17-Feb-22: Yes, we're exasperated

The Tamimi Wanted posters were issued by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation [Image Source] of the US Department of Justice in English and Arabic versions

In less than a month from now, on March 14, 2022, an incredible five years will have passed since the United States charged a Jordanian woman, Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, with murdering Americans by means of a weapon of mass destruction.

One of those murdered Americans was our daughter Malka Chana Roth, age 15.

Back in 2017, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security (at the time) Mary B. McCord, Channing D. Phillips U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia (at the time) and Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office (at the time) Andrew Vale made the announcement.

“Al-Tamimi is an unrepentant terrorist who admitted to her role in a deadly terrorist bombing that injured and killed numerous innocent victims. Two Americans were killed and four injured. The charges unsealed today serve as a reminder that when terrorists target Americans anywhere in the world, we will never forget – and we will continue to seek to ensure that they are held accountable,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “I want to thank the many dedicated agents and prosecutors who have worked on this investigation.”

“We have never forgotten the American and non-American victims of this awful terrorist attack,” said U.S. Attorney Phillips. “We will continue to remain vigilant until Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi is brought to justice.”

“Al-Tamimi is a terrorist who participated in an attack that killed United States citizens,” said Assistant Director in Charge Vale. “The bombing that she planned and assisted in carrying out on innocent people, including children, furthered the mission of a designated terrorist organization. The FBI continues to work with our international partners to combat terrorists like Al-Tamimi and hold them accountable”... 

The investigation into this matter was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The Office of International Affairs of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division provided significant assistance. The case is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

The determination of the most important law enforcement agencies in the United States was clear and unambiguous. We wrote at the time ["15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice"] that 

Obviously, justice is very much on our minds right now. In fact, that has been consistently true since August 9, 2001.

But we were also aware that much still needed to be done and we said so. However what followed, notwithstanding the use of the clear words “We have never forgotten the American and non-American victims of this awful terrorist attack”, was and remains far more challenging than we suspected back then.

First, as we wrote in a tweet earlier today, thanks to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the bomber, one of only 25 individuals named as FBI Most Wanted terrorists, remains free today. What's more, she continues to actively encourage more terror. 

Who allowed this to happen? Who, if anyone (apart from the families of the Jordanian woman's victims) is outraged by it?

As parents of one of the bomber's many child victims, we're exasperated by the passivity - sometimes calculating, often ignorant - of a long list of officials, politicians, community leaders and media figures. 

CNN's Fareed Zakaria is among the most puzzling of them, though far from the only news industry professional about whom we have serious questions that we prefer not to share at this stage. Let's simply observe that not one of his several exclusive interviews with Jordan's king has ever touched on the kingdom's harboring of the world's most wanted female terrorist.  

That kind of high-profile tip-toeing around an explosive issue, along with the kid-gloves treatment Jordan gets right across the media, is a large part of why justice in the Tamimi/Jordan case has been thwarted for so long. 

We're now serving notice, as we wrote in our Twitter account today, on those we have tried over and again to engage in this pursuit of justice. 

Our message: If you aren't demanding publicly now that Jordan extradite the blood-drenched @Sbarro bomber to Washington, you're standing with her. And standing with the woman who says she has never regretted what she did at the Sbarro pizzeria is disgraceful. 

I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. 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 Video]

And for those out there who don't run community organizations or departments of major governments or edit great metropolitan newspapers or their Internet-era equivalents, what you can do - and we seriously hope you will no matter what country's citizenship you hold - is sign our petition. 

Please - we seriously need all the help we can get.

15-Nov-21: What values guide our societies and where does justice fit in?

Wanted posters issued in multiple languages by the US Department

of Justice and the FBI when terror charges against the
Jordanian fugitive were unsealed in March 2017

In October 2020, a little over a year ago, Arnold Roth - one of the two bloggers who produce the contents of this site - was interviewed by British media presenter, sports journalist, and political commentator Jonny Gould.

The discussion ranged from what the most important single part of the British media had just done ["22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism?"] to some unreported consequences of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner release deal and on to the large and consequential matter of justice and what happens when our societies and their leaders stop giving it the absolute respect it has to get. 

