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

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

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

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

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

• • •

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

Source: YouTube screen capture

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justice Delayed, Justice Denied

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

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

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

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

A Personal Betrayal

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

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

Our spirits were dramatically raised. 

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

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

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

Congress must help

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

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

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

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

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

A Moral Imperative

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

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

• • •

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

24-Apr-24: The Sbarro bomber: Betrayal, lies, politics and grief

Nuland, Biden, Blinken [Image Source]

On March 14, 2024, under the headline "Betrayal, lies, politics and grief | The world’s refusal to bring my child’s killer to justice.", the Jewish News Syndicate published a first-person opinion piece authored by Arnold Roth.

Its appearance was timed to coincide with the anniversary of the day in 2017 when federal terrorism charges, kept secret up to that point by the US government for years, were finally made public.

Since the op ed was republished by no more than a handful of JNS syndication outlets, we think it's right to repost it (with light changes and additional hyperlinks). 

What's said here is important to us - important enough that we continue to press the government of the United States to finally do what its law enforcement arms have endeavored to do since 2013 when it indicted Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi under seal: to put her on trial in Washington and if convicted, to put her behind bars for the rest of her life.

For murky reasons which we think we understand but which have never been revealed by any news media anywhere, those US federal charges remained secret from the world, the media and the families of Tamimi's victims for four years, until March 14, 2017. 

But they were not kept secret from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan which is bound by bilateral treaty to the United States to extradite Tamimi to the US. Via a formal ruling by one of its appellate courts, just six days after the charges became public knowledge in 2017, Jordan flatly refused. It still refuses until today.

Here's the updated version of what Arnold Roth wrote for the JNS in March.

* * *

Seven years have passed since criminal charges were brought in Washington, D.C. against the woman who murdered my sunny, lovely, empathetic 15-year-old daughter Malki. The anniversary of the charges being made public is today, March 14.

As milestones go, this one is dark. The fugitive killer admits to her central role in the massacre for which she is being prosecuted. Though she brags about her atrocity, she lives the life of a celebrity and an inspiration to others. 

Yet her ongoing freedom gets negligible attention in the news industry and public discourse—even in the U.S. To the extent that the Arab media report on her, it is overwhelmingly favorable and sympathetic.

The dry details of Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi’s long-thwarted prosecution are easy to find. The mugshots, biographical details and charges are accessible via three sites: The FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists, the 2017 Department of Justice unveiling of the hitherto secret charges and the State Department’s 2018 post of a $5 million reward that is still unclaimed two full decades after it first went public.

What’s behind Tamimi’s freedom is harder to ascertain. 

Those who know don’t talk openly and those with a stake in her ongoing freedom are too often untruthful about it. Understanding this and conjecturing why it is the case is at the heart of the nightmare my wife and I endure years after our beautiful child’s life was extinguished.

* * *

Tamimi was recruited by Hamas in 2001. The first female to become one of its jihadists, she was given the mission of bombing one of Jerusalem’s few large department stores.

Hamashbir Lazarchan, located on busy King George Street, was an easy hit. On July 30, 2001, she entered its basement supermarket with an explosives-filled beer can. No security people stood at the doors in those innocent days. Tamimi placed the bomb on a shelf among other beverage containers and strolled out.

An FBI “Most Wanted Terrorist” poster for
Jordanian terrorist Ahlam Ahmad Tamimi [Source: FBI]

Still flush with excitement in a 2012 interview on an Arab TV station, she recounted what resulted:

“The supermarket completely exploded... The Israelis said that nobody had been killed or wounded... This was the beginning of the intifada, and it was normal for them to conceal the number of casualties in order to avoid panic among the Zionists” (Arabic-to-English transcript).

A calmer version from the standpoint of the bombmaker, a Kuwaiti kinsman of Tamimi by the name of Abdallah Barghouti, stated, 

“The operation was not intended to cause deaths or injuries but was intended to test the occupation’s security precautions” (source).

Both accounts are absolutely untrue. No one was injured by the bomb, though the aim was to cause a bloodbath. And when it failed, Tamimi badgered her Hamas handlers to immediately give her a better bomb for a second shot at jihadi fame.

That came just a week later on Aug. 9, 2001. An exploding guitar case fabricated by Barghouti was handed to Tamimi by a Hamas handler who paired her up with a religious zealot willing to sling it across his shoulder and carry it inside the target she had selected: central Jerusalem’s bustling Sbarro pizzeria.

From Ramallah, she accompanied the suicidal human bomb by bus and cab to Jerusalem. Then on foot through its downtown streets where, unknown to Tamimi or the young man by her side, the Israel Police had been put on alert following an intelligence tip that a terrorist attack was about to take place. 

Tragically, the general public was never told.

Sbarro, central Jerusalem, the afternoon of August 9, 2001
[Image credit: Avi Ohayon, Israel Govt Press Office]

The massive explosion gutted Sbarro at two o’clock on a hot school vacation afternoon, erasing 16 lives and injuring 130 other innocents. Three Americans were murdered, one of them Malki.

Tamimi was arrested weeks later. Tried in Jerusalem, she was convicted and sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. The three-judge panel, horrified by the smiling accused who admitted all the charges against her, recommended from the bench to the Israeli authorities that Tamimi should never be set free—not in any political deal, not on bail, not for any reason.

Their advice was ignored.

Tamimi walked free in a 2011 deal between Hamas and Israel for the release of a young IDF soldier held hostage for five years. Israel paid heavily, conditionally commuting the sentences of 1,027 convicted Palestinian Arab and other Arab terrorists and setting them loose. More than half had blood on their hands.

Tamimi was bused to Cairo on the day of the release. Following a high-profile media event there in which Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal blessed her arrival, she left on a VIP flight to Jordan and a tumultuous welcome at its main airport and instant, noisy stardom. 

