27-Nov-19: Jordanian ruler honored in Washington calls for empowering young people

At the NYC gala (the king is the one wearing the medal)

The Jordan Times is widely regarded to be an English-language mouthpiece for the kingdom's Royal Palace.

Earlier this week, it published a generous account of King Abdullah II's remarks at a glittering New York City event honoring him, hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy on November 21, 2019.

We believe the WINEP recognition is ill-conceived and have said so, and explained why, in several places (see below).

The king makes all of Jordan's important decisions as well as appointing its political leaders and judges. But he also demeans the 1995 extradition treaty entered into by his late father King Hussein and the Bill Clinton Administration - all, it appears, in order to safeguard a popular jihadist with a strong Jordanian following.

That jihadist happens to be the confessed mastermind of the mass-casualty Sbarro pizzeria bombing in which our daughter Malki was killed. The bomber, Ahlam Tamimi, is a fugitive from the FBI who lives openly, never in hiding, in Jordan's capital city Amman.

We have published three related pieces in recent days expressing a viewpoint that is deeply critical not only of the Jordanians but of the Washington Institute whose leadership continues to ignore all our attempts to engage them in discussion.

• "A tribute unfit for a king who harbors our child’s killer" (Featured op-ed in Times of Israel, November 21, 2019]
• "23-Nov-19: We have some unanswered and troubling questions about honor, justice and decency" [This Ongoing War: A Blog, November 23, 2019]
• "Has The Washington Institute lost its moral compass?" [The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Frimet Roth's Blog, November 18, 2019]

The full text of the Jordan Times article reproduced below (originally published here) provides insight into how the WINEP award is viewed from the Jordanian perspective.

Not surprisingly, even as the king speaks of peace, countering extremism and paying close attention to the future being prepared for young people, the extraordinary enthusiasm his country shows for Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children and Jordan's unjustifiable dismissal of its treaty obligations to the United States go unmentioned.

* * *

King, at Scholar-Statesman Award dinner, urges countries to believe in their peoples, give them opportunity
Jordan Times, November 23, 2019

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah participated in a conversation in New York on Thursday evening, held by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy with its executive director, Robert Satloff.

The conversation, held as part of the 2019 Scholar-Statesman Award dinner held in honour of King Abdullah, covered regional developments, the threat of terrorism and efforts to achieve peace in the region, according to a Royal Court statement.

Responding to a question on lessons learned on leadership over the past 20 years, His Majesty said: “With all the challenges that we have in our part of the world, you always have to look to the positive, you always have to reach out and do the right thing.”

“As challenging and as confusing as our part of the world looks, I am optimistic; we will move to the future, and I get that inspiration, not only from my family, but from young men and women in Jordan that have that aspiration to make life better,” the King continued.

“Youth want to move forward, live together and make a better world for themselves, and that’s what gives us, I think, the energy to continue,” His Majesty said.

Commenting on extremism, the King noted that the challenge is global, adding that Daesh has been defeated in Syria and Iraq but not destroyed, according to the statement.

His Majesty pointed to renewed threats from the group, warning that “until politicians understand who the enemy is, it’s two steps forward and one step back”.

The King said the challenge comes from the outlaws of Islam, including takfiri jihadist groups like Daesh that utilise the Internet and social media to create a global reach and recruit around the world.

“So unless we call the enemy and those who support them for what they are, it’s going to take a long time for us to be able to deal with this,” His Majesty added.

Commenting on protests in the Middle East and similar past movements, the King said the Arab Spring was led by youth who were frustrated and wanted opportunities, the statement said.

“We look back at that point in history, and it is obviously a very defining road for us in Islamic and Arabic history, and I think we’ll look back on it and say that was a crossroad that we needed to cross,” His Majesty noted.

Responding to a question on how monarchies have handled protests, the King said: “Monarchies in the way I was brought up by His late Majesty and he was brought up by his father and his father, is we are there for all of society.”

“We are the balancer for everybody in society… We are the ones that make sure that everybody is protected and everybody is supported, and I think that is what has helped the monarchies be stable during a very difficult time for our region,” His Majesty continued.

Discussing efforts to rekindle peace efforts in the region, the King stressed the important role of the United States in bringing both sides together, according to the statement.

“I think there’s quite a few of us in this room that believe that the only way to move forward is a two-state solution, because the alternative is worse for all of us — an Israel looking inwards, which none of us can afford. We then have an immediate challenge of equal rights, which, again, is something that we can’t deal with,” His Majesty stressed.