And along the way, the matter of how can peace be done with Jordan. As Jonny Gould notes in the interview, the US is Jordan's largest provider of foreign aid. It gives billions of dollars to the Hashemite Kingdom each year. Why, he asks, is the US cozying up to the Jordanian king, Abdullah II, even as Jordan provides ongoing sanctuary to a killer who faces trial in the United States for her role in the murder of US citizens. (The reference is to our murdered daughter Malki, 15, who was a US national.) 

We're currently involved in renewed, immensely frustrating, contacts with senior officials of three governments as we continue to press for the Jordanian government (with whom we are not in any sort of dialogue and never have been) to be told what it must do - but still refuses - with the fugitive pizzeria bomber whom they have illicitly harbored since 2017, Ahlam Tamimi.

Against that background, here is a video of last year's interview.

Our sincere appreciation to Jonny Gould. Few journalists of the many with whom we have engaged in all the years of our campaigning come as well prepared as Jonny or as articulate as he is.

25-Jul-21: What we said in the media about King Abdullah's visit

Last week in the White House

Jordan's King Abdullah II is now back on Jordanian soil after more than three weeks of official travels in the United States. Only the last part - about a week in and around Washington - has gotten media coverage in the US. 

If, as we think is the case, his intentions and those of his handlers were to avoid getting cornered on the Tamimi issue, it has pretty much turned out to be a stunning success. 

He was not interviewed at all as far as we can tell, though we see he is advertised to be appearing later today on the weekly CNN talk show hosted by Fareed Zakaria. (This was very likely recorded before he left Washington.) 

He also succeeded in making not a single public comment about Jordan harboring for the past near-decade the self-confessed bomber of Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. Did he make statements about this behind closed doors? We may never know but as of the time of writing, the answer appears to be no.

We worked hard at trying to be heard. The US media have never made that easy and we are grateful to all the talented and willing professionals, colleagues and friends who advised us and gave a helping hand. 

The results, meaning what got published, are in the table below. (It's an embedded PDF - if you have problems accessing it, please be in touch with us at thisongoingwar@gmail.com) 

The actual results are another matter. We will be updating on them shortly.

31-Jan-20: Fox News break ranks with the mainstream media on Tamimi and Jordan

It's something of a milestone.

On Wednesday, over on the heavily-trafficked Fox News website, there's an informative long-form report that deals with our efforts to see Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Islamist who masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001, finally brought before US justice.

Written by Hollie McKay, the article is entitled "Most wanted female terrorist lives in freedom in Jordan despite extradition request for bombing that killed Americans" [archive]

Tamimi faces serious Federal charges in the United States for the central role she had in the mass-casualty attack. The FBI and the US Department of Justice have made serious efforts to take her into custody and reached what we think is the limit of their capabilities, absent the involvement of the political echelon of both the United States (by far the more important side) and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

The mainstream media pay almost no attention to Tamimi, to Jordan's egregious (and frankly disgraceful) refusal to comply with its own 1995 treaty with the US, to our efforts, to the effect the Jordan/Tamimi scandal is having on the unchecked spread of Islamist and extremist pro-Palestinian Arab violence, and to how US politicians (with some important exceptions) treat the affair as untouchable and us - the parents of one of the many murdered children who were targeted by Tamimi - as lepers.

Our thanks to Fox News and to Hollie McKay whom we've never met, for focusing on what we are sure is an important story that exemplifies how justice in the plainest sense can be denied for shabby and unspoken political motives.

We're hoping other parts of the media will now step up and give it some more attention. And that the pressure for Jordan to extradite this unrepentant savage so that US justice can at last be delivered to her in accordance with the law.

13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister

Jordan's Foreign Minister [Image Source]

This open letter is written by Frimet and Arnold Roth. They are the parents of Malka Chana Roth, murdered at the age of 15 in the Jerusalem Sbarro massacre, a bombing attack organized by Hamas and spearheaded by a Jordan student/reporter who has been sheltered, shielded and honored in and by Jordan since 2011.