In the years that followed, she hosted her own made-in-Amman terror-friendly Hamas show that was beamed globally via satellite TV. She settled into a jihad-centric talk circuit that got her in front of television cameras, on public event panels and before live audiences throughout the Middle East, as well as opinion pieces in influential Arabic mainstream and social media outlets. Tamimi’s position as one of Islamist terror’s most influential icons is beyond doubt.

* * *

Meanwhile, starting in 2012, just weeks after she left her Israeli cell, Tamimi became a person of interest to the U.S. Department of Justice. A core factor was that two of her victims were U.S. citizens, one of them Malki. (A third, who suffered profound injuries in the atrocity, died in May 2023, having never regained consciousness.)

Those charges were signed off by a U.S. federal judge in July 2013. But they became public only much later on March 14, 2017 via a Department of Justice announcement. 

As this was happening, we were quietly told that Jordan, which is obligated by a 1995 treaty with the Clinton administration to extradite Tamimi, had flatly refused to comply. “You’re now in the court of public opinion,” one of the officials told me. “Good luck.”

The court of public opinion doesn’t have a single address but many. As Malki’s parents, we have tried to reach all of them. We have gone to Congress, assailed the mainstream Western media, written privately to the Biden administration and to the two that came before it, turned to a herd of America’s Jewish organizational insiders, sought help from the government of Israel, and engaged with numerous respected commentators and analysts with expertise in the field.

One or two have said getting Tamimi prosecuted is a bad idea if it offends Jordan. The vast majority either fail to respond or acrobatically avoid dealing directly with the issue even as they sit in the room with my wife and me. The result is mostly the same: We come away frustrated and dismayed by the miles-wide gap between the values they profess and their inaction or actual obstruction.

We have written or spoken about some of those beating-our-head-against-the-wall encounters, but not all. I present a small sample:

• Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the U.S. in 1995 and complied with it for years. There’s no doubt that it remains valid and enforceable. But a Jordanian court, suspiciously ruling just a week after the charges against Tamimi were unsealed in Washington seven years ago, said the treaty needed to be ratified by the parliament but never was and thus was invalid.
• No reporter whom I have contacted has ever pressed the Jordanians about the patent falseness of this claim. If it’s true, Jordan created the problem and Jordan can fix it by simply ratifying the treaty tomorrow morning. But as we discovered by suing the State Department in 2021 under the Freedom of Information Act, King Hussein—the father of Jordan’s present King Abdullah—personally ratified the treaty and swore not to allow its violation. That should have ended the controversy but, of course, it hasn’t.
• Years of appeals to senior American Jewish leaders have been brushed off. 
• But two significant breakthroughs came this past year: The American Jewish Committee (AJC) wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland in July 2023 and the Conference of Presidents wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken in January 2024. Each asked the U.S. to press Jordan harder so Tamimi is handed over for trial in Washington. Both requests have failed to get a response of any kind.
• My wife Frimet is a registered voter in Queens, New York, where she lived for 20-some years. Our requests to the lawmakers who represent her to take up the Tamimi issue with the State Department have gone unanswered or gone nowhere. Both parties in Congress have shown the same unwillingness to tackle the issue.
• All our encounters with Washington’s ambassadors to Israel have been, putting it respectfully, a disappointment.

That’s also true of the things we have done to get reactions from the top of the pyramid. I have avoided publicizing this but I feel justified in sharing how our polite, cogent personal appeals to various presidents, secretaries of state ["27-Aug-21: What we said to Secretary of State Blinken about our child's murder and how he replied"] and current National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan have been brushed aside as if the Tamimi case were not worth addressing.

* * *

Out of the blue, months after we decided to stop wasting further time on them, a letter dated October 25, 2022 arrived from Victoria Nuland, at the time the Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs and Deputy Secretary of State. She has just retired.

She opened with some startling words: 

“On behalf of the President, Secretary Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan I want to reiterate…”

She then listed things no government figure has until now: Tamimi must be held accountable; the U.S. is fully committed to getting her into a U.S. court; it’s pursuing “all viable options” with Jordan; and getting justice for Malki and others “is a foremost priority for the United States.”

The most distressing part of Nuland’s letter was its final sentence: 

“We will stay in contact with you regarding our ongoing efforts to ensure Tamimi is held accountable for her despicable crimes.” 

She hasn’t stayed in contact at all. And now she's left her job as America's third-highest ranking diplomat.

On one level, the ongoing pain of our bitter experience stems from the failures of U.S. justice, Congress and the executive branch, reinforced by a depressing propensity for clear-cut issues to fall victim to politics both domestic and global. 

On another level, especially painful for us, there are the lessons about American Jewish life and its leadership’s failure to lead. 

On yet another level, ours is simply a human story of parents fighting so that the killer of our teenage daughter is brought in chains to a U.S. court to face prosecution. 

Tamimi hosted an Arabic language TV series,

"Breezes of the Free", beamed from Amman to the entire

Arabic-speaking world for five years.

The U.S. and the world want to see the Israel-Hamas war wrapped up. In some ways, there’s a mood of “whatever it takes” in the air, and therefore a realistic prospect that Israel will free Palestinian Arab terrorists, including senior Hamas figures. (We’re totally opposed.) 

Some of them might go to Jordan.

So what would it mean if the incomprehensibly generous grant of impunity that Jordan, one of the world’s most antisemitic entities, has enjoyed while illicitly holding tight to Tamimi were extended to cloak those terrorists? 

The Tamimi case is a red light for what may lie ahead.

* * *

Our battle for justice and against the terrorists has been personal from the outset; not because it’s important for us alone (it’s more important than that) but because it’s driven by pain and grief. Those feelings grew even more intense a few weeks ago when our son-in-law, the beloved husband of one of Malki’s sisters and adored father of two of our toddler granddaughters, was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza.

It’s time to change how America views the war against the terrorists and those who stand with them. Everything dear to us depends on getting that right.