On the current prospects of the two-state solution, the King said, “Every time we lose a year, it is going to be much more complicated, and much more difficult for the Palestinians and Israelis to get to go forward together”.

Noting that Israel’s future is being part of the Middle East, His Majesty said that cannot happen “unless we solve the Palestinian problem”, which is a sensitive and emotional issue.

“Unless we can solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, we’ll never have the full integration that all of us deserve in our part of the world,” the King said.

Pointing to the recent elections held in Israel and the current stalemate, His Majesty said, “we are all in pause mode, and we have not been able to get people back around the table talking to each other”.

In January 2018, the US announced a $5M reward

for the capture and conviction of Tamimi

whose home address and movements in 

Jordan's capital are well-known

“The Jordanian-Israeli relationship is at an all-time low. Part of it is because of Israeli domestic issues. We are hoping that Israel would decide its future, whether it is in the next several weeks or in the next three months, and then it is very important for all of us, and I am saying, our friends here in the United States, to refocus our energies on bringing all of us back to the table, and looking at the glass half-full,” His Majesty added.

“The problems that we’ve had with Israel are bilateral. Part of it is internal politics; I understand that, but not at the expense of something that my father and the late prime minister Rabin fought so hard to achieve, as a symbol of hope and opportunity for Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians and others,” the King continued.

His Majesty pointed out that the Jordanian-Israeli peace was the result of the two sides sitting together “because they had the confidence in each other to create this peace”, voicing hope that the two sides can go back to talking to each other on simple issues “that we have not been able to talk about for the past two years”.

Reacting to calls by US officials to come back from the Middle East, the King expressed understanding for the desire to bring back young men and women out from harm’s way.

“I am absolutely sympathetic with the desire for people to bring their troops back… The United States is in a unique position of being the most powerful, capable country in the world, and with that comes a moral responsibility to help stabilise the world,” His Majesty said.

“From an ex-military point of view, and this is my personal opinion, sometimes when you move out of a campaign before it is over, you are only going to be back tomorrow to try to fix it again, having lost all that ground,” the King underscored.

“Nobody can fault Americans for wanting their loved ones back. But they will be back, unless we solve it, and that is the problem,” His Majesty added.

The King concluded by reiterating the need to empower young people.

“Just know that there is a younger generation of people in our part of the world that just want to get on with their lives,” His Majesty said. Be they Jordanian, Palestinian, Yemeni, Israeli or Iranian, they want to be able to find jobs, settle down with families, and move on, the King explained.

“Believe in your people, because they do want to have the right thing but give them the opportunity. And I am not just talking about our part of the world in the Middle East. This is all over the place. So, give the young people your love and your consideration, because they will make the world better if we give them a chance,” His Majesty concluded.

03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice

We posted this meme in August 2019.
Instagram closed down Tamimi's account a few days later.

We report here on an unexpected, modestly encouraging development in our efforts to bring to justice the fugitive Hamas savage who bombed a Jerusalem pizzeria because of the children inside it.

Jewish children, as it happens. Exactly whom the bomber was targeting.

But first some background.

Our fifteen year old daughter Malki was one of many children killed in the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem whose deaths were sadistically celebrated as a triumph in parts of the Arab world.

Over the years since the massacre, one of the hardest things for us to accept as bereaved parents has been the deplorable ongoing role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in all this. And the minor, essentially invisible, outrage it has aroused among people we think ought to be seriously enraged. This is not about politics after all but justice.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who says she was Hamas' first female terrorist and who masterminded the bombing, has publicly confessed - on camera, for the record, multiple times - to the role she played. She has proudly called it "my operation" and has said she has no regrets about what she did.

Describing the shared-taxi ride that got her out of Jerusalem minutes after the explosion, she cheerfully shared the mood:

They said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn't even know that I was among them... We passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: 'Congratulations to us all.' Everybody was happy. [Source: MEMRI]

Her satanic handiwork in fact left behind 16 destroyed lives. Dozens more victims were horribly maimed but survived.

Tamimi, born in Jordan in 1980 to a Jordanian family, lived in Jordan until she started college studies at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the area today controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Few of our readers will know that Beirzeit's Arabic-language Wikipedia page (archived here in case it, you know, gets lost) names her as one of its notable alumnae along with numerous other terrorists. The more widely-read English-language version cautiously leaves her and the others out.

Tamimi returned to Jordan after Israel conditionally commuted her sentence (to time served) in the extortionate 2011 transaction known as the Shalit Deal in which a sole Israeli hostage was freed by the terrorists of Hamas in exchange for 1,027 imprisoned terrorists ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"]. Tamimi, serving 16 consecutive life sentences, was one of them.