To: His Excellency Minister Dr Ayman Hussein Abdullah Al-Safadi,

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Queen Alia Airport Street,
Amman 11180

Jordan

Dear Dr Safadi,

Thank you. In an exceedingly rare announcement yesterday as Jordan's foreign minister (as well as its deputy prime minister), you spoke publicly and for the record about how the Hashemite kingdom views the request it received officially in March 2017 from the United States to extradite fugitive bomber Ahlam Tamimi to Washington ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"].

As you know, the US began quietly and without publicity requesting this from Jordan four years before that, starting in 2013. Jordan has refused the entire time.

In simple terms ( and not using the words you used), here is what you conveyed:

Jordan has rejected the US request for some years. We confirm that Jordan still rejects it, no matter what the Americans want.

Tamimi, as you may know, faces charges in a United States federal court for her central role in the Hamas-inspired massacre that took the lives of many people, half of them children. One of those children, Your Excellency, was our daughter Malki who was just fifteen years old.

As her parents, what you have just done is, in a certain way, helpful to our efforts. Let us explain.

You and virtually the entire political leadership of Jordan have been careful to avoid all public mentions of the embarrassing and self-humiliating way Jordan harbors the confessed Sbarro bomber and FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist Ahlam Tamimi.

More than most people, and related to what we lost in the Sbarro atrocity, we know how willing you are to discuss Jordan's disavowal of its treaty obligations to the US in private meetings about which we have gotten reports. And how unwilling you are to talk about this important issue in public. 

It is quite a balancing act.

You might recall how we tried to draw out your response in an article we published more than two years ago, addressed like this current post, to you personally: "26-Jul-17: We listened carefully to Jordan's foreign minister and we have 10 questions".

And as you may remember, you ignored us totally. (So did and do your staff.) 

Special mention of Jordan's ambassador to Washington who right up until today blocks us on Twitter. We assume this is what feeling really embarrassed about an issue will cause even a polite and cultured person like Ambassador Dina Kawar to do.

In the last two weeks, the United States via an official announcement of its foreign ministry, the US State Department, has clarified in a gratifying way its rejection of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan's claims that the 1995 Extradition Treaty signed by the late King Hussein and President Bill Clinton's administration is invalid. 

You are invited to read what we wrote about that US statement just yesterday: "12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria".

This is also well reported in the online English-language edition of Haaretz. (You can click here to download the printed version.)

Also yesterday, possibly unwittingly, you spoke as Jordan's Foreign Minister to a public event and put Jordan's position - and presumably your own personal views as well - on the record.

We are pleased that you did. Pleased enough that we want others to know. As many others as possible. And especially the small tribe of US Congressional figures making frequent pilgrimages to Jordan and to its king ["09-Nov-19: Another delegation from US Congress at Jordan's royal court. Did extradition come up?"]

We found your blunt and deliberate words on the popular Jordanian news-site JO24. (We remember it as one of the Jordanian TV channels that lovingly provided Jordanian audiences with real-time, live video coverage of Ahlam Tamimi's wedding to her cousin Nizar on June 16, 2012).

Safadi: We have received US requests to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi. We confirm our commitment to the law that prevents it (JO24)

The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants Affairs, Ayman Safadi, said that several US authorities asked Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam Al-Tamimi, pointing out that Jordan respects and abides by the law "and the law does not allow it".

Safadi said during a press conference to talk about the expiry of the annexes of the Wadi Araba agreement related to the areas of Baqoura and Ghamr, on Monday, that Jordan is a state that respects the law. Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country and there is no legal basis for the delivery of Ahlam al-Tamimi.
He pointed out that there are requests from US authorities requesting the extradition of Tamimi, "but Jordan deals in accordance with the law and the law does not allow extradition."
In late March 2017, the Court of Cassation upheld a decision by the Amman Court of Appeal to reject Washington's request for the extradition of Ahlam al-Tamimi, accused of involvement in an attack that killed two US citizens in 2001.
Tamimi spent 10 years in Israeli jails after being sentenced to 16 years [might be a machine translation error - see below] in prison for participating in a martyrdom operation of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in the Sbarro restaurant in West Jerusalem in August 2001 in which 15 people were killed and 122 others were injured.
The occupation [a reference to Israel] released Tamimi and handed over to Jordan in 2011 as part of a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.
[Source: "Safadi: We have received US requests to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi. We confirm our commitment to the law that prevents it", JO24, November 12, 2019 - the original article is in Arabic; the English text is via Google Translate]

(For background to the US extradition request, see "03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice")

You are the latest in a line of foreign ministers - eight of them so far - to have served Jordan since its absolute monarch King Abdullah II ascended to the throne. You are the first to have publicly expressed, to the best of our knowledge, a frank and open disdain for an entirely proper request made by the United States, your country's most important strategic partner.