01-Feb-24: Jordan, Tamimi and a long-awaited public call for US moral integrity and justice

Image Source: The FBI

Getting Jordanian fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi into a Washington courthouse to face trial on charges that were signed off more than a decade ago has been orders-of-magnitude more difficult than we originally thought possible. 

And she's still free. This is despite

• Jordan being a treaty partner of the US and the recipient of well over a billion and a half dollars annually in aid funded by American taxpayers - more than any other country (and we don't mean per capita). 
• Tamimi being an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist of whom only 24 are currently alive and only two of them are females. 
• Tamimi living proudly and openly in Amman, never in hiding as far as we know for even a single day since her return to her homeland in October 2011 - an arrival marked by tumultuous receptions and cheering crowds at the airport, and a long series of exuberant public rallies in downtown Amman, at the University of Jordan's main campus, and at numerous other schools and universities, as well as dozens of venues in other Arab countries.

How she's perceived in Jordan is straightforward. There, she's a celebrity, widely admired for what she did (the dead Jewish children, the getting away from the scene, the getting out of Israeli prison, the outspoken and unwavering promotion and admiration of deadly terror. There's more.) We're reasonably sure that we follow Jordan's media more closely than most non-Jordanians do. If a critical word about Ahlam Tamimi has ever appeared in any newspaper or magazine article, we haven't seen it. 

We doubt it's ever happened.

But how Tamimi is viewed in the highest reaches of America's power hierarchy is considerably less simple. 

On one hand, she has faced criminal charges in Washington DC since 2013 that, if she's convicted, may see her spending the rest of her life behind bars in a federal prison. 

In January 2018, a unit of the State Department called Rewards for Justice announced a reward of "up to $5 million" "for information on Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi". That reward is still in effect. Referring to the Sbarro atrocity, the reward offer page says that

"in 2003, al-Tamimi pleaded guilty in an Israeli court to participating in the attack and was sentenced to 16 life terms in Israel for assisting the bomber. She was released in October 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange between Hamas and Israel. On March 14, 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and an arrest warrant for al-Tamimi. The FBI also added al-Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists List."

In addition, we know what President Biden says about bringing her to US justice. It's the very same thing Secretary of State Antony Blinken says. There's a good reason we can say this and that is that on October 25, 2022, a senior official in the US State Department (we prefer to give no names at this stage) sent us a personal letter in their names. "Us" means Frimet and Arnold Roth - we write this blog.

Here's most of it:

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Roth:

Thank you for your July 10 letter to President Biden and your September 1 letter to National Security Advisor Sullivan. On behalf of the President, Secretary Blinken, and National Security Advisor Sullivan, I want to reiterate our deepest condolences to you and your family for the unimaginable pain and suffering you have experienced over the tragic loss of your daughter, Malki. Ahlam al-Tamimi must be held accountable for her role in the terrorist attack that claimed the life of your daughter and 14 others.

The U.S. government remains fully committed to bringing Tamimi to the United States to face federal terrorism-related charges in U.S. courts. The U.S. government is pursuing all viable options to hold Tamimi accountable, including ongoing engagements with the Government of Jordan.

I can assure you that pursuing justice for American victims of terrorism, including Malki, is a foremost priority for the United States. We will stay in contact with you regarding our ongoing efforts to ensure Tamimi is held accountable for her despicable crimes.

Sincerely yours,

As it happens, there were some questions we wanted to ask the writer of the letter. So we wrote back. And then wrote again. And again and again. 

In fact the "we will stay in contact with you" part of it has ended up being pretty puzzling for us. Not one of our dozen or so emails and messages to the writer has gotten even a single response in the nearly sixteen months since the letter was sent to us by the US Department of State. That's a serious piece of pretending not to hear us.

Has Tamimi been held accountable by the US? Not in the smallest way. Her name has never once been mentioned in any public utterance by President Biden, or by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, or by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, or by any of their media spokespersons. 

Pause and read that again; it's a serious thing. 

On the other hand, and perhaps others will be less surprised by this than we are, those very same, very important officials who haven't once managed to speak publicly about Jordan's harboring of the killer and who have never mentioned on the record the killer's name or the names of her victims have very little reluctance in publicly praising the ruler of Jordan and his country. 

Examples from among many: 

• The American President offered some widely-reported warm appreciation: "Biden Praises Jordanian King as Strong Ally in 'Tough Neighborhood'" [VOA, July 19, 2021]. 
• Secretary Blinken, speaking after a May 2021 Middle East tour, spoke highly of King Abdullah’s “crucial” leadership in helping to secure a cease-fire agreement between Israel and “Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip... Jordan’s recent contributions to help bring an end to the conflict in Israel demonstrate the kingdom's enduring role as a force for peace in the region, which is one of the reasons our relationship is so strong and so vital,” Blinken told reporters after meeting with King Abdullah in Amman.” [Source]. That's the ceasefire that so viciously ended with the Hamas mass-butchery, rape and pillage of October 7, 2023.
• And the National Security Advisor in May 2022: “Sullivan commended Jordan’s pivotal role in promoting regional security and stability, stressing the United States’ keenness on maintaining coordination and working with the Kingdom to counter threats to regional stability and their implications on international peace, in addition to ongoing efforts in the fight against terrorism and extremism.” [Jordan Times, May 14, 2022].

As the parents of a greatly-loved murdered American child, we have fought since 2012 to see Tamimi brought to justice under US law in the US. It's a process that has been marked by rudeness and disdain over those years from a long list of officials in three consecutive US administrations. 

That's why we were so heartened by what happened just two weeks ago. 

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an influential roof-body organization based in New York, is 

"the proven and effective voice of organized American Jewry for more than half a century... (working) publicly and behind the scenes to advance the interests of the American Jewish community, sustain broad-based support for Israel and addresses the critical concerns facing world Jewry with US and world leaders, key opinion molders and the public. [It's] the preeminent forum for diverse segments of the Jewish community to come together in mutual respect to deliberate vital national and international issues, set policy and priorities, deliberate proactive strategies and take collective action." 

