went to a lecture given by Rav Elon with Shulamit, Leah, Efrat Shafir and Chen [her friends].  I didn’t exactly understand the lecture but it was fun. I met Zvi [her brother] there and we stayed for Arvit. “Sunday is now completed…”

Then, apparently later and in a different colored pen, she added:

“Aryeh Hershkowitz, may his death be avenged, was shot dead a month ago. Now his son was shot dead near Ofra!!! Only the little brother can say Kaddish.”

On the first page of her diary is a printed list of personal details: name, address, phone number and so on. And finally partner’s name. Here Malki wrote:

“Still unknown, but will arrive, G-d willing, with time.”

We would never have imagined that our pain could deepen. But one and a half years ago, prime minster Netanyahu taught us otherwise.

Discarding reasoned judicial rulings, verdicts and sentences along with his vaunted ideals, he caved in to Hamas pressure and released hundreds of convicted terrorist murderers in the Gilad Shalit deal.

He then assured the public that he had contacted the victims of those evil-doers to explain his decision, when in fact he had not - and never did.

Malki’s murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, the self-confessed engineer of the Sbarro bombing, was among those Palestinian prisoners. Several months after she had walked free, Mr. Netanyahu inexplicably decided that reuniting Tamimi with her father and brothers in her hometown, Amman, was not enough. He buckled under again, this time to the demand of Tamimi’s fiancé, Nazir Al-Tamimi, to be permitted to enter Jordan in order to marry.

The conditions of Al-Tamimi’s release had expressly forbidden his exiting the West Bank. But justice no longer seems to interest our prime minister very much. The evil couple were married at a well-publicized extravaganza before throngs of Hamas supporters and are now expecting a baby.

In a 1985 speech before the American Bar Association, the late Margaret Thatcher said:

“We have behind us many fine declarations and communiques of good intent. We need action; action to which all countries are committed until the terrorist knows that he has no haven, no escape. Alas that is far from true today.”

Here in Israel where the threat of terrorism is constant, terrorists fear little. In fact, they can be as cocky as Malki’s murderer: “I do not regret what I did… I will be free again,” she told interviewers twice during her imprisonment. She knew our prime minister better than we did.

Let us all resolve today to prevent a recurrence of the Shalit Deal outrage. State leaders must be compelled to find other means of resolving crises. They must be reminded of the significance of justice: murderers belong in prison serving the sentences meted out to them by our judges and juries – not by our prime ministers.

While we cannot return our murdered children, we can restore our discarded justice.

Frimet Roth is a freelance writer in Jerusalem. Her daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in the Sbarro restaurant bombing (2001). With her husband Arnold. she founded the Malki Foundation (www.malkifoundation.org); it provides concrete support for Israeli families of all faiths who care at home for a special-needs child.