We confess to being surprised by how inaccurate your claims are, at least in the form reported by the Jordan media. Naturally, if they misquoted you (which sometimes happens to politicians), we assume you will see to it that the record is fixed.

Meanwhile, on the assumption that what we see does reflect what you said, allow us to point out some of what you got wrong. And some matters that ought to be more on your mind than they seem to be.

• You say "Jordanian law does not allow the extradition of a citizen to a third country". That's simply and absolutely not true of Jordanian law. 
• It's also not what Jordan's highest court said in its March 2017 decision to prohibit Tamimi's extradition. The court's argument has to do with a narrow, highly technical alleged flaw in how the treaty was accepted by Jordan. 
• And by the way, officials in the US State Department have told us the allegations of a flaw are simply untrue as a matter of fact. 
• As you surely also know, even if there was a technical flaw, it could have been fixed by Jordan's parliament (whose members are by and large selected by the king, according to this Wikipedia entry) at any time. Including this afternoon. Somehow no one in Jordan has gotten around to even trying.
• Leaving the dubious legal claims about the treaty aside, it's a fact that Jordan's still-active extradition treaty with the US went into full legal effect on July 29, 1995 and that both countries treated it as being valid and effective for the next 22 years. Jordan, as you know, has extradited several Jordanians to the US. We can give you the details of several of them who are currently serving long US prison sentences. Just ask.
• What's more, based on things we have learned from open source materials, Jordan has never once failed to extradite fugitive terrorists to the US when asked to do so - until the Tamimi case.
• Is there really any doubt (as you seem to claim) about Jordan having extradition treaties with other countries? The list certainly includes at least Syria, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Algeria, Kuwait and Azerbaijan [all documented here, at page 11] as well as Lebanon and France. And to our personal knowledge via connections in Canberra, an extradition treaty is currently being negotiated between Jordan and Australia where our murdered daughter Malki was born. We are fairly certain the real list is longer than what we have managed to find.
• Then there's the money: Jordan, which struggles economically and has huge burdens, is monumentally dependent on US aid. The US provides far more foreign aid to Jordan than anyone else does.
• In fact, on scanning the same Arabic media source that reports your disappointing statement about disavowing your country's treaty with the US, we were startled to find a report ["$1 Billion Additional Aid Will Reach Jordan Next Month", JO24 and archived here] that underscores in a concrete way how hugely important US support and generosity is to the kingdom. Somehow this is not reflected in the tone or content of what you are quoted as saying.
• While you are not to blame for this, we noticed what the JO24 report on your speech said about Ahlam Tamimi. It's sadly typical of the chronically inaccurate journalism emanating from other sources in your country. Tamimi, it wrongly states, is "accused of involvement in an attack that killed two US citizens in 2001". Accused? Really? She may be accused but why not mention that Tamimi herself proudly boasts that she did it. Worth knowing as well that she was convicted by a tribunal of three Israeli judges who sentenced her to sixteen terms of life imprisonment. JO24 says it was 16 years which isn't close to the truth (but could be a translation error). But in any event, she was out of prison as a result of the catastrophic Shalit Deal after just eight years. 
• And while it's true that she is charged by the US with killing just two US citizens - our daughter and the pregnant daughter, the only child, of our dear friends, the Haymans - the number of lives Tamimi extinguished, including the non-US citizens among them, is 16. One of those is a young mother, a US citizen, who has been lying unconscious in all the years since then.
• Thanks to very uncharacteristic and misplaced Hashemite tolerance, Tamimi had her own television program called Breezes of the Free or in Arabic “نسيم الأحرار” [background: "6-May-12: What lies behind freedom of the Palestinian Arab press?"], produced by Hamas and recorded unhindered, week after week, in the Jordanian capital between 2012 and 2016. From there it was beamed literally throughout the world, everywhere that Arabic speaking audiences were found. This turned Tamimi into a global celebrity. As you know.
• How does Jordan's willingness to allow Tamim's weekly incitement to terror, her gloating over the joys of blowing Jewish children to pieces, sit with your claim that the kingdom "respects and abides by the law"? Why is she permitted to appear as a celebrity in public events in Jordan? On Jordan's commercial television? Why was her rapturous welcome back to Jordan in October 2011 conducted in a government court-house? (Here's the proof.) Why isn't she in a Jordanian prison? Why isn't she on a flight to Washington now, in handcuffs and chains.
• And why, in the name of all that's good and decent, do you express no concern, no discomfort, no embarrassment, no nausea over the reality that Jordan has given Tamimi, who has never denied the murders in which she was involved, a dream life? Do you have children? Do you know anyone who does? Are you aware that Tamimi has boasted repeatedly that it was children she set out to kill with her bomb?