It speaks in the names of some fifty member organizations. They include AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti Defamation League, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the Jewish Federations of North America, the National Council of Jewish Women and some 44 more. 

This is what the COP sent to Secretary Antony Blinken on January 16, 2024 and made public shortly afterwards:

Dear Secretary Blinken,

Thank you very much for your and President Biden’s continuing support for Israel during the ongoing crisis.  Your steadfast dedication to ensuring a peaceful and secure future for the people of Israel is noted and appreciated by the American Jewish community. 

We write today to reiterate how deeply concerned we are by the fact that Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist responsible for the heinous 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, continues to find refuge in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The horrific attack on the Sbarro pizzeria claimed the life of sixteen innocents, three of them American nationals. These victims included a pregnant woman, a woman who remained in a coma for more than twenty years before succumbing to her injuries, and 15-year-old Malki Roth. The pain and anguish experienced by Malki’s family, Frimet and Arnold Roth, are shared by countless others in the American Jewish community and beyond.

We are heartened by President Biden’s commitment to conducting diplomacy rooted in America’s democratic values and dedication to upholding universal rights. We believe that these principles should extend to seeking justice for victims of terrorism, regardless of where the perpetrators seek shelter.

Jordan’s refusal to extradite Ahlam Tamimi represents a breach of the 1995 bilateral treaty between the United States and Jordan. Despite her confessions and incriminating statements, she has enjoyed immunity from justice, further exacerbating tensions and fostering an environment of hatred and extremism in the region.

We believe that the United States should prioritize Tamimi’s extradition in our bilateral relations with Jordan. We suggest a comprehensive review of the leverage that could be applied by the United States to signal the importance of compliance with U.S. law and principles.  We urge the State Department to engage in a robust diplomatic dialogue with Jordan’s leadership, stressing the importance of upholding international agreements and commitments to justice.

Also of concern, Jordan’s Court of Cassation denied a 2017 US request for extradition by asserting that the country never ratified the extradition treaty with the United States. However, the ruling failed to acknowledge King Hussein’s ratification of the treaty at the time of its signing in March 1995. We request that the United States make this information publicly available to counteract misconceptions and bring clarity to the matter.

We also request that you raise the issue and seek tangible progress on Tamimi’s extradition with King Abdullah II.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations stands united in our unwavering commitment to combatting terrorism and ensuring justice for victims and their families. We trust that the United States will continue to demonstrate its leadership and moral integrity by pursuing this crucial matter.

Sincerely,

        

Harriet P. Schleifer                                   William C. Daroff

Chair                                                        Chief Executive Officer

The text of the letter was made public by the COP on or just after the day it was sent [here]. When we checked today with a senior source there, we were told there has been no response so far from anyone at the State Department. 

As we have said in this blog before, our experience in getting Secretary Antony Blinken's attention on the Tamimi case, or in prodding him to take concrete steps towards bringing the Jordanian fugitive to US justice, haven't gone well. Some of that quite bitter experience is laid out here: "27-Aug-21: What we said to Secretary of State Blinken about our child's murder and how he replied". 

And as we noted above, none of the people who have served him as spokesperson or deputy spokesperson in the role he has had since 2021 has ever pronounced Ahlam Tamimi's name in public. 

It's a depressing reality made far worse by the way America's mainstream media have ignored the story, and continue to ignore it today. 

What this means is the vast majority of Americans know nothing about Jordan's ongoing breach of the treaty, about its devotion to harboring and protecting a fugitive charged with being the central figure in a massacre of Jewish children and of Americans, or about the Conference of Presidents' open letter of two weeks ago. 

Little wonder that Congress - both sides of the aisle - ignore the scandal, thereby allowing Jordan to keep pocketing massive taxpayer-provided US aid and Ahlam Tamimi to avoid justice and accountability.

14-Aug-23: Getting Tamimi to US justice: A modest positive step

The admitted Sbarro bomber hosted a made-in-Jordan weekly TV

show from Amman between February 2012 and September 2016.

Taking a robustly pro-terror line, it went to air globally via the
Hamas Al Quds TV satellite channel with a generous
assist from YouTube.

A small but meaningful step forward by America's organized Jewish communities in addressing a subject they have avoided confronting for years happened, to our surprise and appreciation, a month ago. 

But first some background.

The woman who brought a suicidal/murderous human bomb to the door of a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem 22 years ago this week lives in Jordan today. 

A fugitive with a $5 million reward on her head from the Rewards for Justice unit of the US State Department, she's free but not only that. 

She's also a media celebrity. A 21 year old TV news reader when she spearheaded the Sbarro massacre, she went on to host a television program aimed at a global Arabic-speaking audience that was produced in Amman, Jordan's capital, and beamed from there throughout the world weekly from February 2012 for the next almost-five years. 

If she wasn't already famous, the terror-focused show called "Breezes of the Free" turned her into a pan-Arab public figure. If anyone has a claim to being an icon of Islamist terror, a person who more than anyone else embodies murderous lust for dead Jews and Israelis, it is Ahlam Ahmad Aref Al-Tamimi. 

But this isn't about her. 

What's disturbed us more than any other single factor through the years that we have striven to see her arrested in Jordan, put on a plane and brought in chains to Washington where federal US charges have faced her since July 15, 2013, is the incomprehensible passivity of so many parts of American society.

And none more incomprehensible than America's Jewish organizational leadership. 

The still-thwarted US prosecution of Tamimi ought to have been embraced as an American-Jewish issue par excellence. The woman is open about having targeted Jews, and in particular Jewish children, in the massacre she engineered at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. And in this, she succeeded on a shattering scale: a death toll of sixteen, half of them children, most of the rest women, and three US nationals among them. 

She is on the record saying that nothing she did left her feeling any moral or other doubt: 

I have no regrets, and no Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done. We were defending ourselves. What are we supposed to regret? Should we regret defending ourselves? Should we regret that the Israelis killed one of us so we killed a different one of them? We have no regrets. [Palestinian Media Watch]

And not only no regrets but redemptive theological conviction:

This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner (Source; Tamimi interviewed in Jordan in October 2011 - translated by MEMRI).