Now married ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"], a mother, a celebrity, an honored speaker at public eventts where she shares lecterns with senior figures from Jordan's highest ecehelon, she continues to live there today, free as a bird. It's a dream life.

It should never have turned out that way. A US Federal criminal complaint (roughly the same as an indictment) issued in 2013 but kept secret and under seal until March 2017 ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"] makes her a fugitive from US law.

Not right away but nearly a year later, a substantial State Department reward was announced ["31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice"]. And most significantly there's an unsatisfied US request to its ally, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to extradite her under their 1995 treaty ["21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan..."]

Absolutely determined that she should face justice, we have written often and bitterly about Jordan's brazen flaunting of its treaty with the US. It is clear to us and to better-informed commentators (this 2017 journal article from National Security Law Brief is a good example) that Jordan's claims that the 1995 extradition treaty with the US is unconstitutional are baseless.

Jordan in fact asserts the treaty has never had any legal effect since the day it was signed. But in reality, the kingdom has extradited to the US every time it was asked to do so. Right up until the Tamimi case.

Note that neither the Jordanian government nor any of its diplomats, senior politicians or royal family members has claimed Jordan's constitution keeps Tamimi safe from extradition. That role has been taken exclusively by the judges of its Court of Cassation, in effect the kingdom's supreme court. Everyone else in Jordan's power system has stayed silent about Tamimi and extradition. And no reporter, as far as we know, has ever pressed Jordan's authorities to explain.

Parallel to that, there has been a striking absence of public statements on the matter by US government sources. Even as that has continued, we have watched, infuriated and offended, the steady parade of US officials paying visits to Amman and King Abdullah's palace and the frequent return visits by the king and his entourage to the US Congress, to the White House, to the welcoming US media.

All of this with no mention by any of them about how Jordan demeans its treaty with the US.

No US government official has said what we believe ought to have been said over and again: that Jordan disclaiming responsibility for extraditing the confessed bomber and mass murderer of children - and harboring her - is wrong and offensive. That it breaches Jordan's bilateral obligations. That the US, which lavishes financial, military and other support on the Hashemite Kingdom, won't stand for the rank injustice the Jordanians are getting away with.

Nothing. Till now.

What's just happpened? Since 1985, the US Secretary of State had to deliver to Congress (in accordance with Title 22, Section 2656(f) of the United States Code) an annual report on global terrorism and what countries around the world are doing to defeat it. Since 2005 when a name change was made, these have been published as "Country Report on Terrorism". Jordan is always listed.

Last year's report [here] introduces Jordan (at page 138) in the customary way:

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. 

Tamimi

Then for the first time it mentions Jordan thwarting the US efforts to extradite Tamimi:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in March charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, 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 an August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a restaurant 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. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. Jordan’s courts have ruled that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.

And that's it. Evidently, whoever compiled it had nothing more to say.

To us, this was a disturbingly odd summing up. While it airs Jordan's anti-extradition viewpoint, it says nothing about what the US believes. It cannot be, we said to ourselves, that the US lacks a view about this scandal. That it has nothing at all to say to the Congress. Something's wrong. What are they hiding and why?

The 2018 edition came out yesterday [here].

It adopts essentially identical language to the paragraph above. But then at page 135 it adds this new conclusion:

In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. The United States regards the extradition treaty as valid.

And there it is.

For the first time, a simple, clear public statement by the US clarifying what we keep asserting: that when Jordan denies it has any obligation to extradite our child's killer, that's wrong. It's also unacceptable to the United States.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi with her Jordanian hosts in Amman
two weeks ago [Image Source]

But here's what happens in the real world.

Two weeks ago ["19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child's killer"], nine members of the US Congress, eight of them Democrats - all of them chairs or senior members of House of Representatives committees - made a flying visit to Amman, Jordan's capital, and the royal palace. There they sat down with the king and his son the crown prince.

The distinguished Congressional travelers' names:

Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, House Armed Services Committee; Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Chairman Bennie Thompson, Homeland Security Committee; Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congressman Ron Kind, House Ways and Means Committee; Congresswoman Susan Davis, House Armed Services Committee; Congressman Stephen Lynch, Chairman, House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security; Congresswoman Elaine Luria, House Armed Services Committee; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

(Strikingly, no one from the House Judiciary Committee took place. That's relevant because of what's in this recent news report: "Parents of US Girl Killed in 2001 Jerusalem Bombing Call for Congressional Investigation Into Fugitive Hamas Terrorist Living Freely in Jordan" [Ben Cohen in Algemeiner, July 17, 2019])

Had we been tipped off in advance about the delegation meeting with King Abdullah, we would have asked them to challenge their host's disregard of a quarter-century-old cornerstone agreement solemnly entered into with the Clinton Administrationn by his revered father, King Hussein. As senior lawmakers, they could have reminded him how annual US aid to Jordan has nearly quadrupled in historical terms over the last 15 years. An authoritative source [Congressional Research Service, April 2019] says roughly $20.4 billion had been given as at the end of Fiscal Year 2017. And a lot more since.