Referring to two separate Jerusalem bombng attacks which she spearheaded, she brags (to a Turkish audience in October 2021) that 

Allah let me have a membership in the ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions and [allowed me to] participate in two jihad operations that produced, by the Lord’s virtue, the deaths of fifteen zionists with 122 zionists wounded in two Jihad operations. We ask Allah to accept this. These two jihad operations are a crown on my head. By Allah’s virtue, I entered history by doing the finest of deeds, the finest operations, in the finest of ways, which are the ways of jihad. Praise Allah, He has prescribed me this fate.

With years of detailed, recorded and filmed interviews, speeches and public rallies behind her, there is absilutely no reason to doubt Tamimi's deep belief in the righteousness of the crimes that have made her one of the FBI's twenty-four Most Wanted Terrorists. 

* * *

Jordan's supremely shabby role in keeping this appalling woman free and out of reach of America's law enforcement agencies is a matter of record. 

The Hashemite Kingdom entered into an extradition treaty with the United States in 1995. But in March 2017, just six days after the Justice Department in Washington unsealed its long-secret 2013 charges against Tamimi, it repudiated the bilateral agreement ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]

There is no legal validity to Jordan's judicial assertions, whatever the Jordanians may claim. 

The United States has made a variety of official statements - some relatively forceful, some whispered, and none of them directed at Jordan in any public way - confirming that it views the treaty as in force. We summarize them here: "29-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?" 

It's a troubling chronology.

Treaties and legal obligations are. of course, only as effective as the people who enforce them. In the Tamimi case, no one answers to that description with the exception, as we know from our own experience, of the prosecutors and investigators of the Department of Justice and of the FBI. Almost all the obstacles we know about, and to a large extent have experienced, emanate from the Department of State.

How do State Department officials justify stepping into the path of US law enforcement? How can they explain taking measures to ensure Tamimi isn't handed over to US marshals? Why would they align their interests and those of the US government with a monstrous terrorist responsible for he deaths of sixteen innocents including three Americans?

They don't. 

In fact, in an unclassified October 2022 fax to the parents of Malki Roth, one of Tamimi's many victims, they assert that Tamimi

must be held accountable for her role in the terrorist attack that claimed the life of your daughter and 14 others [that became 15 in March 2023 with the death of an American woman who had been left in a coma in the pizzeria atrocity]... The U.S. government remains fully committed to bringing Tamimi to the united States to face federal terrorism-related charges in U.S. courts. The U.S. government is pursuing all viable options to hold Tamimi accountable, including ongoing engagements with the Government of Jordan. I can sure you that pursuing justice for American victims of terrorism, including Malki, is a formost priority for the United States...

and so on.

Nothing substantive has happened to bring this loathsome woman to US justice in more than a decade. Nontheless some of the most senior officials at the pinnacle of US power continue to say how much they want her, how hard they're working to get her, that their thoughts and prayers go out to the families of her victims. 

It's not a terribly complex picture. Most people can figure out the truth of what's actually going on.

* * *

But in the midst of this remarkable saga where America's lawmakers, senior government officials and - to a surprising extent - America's mainstream media all show a striking passivity, there has been a long-overdue positive development. 

One of American Jewish life's leading advocacy organisations made an announcement a month ago that marks one of the very few positive moments in the years-long struggle to prosecute the Sbarro bomber. They addressed the US government with a request that efforts be made to get this extradition done. This is good news.

Here's how Jewish Insider reported it on July 13, 2023.

12-Jul-22: No political dimension: Our letter to President Biden and his answer

Another AP story from a year ago [Image Source]

Associated Press began reporting last night (Monday) that the White House has already responded to the letter we emailed to President Joseph Biden on Sunday [we described that here: "11-Jul-22: President Biden is heading to Jerusalem and we're asking for a few minutes of his time"]. 

They say:

The U.S. said Monday it is still seeking the extradition of a Palestinian woman in Jordan convicted of aiding a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 2001. But it declined to comment on a request from the family of one of the victims for a meeting with President Joe Biden... The Roths have been waging a campaign for the extradition of Tamimi since she was released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas militant group and sent to her native Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media... ["US seeks extradition of Palestinian attacker in Jordan", AP, July 11, 2022]

The AP report goes on to quote a high-level source that

“The U.S. government continues to seek her extradition and the Government of Jordan’s assistance in bringing her to justice for her role in the heinous attack,” the National Security Council said Monday.

Continuing to seek her extradition. It's a term that needs some context. And we're happy to provide it. 

The US has never made a single public call on Jordan to extradite Tamimi, beyond the formal request (under a 1995 extradition  treaty which is valid and in force) in 2017. 

It has also never publicly criticized Jordan for breaching the treaty. This despite the reality that Tamimi has lived free in Jordan since October 2011, traveling freely from Jordan throughout the Arab world to address rallies and make blood-curdling pro-terror speeches, while being the presenter of her own made-in-Jordan weekly TV program devoted to terror, terrorists and the need to support both. 

We're genuinely glad to be told that the US is continuing to pursue extradition. But after so many years of zero progress, is it not time to ask what those efforts are? And why they don't succeed? Jordan, after all, is a small but strategic ally, massively dependent on US largesse, the beneficiary of a whole raft of made-in-USA special facilities, programs and strategically helpful attention.

It's fair to say we are disappointed by the non-response. 

And allow us to be clear about this aspect: no one has been in touch with us from the President's staff, the State Department, the National Security Council or the US Embassy in Israel.

Jordan's royals and the Bidens - July 2021

But here's the point. Throughout the years of our immensely frustrating campaign to see the government of the United States respect and defend its own laws, criminal code and treaties in relation to the Tamimi case, poor - even absent - communication from US government officials has been an almost invariable constant.

The Tamimi case has special significance to us. 

That's in large part because the Jordanian fugitive planted the human bomb at the Jerusalem pizzeria in August 2001 whose explosive malevolence erased sixteen lives, one of whom was the life of our beloved fifteen year old daughter Malki. Another American woman, a tourist visiting from New Jersey, was murdered along with the unborn child in her womb. And another American woman was rendered so profoundly brain-damaged that she has remained in a comatose state from that summer 2001 afternoon until today.

Now that the Biden team have explicitly blocked our efforts to press the case, we feel justified in sharing the letter we sent him to which no answer will ever come. 

Here it is.

July 10, 2022

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500-0005 

Dear President Biden,

Extraditing our child’s killer from Jordan

As you arrive in Jerusalem, we write to remind you of the open letter we addressed to you in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last summer. It appeared on the day you hosted Jordan’s monarch in the Oval Office of the White House: [“Jordan Harbors Our Daughter’s Killer | Biden should demand the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi”, Frimet and Arnold Roth, Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2021]. 

It was distressing to us that you did not respond in any way, not via the White House press spokesperson; not via any members of your staff; not in the months that followed; not even when you hosted the same king in the same Oval Office this past May.

Our letter then, and the thoughts we share with you below, have no political dimension to them. And in sharp contrast to the letter from the family of an Aljazeera reporter shot and killed as she stood in the midst of a firefight between Palestinian Arab gunmen and Israeli forces in Jenin, it’s not necessary for us to assert again and again – as they do about their case – what we believe to be the cause of the death for which we seek accountability. It’s tragically clear.

Our daughter Malki, a sweet American girl who never reached her sixteenth birthday, was murdered by a Jordanian reporter called Ahlam Tamimi. In contrast to the Shireen Abu Akleh case, no committees of enquiry, not the United Nations or the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN or the Associated Press or B’Tselem or even the White House spokesperson are needed to lay the blame.

A massacre happened at a pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem on a hot summer vacation day when it was filled with children. Tamimi, again and again, on television, via YouTube and in live appearances, has said she did it. She calls it “my operation”. She brags about what she did. In a viral interview, she said “I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll.” 

Last October in a video conference to Turkish schoolgirls and young women [source] she called the bombing “a crown on my head. By the grace of Allah, I joined the annals of history by committing the best act, the best operation, the best path - the path of Jihad.”

Tamimi has never expressed a syllable of regret beyond saying of the children she targeted that she wishes more had been killed that day.

She has been an FBI Most Wanted terrorist since March 14, 2017, the day that long-sealed US federal terror charges were finally made public. And in all the time that has passed, she has lived free as a bird in Jordan. She is still there, shielded by Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

In the 5+ years since the charges were made public, the two of us have reached out to a depressingly long list of officials and lawmakers seeking to bring an end to the cruel game being played at our expense. It involves serious people with extraordinary power and influence telling us (those who bother to respond at all since most prefer to look away or pretend not to hear) that the US “continues to seek her extradition and will continue to work to ensure she faces justice” [source].

Years of this.

Jordan, to say it clearly, is not a free or liberal place. Its media are among the mostly tightly restricted of any country and its governments are assiduous in executing the will of King Abdullah. Yet for five years, Tamimi had her own terror-advocating TV show, made in Jordan and distributed from there to Arabic-speaking audiences throughout the world. The ruler whom you so admire, whom you praised lavishly last summer [“Biden calls Jordan king a loyal ally in ‘tough neighborhood’”, The Associated Press, July 20, 2021] must have approved it. On any view, he certainly did nothing to shut it down.

Five years, sir.

Something is obviously terribly wrong with how the pursuit of America’s most wanted female fugitive is going. If it’s accountability for her crimes that we speak – and accountability is what your press spokesperson has invoked over and again these past few weeks in the Aljazeera reporter’s case – then it’s worth asking whether five years is enough time to have achieved that.

Nothing in our handful of encounters with senior figures in your State Department and that of President Trump has given us even the smallest hope that the US wants this woman in chains, on a flight from Amman and extradited to a DC courthouse.

The opposite is true. When politicians and their bureaucrats want to justify their action or inaction, they rarely lack the words. But in our case, most by far of our approaches to Washington insiders have been answered with silence. We want to think it stems from shame and embarrassment but that’s speculative on our part. What is abundantly clear is that getting justice for the small handful of American lives, all of them Jewish, extinguished among a much larger number of Tamimi’s victims, is – in the cold calculus of today’s Washington – evidently not worth the political irritation it will cause.

We want to explain this to you better in a face-to-face meeting. We want you to look us in the eyes, Mr. President, and tell us how Jordan’s king can be a praiseworthy ally even as he cynically tramples –on narrow technical grounds that it turns out don’t hold water – a treaty made by President Clinton and King Hussein, his greatly admired father.

That treaty has for a quarter century been the essential tool that enabled US law enforcement to apprehend a string of Jordanian terrorists and bring them to trial and eventually prison in the US. It’s a valuable part of America’s constant, essential vigilance against the dark forces of jihad. There’s a much larger issue than simply justice for the life of an American child at stake when an ally – one who benefits from billions of dollars in US taxpayer funded aid each year – trashes a bilateral agreement at will.

In your Washington Post opinion piece on Saturday [“Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia”, Washington Post., July 9, 2022] you mentioned King Abdullah of Jordan recently referring to the “new vibe” in the region with countries asking “How can we connect with each other and work with each other.” The answer in Jordan’s case is clear. It can honor the unquestionably valid treaty and extradite Tamimi.

We’re approaching the fiftieth yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a luminary in the world of Jewish thought and a prominent figure in America’s struggle for human rights who passed away in 1972. Rabbi Heschel observed that "...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

We are bereaved parents as you are, sir. We have a burning sense that injustice in the wake of our child’s murder is winning. Years of experience tell us this is so. We ask that you address this as only the leader of the United States can and take the steps that will bring the Sbarro bomber to long-thwarted justice in Washington.