But their visit was unpublicized ahead of time. We had no idea.

On learning about it, we promptly did two things:

• We messaged each of the Congress people and asked them to engage with us. How many people, seeking justice for a murdered loved one, a child, a US citizen who never reached her sixteenth birthday, do these representatives ever hear from? Every one of these elected officials has a well-staffed office, people who are paid to deal with nudniks and the general public. Not one of them has so far responded to us or acknowledged our questions in any way.
• We asked the State Department if delegation members were briefed ahead of their Jordan visit, thinking that since there's so little media coverage of the Tamimi case, they could do with some help. We received a polite response. It says the Congressional delegation did indeed get a briefing before their Jordan visit but declined to say what matters the briefing covered - only that it "included a number of topics related to the bilateral relationship." 

So did the legislators ask King Abdullah II to extradite Tamimi so she can be put on trial for the terrorism charges she faces in Washington? We still don't know. And it's not for lack of trying. But at least we know now this isn't because Jordan is free of the obligation to hand her over. We know the State Department has an actual view on this. That view is the Jordanians surely are obliged and that justice demands it.

Jordan's government tracks what was published in yesterday's Country Report about Jordan and Ahlam Tamimi. We know because it's a front page item in today's Jordan Times, the English-language newspaper said to be controlled by the government (and which blocks us on Twitter):

The US Department of State has hailed Jordan as a “committed partner” in counterterrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE). In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2018, the Department of State commended Jordan’s “leading role” in the global coalition to defeat the Daesh terror group... 

Hailed and commended, yes. As for the State Department report saying the US regards the extradition treaty as valid, that part the authoritative Jordanian daily's editors simply ignore. They just choose not to report it. And for those laboring under the illusion of a free, liberal and fair-minded Hashemite Kingdom, you might want to glance at "20-Jan-18: Shutting down media critics in Jordan isn't quite the challenge it might seem to be". According to Freedom House, Jordan has one of the world's most unfree news industries, media and human rights environments.

Nonetheless, what's just happened amounts in our view to a welcome step in the direction of overdue justice. There haven't been many of those till now. So we're feeling fine with it.

UPDATE November 10, 2019: The Haaretz article which was published on line is in today's print edition of the newspaper. View the printed page here.

08-Oct-19: Again: Jordan's inscrutable US relationship

The Jordanian government harbors and safeguards within its borders the Sbarro pizzeria bomber, Ahlam Tamimi, a Hamas jihad agent.

It has been doing this since at least March 2017, days after the US Department of Justice unveiled terrorism charges against her and announced that it had called on Jordan to extradite her under their 1995 treaty.

Since then, and despite repeated efforts by us - Frimet and Arnold Roth whose daughter Malki was murdered in the terror attack masterminded by Tamimi - the US government has not once stated publicly in any form or any language that it views Jordan's unstated failure to extradite as being in clear breach of the 1995 Extradition Treaty signed by the two countries.

(But there's this: In correspondence addressed to us specifically and said to be official and quotable, a spokesperson for the US government made clear that the US "continue to dispute the Jordanian government’s claim [namely] that the bilateral extradition treaty we signed in 1995 is null... as we exchanged instruments of ratification, bringing the treaty into force on July 29, 1995, and the treaty has not been terminated.")

From US law enforcement services, we have learned that they are ready to take Tamimi into custody. That's been the case since March 2017 at least ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"].

The problem, and it's a stunning one given how dependent Jordan is on its American allies, Jordan won't allow it.

We have written polite and carefully drafted letters to a variety of senior officials in the Department of Justice, to officials in the State Department, to the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to a variety of US diplomats posted in the Middle East.

Not one of these has produced a satisfactory response, no matter how generously "satisfactory" is defined.

Image Source: Jordan Times, a newspaper controlled by
the Jordanian government. It blocks us on Twitter. So does
Jordan's ambassador to Washington.

Jordan continues, despite the outrageous finger-in-the-American-eye, to be treated by the United States as if nothing had happened. Our objections, as the parents of a child, a US citizen, murdered in the Sbarro massacre, are for all practical purposes ignored.