Respectfully,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

You will have our sincere appreciation if you share this widely.  

20-May-22: Jordan's king takes Washington again as we try to get our pursuit of justice noticed

Jordan's Washington embassy published

this proud tweet [Image Source]

Jordan's King Abdullah II spent all of last week in the United States. 

It was a visit filled with events including a solemn ceremony in which America's Catholic hierarchy paid homage to His Majesty and his wife for Jordan's "religious tolerance, harmonious interfaith, overall peace, and humanitarian efforts". 

Also: top-level meetings in the Congress involving various committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. And a lot of media ["Biden reaffirms Jordan's role overseeing Temple Mount", Associated Press, July 13, 2022]

Our own sources inform us that the Tamimi issue came up. But only tangentially and never once reported in the news.

From Jordan's standpoint, the peak achievement was a well-publicized face-time session in the Oval Office with America's chief executive. Here's the White House's official summing-up of the discussions between the two leaders: 

Readout of President Biden’s meeting with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan

MAY 13, 2022 | President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. met today with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan and reaffirmed the close and enduring nature of the friendship between the United States and Jordan.  Jordan is a critical ally and force for stability in the Middle East, and the President confirmed unwavering U.S. support for Jordan and His Majesty’s leadership.  The leaders consulted on recent events in the region and discussed urgent mechanisms to stem violence, calm rhetoric and reduce tensions in Israel and the West Bank. The President affirmed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and cited the need to preserve the historic status quo at the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. The President also recognized the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan’s crucial role as the custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem. The leaders discussed the political and economic benefits of further regional integration in infrastructure, energy, water, and climate projects, with Jordan a critical hub for such cooperation and investment.  They agreed to remain in regular touch and further enhance the historic ties between our countries.

Not surprisingly in view of how things have gone so far with the Biden administration, Jordan's harboring of America's most wanted female fugitive was left off the agenda. 

So too Jordan's ongoing breach of the Clinton-era Extradition Treaty that since 1995 has enabled the US to request and get the arrest and handing over of Jordanian terrorists for trial and imprisonment in the US.

How well did all of this go for the Hashemite Kingdom? Spectacularly well. The post-visit video published by its embassy in Washington has the highlights along with a stirring musical sound track:

The images in the video clip of happy Congressional figures including Senators and Representatives, their advisers, senior officials, as well as key figures in the State Department and the White House make for hard viewing if, like us, you're pressing many of those same people to stand up for American principles, values and laws in order to persuade an extremely well-funded minor state in the Middle East to comply with a binding treaty that no one outside Jordan regards as invalid in any sense.

July 13, 2022: Jordan's king, the heir apparent and their Oval Office friend

As heads of state go, Abdullah is one of Washington's most frequent visitors. This source lists more than forty such visits since he ascended to the throne 22 years ago. 

In June 2020 as the COVID pandemic was raging, there was an incredible blitz of behind-closed door, off-the-record video-conference "briefings" (that's the word the Jordanians use) inside the Congress to leaders and committees. See our lengthy post "26-Jun-20: Private meetings with His Majesty and the injustice they conceal" that is accompanied by numerous photos that have somehow never gotten into the news media. 

Then in July 2021, he spent three weeks in the US including another Oval Office visit. A lower-profile visit to New York took place in September 2021 (video) including a behind-closed-doors off-the-record meeting with America's most senior Jewish community leaders. 

King Abdullah meets Senators John Thune, Mitch McConnell

and Chuck Schumer at the US Capitol May 13, 2022 [Getty Images] 

Plainly the royal team know the scene and advance his agenda with distinction.  

As we wrote here ["26-Apr-22: New legislation seeks to hold Jordan accountable for failure to send the Sbarro bomber for trial in Washington"], some Congressional efforts are underway to impose sanctions on Jordan for its failure to respect the long-standing treaty. This is being brushed off in certain quarters of the US capital ["01-May-22: A Congressional initiative sanctioning Jordan gets some Arab lobby attention"]. But in parts of the media - including some Jewish parts - it's getting modest attention.

Over at the blog of the formidable Elder of Ziyon, there's an interview published earlier today by Varda Meyers Epstein (who writes under the nom-de-web Judean Rose) in which Arnold Roth gets to do some venting about the frustrations of trying to get get justice for a murdered child. It's here: "Rep. Greg Steube Wants Congress to Push Back at Jordan on Thwarted Extradition (Judean Rose)". And for anyone wanting to acquire a sense of what we face - and the miserable public figures who are responsible for the protracted nature of our battle to see justice done - it has some insights we hope will interest you.

Here's one of the numerous well-crafted questions Varda asked me in our Elder Of Ziyon exchange, with my response.

Varda Epstein: There has to be a sense of betrayal that Israel released your daughter’s murderer from prison, especially since you threw in your lot with the Jewish State by making Aliyah. Your wife is American. Does she feel a sense of betrayal as an American citizen at the lack of will to push for extradition? How does it feel to be doubly betrayed, so to speak?

Arnold Roth: That’s a hard question to answer. Not because I don’t feel those things but because complaining of being betrayed doesn’t go down well or get you far in the court of public opinion. People have a hard enough time with their own problems.

So first about Israel. Yes, we have certainly been betrayed. That’s the right word: we had rights and they were and are being cruelly trampled and with no regard to what this does to our values as a society. Or to people like us.

In this, we are not alone. The same thing can be said by all the other families who experienced the murder or maiming of loved ones by terrorists who were sentenced to long prison terms by judges applying very respectable judicial criteria and then watching as the convicts walked triumphantly free.

That should never have happened. Those who argue differently need to review what they think they know about justice and Jewish values.

But it’s clear to us that Israel as a nation didn’t betray us. It was politicians. There’s much more I would want to say about that aspect but not now. We remain as Zionist as the day we arrived in Israel, passionate and proud to be raising our children and grandchildren in the Jewish homeland.