The government-controlled Jordan Times (a newspaper that blocks us on Twitter) has just produced the next chapter in this ongoing process of US self-debasement.

King receives US congressional delegation

Meeting focuses on Jordanian-US cooperation, strategic partnership, latest regional developments
Jordan Times | October 6, 2019
AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah, accompanied by HRH Crown Prince Hussein, at Al Husseiniya Palace on Sunday, received a US congressional delegation headed by US House of Representatives member Jason Crow.
The meeting, attended by HRH Prince Feisal, focused on Jordanian-US cooperation and strategic partnership, in addition to the latest regional developments, according to a Royal Court statement.
King Abdullah expressed Jordan's appreciation for the support provided by the United States in development and defence, emphasising the important role of Congress in this regard, the statement said.
Discussing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, His Majesty stressed the need to step up international efforts to end the conflict based on the two-state solution, which guarantees the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
The King also stressed the need to de-escalate and resolve regional crises through dialogue.
Discussing the Syrian crisis, His Majesty called for a political solution that preserves Syria's territorial integrity, the unity of its people, and the voluntary, safe return of refugees, underscoring the importance of maintaining stability, especially in southern Syria.
The meeting also covered regional and international efforts to counter terrorism within a holistic approach.
For their part, the US lawmakers highlighted the deep-rooted US-Jordan relations, commending Jordan’s role, under the leadership of His Majesty, in achieving peace and stability in the Middle East.
Adviser to His Majesty for Communication and Coordination Bisher Al Khasawneh and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maj. Gen. Yousef Huneiti attended the meeting.
Also on Sunday, Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi discussed with the US delegation regional developments, with a focus on the Palestinian cause and the challenges facing the two-state solution, the Syrian crisis and the war against terror.
Safadi highlighted the deep Amman-Washington relations and expressed appreciation for the US’ support to the Kingdom, according to a ministry statement.
Members of the delegation lauded King Abdullah’s role and his efforts to achieve regional security and stability reiterating continued support to Jordan as a strategic partner to the US, according to the statement.

We're speechless.

UPDATE October 21, 2019 Another high-level US Congressional delegation has gone to Jordan to pay homage to the king ["19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child's killer"]. And once again, there's not a word about any US official or representative even raising, let alone tackling in a meaningful way, the issue of Jordan harboring a fugitive from US justice.

UPDATE December 16, 2019  There's been another delegation from Washington paying puzzling homage to Jordan's king in his royal palace. This time, the Congressman's office expressed real desire to discuss and explain and listen and so on. But it turns out the delegation, led by chairman of the House Armed Forces Rep. Adam Smith, actually doesn't. We say what we experienced in this post: "16-Dec-19: Like talking to the wall"

28-May-18: Names and identities: A Jerusalem battlefield

Earlier today we tweeted this famous 1948 image, originally
photographed by the remarkable John Roy Carlson [Source]

It won't be surprising to regular readers when we say that we keep an eye on what the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan does. And that we wish people would pay closer attention to some of the disturbing things that emanate from there.

An article in yesterday's Jordan Times ["Changing Arabic names of Jerusalem heritage sites is attempt to ‘Judaise’ city - study", May 27, 2018] provides an illustration. (The emphasis is ours):

The Israeli occupation has changed the Arabic names of 667 archaeological and heritage sites in Jerusalem with the aim of “Judaising the city” and “erasing its historical and religious identity”, according to a recent study.
“Replacing the Arabic names is part of a long-term and systematic attempt to distort facts and falsify the real identity of the holy city until the future generation forgets its Arab and Islamic identity,” Ibrahim Bazazo, researcher and dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Jordan told The Jordan Times on Sunday.
The study was conducted over the course of three years by Jordanians Omar Jawabreh, Mohammad Sarayreh, Haitham Abdelraza and Bazazo, under the title “Towards Sustainable Documentation of Geographical Names of Touristic and Heritage Sites in Occupied Jerusalem Using Geographical Information System [GIS]”. Researchers used documents dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, including holy books, historical and geographical atlases..."

It goes on in this vein, accusing the enemy of "forcing a ‘Judaised’ identity" and blaming "the Israeli occupation" for replacing "Arabic names not only from all signs and banners but also from school books and official curricula". (The very loaded issue of school books offers an egregious example of a Jordanian talent for skating on thin ice.)