I’m not an American. But Malki was and so are my wife and children.

Did the US betray us? No, and this is a good moment to say that we get gratifying support from wide parts of American society. But as with Israel, the politicians – except for those who have shown a distinct sense of morality and honor – do what politicians do and hurt us in heartless ways.

From conversations with US government officials, we have the sense – never said to us in this way – that there’s more interest in seeing Ahlam Tamimi slip away and somehow disappear into the desert than in having her stand trial in Washington.

This is not a partisan political thing; we are almost, though not quite, as infuriated by how the GOP has pushed past the Jordan/Tamimi issue as we are by the Democrats. Again, this isn’t about which side of the US divide you stand on.

Much of America’s Jewish community leadership has been unhelpful and cold. Having said that, it’s an exceptionally painful subject that I don’t want to address here. At some point we will because there’s much we have learned on this that we would have preferred never to know. And people ought to know.

Here’s what I want to say about the US government. Other than at the political leadership level, the Justice Department and the FBI have always given us the sense of being with us and wanting the same result we want – Tamimi in a federal court on trial for her terrorism and the deaths she caused. We sincerely appreciate the hard work that has kept the pursuit of the Sbarro bomber going all these years.

This is relevant to something that happened some weeks ago when Frimet and I met with a significant US government figure (hereafter SUSGF). And here’s the only part of it worth raising in today’s interview. We were told ahead of time by our own sources that SUSGF was going to receive a briefing before our sit-down from well-connected officials in Washington. But in speaking with us for an hour or so, SUSGF volunteered half-way through that he/she skipped the briefing. Hence our mild hope of getting some insight into why we have been treated as pariahs for so long by the government of which our murdered child was a national was misplaced. We learned nothing. The experience was a waste of everyone’s time.

There’s no point in sharing my feelings about the governments of the past. But here’s a thought about the current administration.

Speaking in July 2021 during the first of the three official visits to the US made by King Abdullah in the past ten months, President Biden called Jordan “loyal and decent friend… We’ve been hanging out together for a long time. It’s good to have him back in the White House.”

The same day those comments were reported in the New York Times, Frimet and I wrote an open letter to President Biden. It was published prominently in the Wall Street Journal:

The president, a grieving parent himself, pledged during his inauguration speech to write “an American story of decency and dignity.” Is anything more dignified than doing justice? What’s decent about an ally shirking a treaty to appease popular bigotry?

That question is still on my mind. And again, no response has ever come from the White House.

We also wrote a private letter to Secretary of State Blinken six weeks earlier, in July 2021. He has never answered.

Naturally we hope you will read and share the whole thing.

Just ahead of the latest King Abdullah visit to Washington, we put out a media release of our own that had less impact than we hoped - but we're glad for what we did get. 

Here's how the Australian Jewish News reported it today:

Roths pressure monarch | "Ahlam Tamimi's obscene, ongoing freedom in Jordan has to be on the agenda of every meeting the Jordanian monarch is granted." | By PETER KOHN | May 20, 2022

Arnold and Frimet Roth have thrown their support behind draft legislation in the US Congress to compel Jordan to extradite Ahlam Tamimi, a terrorist involved in the bombing of a Jerusalem pizzeria that claimed the life of their Australian-born daughter Malki 21 years ago.

Click to enlarge

The Roths have publicly endorsed a bill by Congressman Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, which would commit Congress to recognising Jordan has an extradition treaty with the US. Malki, 15, was a US citizen through her American-born mother.

The couple’s endorsement coincided with a visit to Washington by Jordan’s King Abdullah II last Friday to meet with US President Joe Biden over a Jordanian bid to increase the Waqf presence on the Temple Mount after recent unrest, a move rejected by Israel, which has sovereign jurisdiction there.

Tamimi was charged with terrorist crimes by the US in 2013 and is on a list of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists. The bill proposes penalising Jordan if it does not extradite Tamimi. Said Steube, “Our US tax dollars will not continue to flow to a country harbouring a Hamas terrorist with American blood on her hands.”

Jordan maintains its extradition treaty with the US was never ratified, but the Roths cite documentation contradicting this.

Tamimi, one of the bombers of the Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 which killed 15 and injured 140, served part of a sentence in Israel but was extradited in a prisoner swap to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas. She is now a Jordanian media personality and remains unrepentant about her role in the attack.

“Ahlam Tamimi’s obscene, ongoing freedom in Jordan has to be on the agenda of every meeting the Jordanian monarch is granted,” Arnold Roth said of King Abdullah II’s US visit.

Roth told The AJN this week that attempts to engage the Australian government through Prime Minister Scott Morrison and predecessor Malcolm Turnbull have so far yielded “frustratingly disappointing outcomes”. He added, “At this point, Frimet and I have stopped knocking on their doors.”

That last paragraph is not quite what Arnold said. It's a condensed version of how he expressed it in communicating with the reporter. Space is a heavier issue in paper-based publications than online. Here's the full (but unpublished) text of Arnold's comment to the AJN: 

It's likely that most Australians, including the Jewish community where we lived before we made aliyah and where Malki was born, will not see this as an issue on which they can play a constructive role. 

But that's not the case. The decision to be decisive is of course one that has to be made by the Americans. But we think it will help if the recalcitrant Jordanians know the world is watching as they keep the fugitive bomber safe and famous in Amman. 

Australia, for good historical reasons, has warm relations with the Hashemite kingdom. That's what brought me to write an op ed in The Australian, five years ago this week in fact, calling on the then-prime minister to in effect have a quiet word with King Abdullah. Mr Turnbull's answer was a very welcome one but the follow up by others in his government was not. The initiative ended up falling by the wayside. 

For the past two years I have made similar efforts with the current Australian leadership via the prime minister's team and DFAT [Australia's foreign ministry] - with frustratingly disappointing outcomes. At this point, Frimet and I have stopped knocking on their doors.

Our pursuit of justice goes on. We hope you decide to be with us.