Perhaps to bolster the mean-spirited and essentially untrue Jordanian allegations with a little gravitas, the government-controlled newspaper refers to certain thoughts of its ruler:

During the Extraordinary Session of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) held in Istanbul earlier this month, His Majesty King Abdullah called for “immediate measures by brotherly Arab and Muslim countries to support the perseverance of Palestinians and empower them economically, while countering attempts to Judaise Jerusalem and alter its Arab, Islamic, and Christian identity”.

Reacting to the assault on this Arab, Islamic, and Christian identity, an associate professor at Yarmouk University, Omar Al Ghul, is quoted saying:

"We cannot deny the Judaisation processes which are evidenced by the existence of a special committee in the Knesset to change the Arabic names..."

He could be referring to Israel's Government Committee on Names (ועדת השמות הממשלתית) whose work which got started right after Israel's independence 70 years ago is mostly done by now. It has had responsibility for giving places Hebrew names when there are no such modern names. The English-language stub of the Hebrew Wikipedia entry for the committee calls it

a public committee appointed by the Government of Israel, which deals with the designation of names for communities and other points on the map of Israel, and the replacement of Arabic names that existed until 1948 with Hebrew names. The committee's decisions bind state institutions...

It's not clear to us why a sovereign state ought to be criticized for wanting to change the names of places that were given Arabic and/or Turkish names under long-overturned foreign military occupation.

In any event, an academic lawyer whom we consulted informally about the committee's work told us

There’s nothing in international law about names per se. One can always try to stitch together a clever argument that it is part of a bigger plan of genocide or apartheid or whatever the Jewish evil du jour is. The Hebrew [Wikipedia] entry’s claim on the purpose of the committee being the replacement of Arabic names that existed until 1948 appears to be editorializing. The entry quotes Ben Gurion as saying להרחיק את השמות הערבים מטעמים מדיניים: כשם שאין אנו מכירים בבעלותם הפוליטית של הערבים על הארץ, כן אין אנו מכירים בבעלותם הרוחנית ובשמותיהם" but no source is provided, and in any event it does not seem to be part of the official charge of the committee.

That Hebrew quote of B-G's, in our words: "To remove Arab names for political reasons: Just as we don't recognize Arab political ownership of the land, so too we don't recognize their spiritual ownership or their names..."

Back to the Jordanians. The dean of the Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality at the University of Jordan weighs in with some views in yesterday's article. He gets credit as one of the researchers of the "Judaization" study, though not as a lawyer. This doesn't prevent him from dispensing legal advice:

“It is now the role of government institutions and civil society organisations to use the research data and take action to stop the Judaisation of Jerusalem,” the researcher said, stressing: “We should speak out to the international institutions and the International Court of Justice to ensure that our identity is preserved and protected.”

Jerusalem, December 1956 during Jordanian military occupation
[Image Source: Getty]

It's startling to hear Jordanian officials refer to international organizations as providing them with backing and their claims with validation. Jordan's utterly devastating impact on Jerusalem when it ruled the city via a deadly military occupation for nearly two decades ending in 1967 is remembered with considerable bitterness here.

Its ruling family from when Jordan was carved out of Mandatory Palestine in the 1920s, the Hashemites from the place we today call Saudi Arabia, presided over massive, merciless elimination of almost every sign of Jewish presence and history once the British-led Arab Legion overwhelmed Jerusalem's Jewish defenders in 1948:

While Christian holy sites were protected, and Muslim holy sites were maintained and renovated, Jewish holy sites were damaged and sometimes destroyed. According to Raphael Israeli, 58 synagogues were desecrated or demolished in the Old City, resulting in the de-Judaization of Jerusalem. The Western Wall was transformed into an exclusively Muslim holy site associated with al-Buraq. 38,000 Jewish graves in the ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives were systematically destroyed, and Jews were not allowed to be buried there. This was all in violation of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement... Following the Arab Legion's expulsion of the Jewish residents of the Old City in the 1948 War, Jordan allowed Arab Muslim refugees to settle in the vacated Jewish Quarter. Later, after some of these were moved to Shu'afat, migrants from Hebron took their place. During the 1960s, as the quarter continued to fall into decay, Jordan planned to turn the quarter into a public park... ["Islamization of East Jerusalem under Jordanian occupation", Wikipedia - accessed today]

We snapped the image above in 2012; it originally appeared in this post

For more about the rank hypocrisy of the Jordanians and the Palestinian Arabs (ah, but we're repeating ourselves), see this six year old post of ours that still has some fresh things to say: "26-Feb-12: A moment to think about Jerusalem".

Here are a few sentences from there about one of the last prominent visual reminders of that dark and awful chapter:

Half of this city was captured by the army of the Jordanian king during Israel's desperate war of survival in 1948. Jordanian forces then set about destroying and desecrating anything Jewish on which they could lay their hands. The United Nations and other international agencies (to their eternal shame) did nothing to prevent or condemn this or the fact that the Jordanians prohibited access by Jews to all of the holy sites under their control. Then, in an unconscionable act of self-tribute, the Jordanian king built himself a large mansion on a Jerusalem hill-top that we can see as we type these words. Ostensibly a tribute to his dominion over a city holy to three religions, it serves as an indictment of his hypocrisy and that of the nations of the world who were evidently content with what was done by and in the name of the Hashemite regime to eastern Jerusalem and its historical and religious uniqueness during those nineteen miserable years.
The war of 1967 that was explicitly intended to drive the Israeli Jews into the sea (a euphemism for mass killing) resulted in the east and west parts of Jerusalem being reunited under Israeli rule. The city began to flourish in ways that it had not for two thousand years. Its splendour today is greater than at any time in the past. The freedoms it offers its residents and visitors in 2012 are the polar opposite of how things were when the Jordanians ruled.
The palace that King Hussein ordered built in his own honour on one of the highest points in Jerusalem still stands today. But it was never completed and remains an empty, dilapidated shell. Empty shell also happens to be an accurate way to characterize the undertakings Jordan gave in the framework of the 1949 Armistice Agreement to allow "free access to the holy sites and cultural institutions and use of the cemeteries on the Mount of Olives." 

No one is going to lose too much sleep in our part of the world because of Jordanian huffing and puffing over the names of places they continue to dream of dominating - and of destroying. 

17-Sep-17: Stopping terror?: Questions for Jordan's heir apparent

Jordan's crown prince and his parents [Image Source]

The Jordan Times, published in Amman and owned by a kingdom-controlled foundation,
reported this morning the not-entirely-stunning news that

His Majesty King Abdullah, accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania, on Friday left the Kingdom, heading to New York, where he will be leading the Jordanian delegation to the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly... Deputising for the King, HRH Crown Prince Hussein is scheduled to deliver Jordan’s speech before the General Assembly... In 2015, the Crown Prince became the youngest person ever to chair a Security Council meeting, when he called for measures to prevent the world’s youth from being lured into the dark world of extremism...  ["King to take part in UN meeting", September 16, 2017]

If you're a news reporter or editor, wouldn't you want to take the opportunity to get Jordan's ruler to clarify his view of terrorism in light of the free-pass and ongoing protection he has given to a mass-murdering Jordanian woman who was named to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list on March 14, 2017?

No mainstream media has tackled him on this. In view of his repeated public condemnations of terror, that's strange, disturbing and something that ought to be corrected.

If King Abdullah is out of reach, can we suggest putting a similar question to HRH Crown Prince Hussein who is going to deliver Jordan's speech to the UN General Assembly? There's much he could explain, but frankly it's the reference in the Jordan Times piece above that has us intrigued.

After all, a public official and next-in-line-to-the-Hashemite-throne who speaks publicly about "measures to prevent the world’s youth from being lured into the dark world of extremism" might be fair game for some timely questions about how to stop terror. He's young (now 23) and perhaps a little naive (just our impression). But editors ought to note he's already two years older than that other Jordanian, Ahlam Tamimi, was when she masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. And he has attracted some extravagant praise:

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised Hussein's attendance at the session saying, "He is not yet 21 years old – but he is already a leader in the 21st century." [Source]

Young Hussein has already shown he is ready to address some especially pertinent questions. As of a year ago, more than 2,500 Jordanians were reported to have joined the ranks of foreign jihadist fighters in Syria. Three sons of sitting members of its parliament had been killed fighting "with ISIS or the al Qaeda affiliate Jebhat al Nusra, in Syria" [source]. It makes sense that terror should be be occupying the thoughts of decision-making Jordanians, i.e. the king and the crown prince.

But since he is evidently on the side of those seeking a solution, HRH might explain how Tamimi, a woman terrorist who happily confesses (time and time and time again) to the murders by bombing of fifteen innocent people and the maiming and wounding of 130 more, can be treated so well by the Hashemite royal house that she and her family publicly thanked them.

Tapping into widespread support among Jordan's majority-Palestinian-Arab population, the Tamimi clan also called on King Abdullah II "along with his government to provide protection and stability" for the proud jihadist murderer and her convicted-murderer husband. From watching closely, we are convinced the "protection and stability" are indeed being delivered. Is this really how you prevent the world’s youth - or even Jordan's - from being lured into the dark world of extremism and murderous, cruel terrorism?

There's nothing especially shocking in any of this except for how the brazen hypocrisy on terror against Israelis gets repeatedly air-brushed out of all mainstream media coverage of King Abdullah's court.

UPDATE September 18, 2017:  In case reporters, journalists, editors or bloggers care to press the young prince on some terror-related matters, allow us to give a hand by pointing you to some questions - ignored of course and unanswered - that we posed to Jordan's current foreign minister who once not so long ago served as the editor of the same Jordan Times that we quoted at  the top. (No one ought to be surprised at the echo-chamber nature of Jordan's power elite.) They're here: "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions".

21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan...

Aljazeera's Arabic-language news did a poll on March 18, 2017.
Its viewers voted Ahlam Tamimi the biggest story of the week
[Image Source: Aljazeera video grab]

The Jerusalem Post has a report today ["Jordan turns down US extradition request for Sbarro terrorist", March 21, 2017] written by Ben Lynfield on efforts to bring our daughter's murderer to justice. It includes a portion of an interview they did last night with Arnold Roth. 

Extracts:

The ruling means that Tamimi will be able to continue her career as a television host admired for striking a devastating blow against the Israeli enemy rather than face trial and possible death penalty in the US. Tamimi caused the deaths of 15 civilians, including eight children and one pregnant woman and the wounding of 130 people. Two of the dead were US citizens...
Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter Malki was killed in the attack, told The Jerusalem Post in response to the Jordanian decision that “four years have passed since the sealed complaint was filed with a judge in Washington. It seems reasonable that the Jordanians have known for some time that the US had an interest in bringing Tamimi before a US judge and that there were ups and downs in those discussions. Jordan is not a democracy, it is a monarchy where governments are created by the king at will.
“When the rest of the world is told something is illegal in Jordan a discerning observer would understand that the people who run Jordan have decided that such and such is now illegal. What’s beyond doubt is that in 1995 Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the US and nothing changed between 1995 and 2017. They certainly don’t have a new constitution,” he said.
“It’s worth pointing out that Tamimi’s first stop when she arrived in Jordan in October 2011 was to a courthouse, the Family Court of Jordan in Amman, where there was a celebration – a public reception to celebrate her freedom and return home.”

King Abdullah II rules as monarch of the Hashemite
Kingdom of Jordan

We wrote about that extraordinary 2011 Jordanian gala reception two days ago [here]. Of the various challenges facing Tamimi, Jordan's court don't appear to be at the top of the list.

They also appear not to be a major concern of the kingdom's authoritative English-language news site, Jordan Times, which (as far as we can tell and we check daily) has not mentioned her or the extradition process even once since they became an issue a week ago. This is in sharp contrast to the general Arab public which voted strongly in an Aljazeera poll a week ago to declare Tamimi as the news person of the week (see photo at the top of this post).

One more aspect of the Jordanian court's ruling: given the extreme gravity of the charges against Tamimi, and the fact that she confessed in court when first tried and then over and again on television since then, might the Jordanian judges have considered placating the Americans by suggesting she stand trial for the same charges in Jordan? Whatever the merits, the fact is they didn't.

Readers wanting a better understanding of the Jordanian political system and its precious constitution ought to see "Jordan’s 2016 constitutional amendments: A return to absolute monarchy?" on the ConstitutionNet website. Also: "Jordan changes constitution to give King more power" (Aljazeera, April 26, 2016). Lots of choice quotes there that curious reporters and their editors could (but so far don't) use in giving context to Jordan's evasion of its 1995 extradition treaty obligations to the United States.

UPDATE March 23, 2017 at 7:00 pm: Over on Elder of Ziyon's outstanding site, there's a new Daled Amos post today ["Jordan Extradited A Terrorist, A Jordanian National, to the US, For the 1995 World Trade Center Bombing - So Why Not Now?"] that bears on these issues. It starts with this:

The story the Jordanians are telling us is that terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who masterminded the Sbarro massacre, cannot be extradited to the US, because there is no treaty. The Jordanian High Court recognizes that an extradition treaty was signed with the US in 1995, but that it is null... The problem is that this is not true. The extradition treaty between the US and Jordan may or may not have been approved by the Parliament, but it was signed by King Hussein. More importantly, in 1995 Jordan did recognize the treaty. The New York Times recounts that the same treaty the Jordanian court is now saying is null, was in fact used to allow...

Click to read what it allowed. How likely is it that those learned Jordanian judges in Amman considered what Daled Amos has noticed?