Thank you for clarifying matters.

You have delivered a good basis for the US media to engage with you. Your short speech will help them understand at a deeper level what your published comments mean in the context of US/Jordan relations and the billion dollars that's coming your way in December.

Naturally, we would welcome the opportunity to discuss what we have just placed in front of you. 

We would also want to take the opportunity to share with you some things you might not know about the beautiful life of the child whose unbearable loss we continue to mourn.

Sincerely,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem, Israel

UPDATE November 14, 2019: The reports of Ayman Safadi, foreign minister of Jordan, speaking clearly for the first time about how Jordan intends to deal with the kingdom's most famous terrorist (after more than two years of carefully maintained public silence) are now widely republished in the Arabic-speaking world. Some examples from the many we have seen this week:

• Report: Tension between Washington and Amman over Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam Al-Tamimi [Arabic], Russia Today, November 08, 2019
• Official... Jordan will not hand over Ahlam al-Tamimi [Arabic], Al-Madinah Al-Akhbariya (Jordan), November 11, 2019
• Safadi: There is no agreement between Jordan and the United States to hand over any wanted person and therefore we will not hand over Ahlam al-Tamimi [Arabic], Saraya News, Jordan's third-most visited website, November 11, 2019
• Jordan confirms its intention not to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi to America [Arabic], Alalam News Network, Iran, November 14, 2019
• Safadi: King made a decision to serve our national interests [Arabic], PETRA - Jordan's official government news agency, November 11, 2019. Significantly, the PETRA report concludes with this sentence: "Safadi reiterated Jordan's refusal to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi to the United States, adding that there is no agreement between the two countries to extradite wanted persons." (Archived version)

27-Apr-18: If it really means to tackle radicalism, the Kingdom of Jordan should extradite Ahlam Tamimi to the US

The US State Department announced a $5M reward on Ahlam Tamimi's head in January 2018 [Source]

His Excellency Dr Mohammad Momani,
State Minister for Media Affairs and Communications,
Amman, The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

Dear Dr Momani,

We know from very recent media reports that Jordan is currently navigating treacherous waters. Its economy is weak, prices are rising, incomes are not and government subsidies on bread and other essentials are being slashed or removed. Jordan's GDP per capita is barely a quarter of the world's average, roughly the same as Albania's. In 1965 (according to the World Bank), Israel's GDP was 2.7 times the size of Jordan's; today (IMF estimates for 2018) it's almost 7 times as large. The two countries have roughly the same size population and roughly equivalent resources.

We're hearing that the Jordanian populace are angry and the fury is growing. There have been riots over the prices of basic foods.

On top of all that, there's been an upsurge in grand larceny as this report from yesterday shows:

A series of armed bank robberies in Amman has rattled Jordan, with some activists blaming the country's rising crime rate on alleged government corruption and failed economic policies. Activists say increased taxes and food and fuel prices have eroded the savings and salaries of the country's poor, which has pushed some to resort to serious crime. Armed bank robberies are rare in Jordan, but Amman has recently seen four heists in branches of the Societe Generale Bank Jordan and Arab Bank - Jordan... Many Jordanians have since expressed seeming delight in the robberies on social media, in a reflection of anti-government sentiment... Activists say government policies were the main catalyst contributing to the increase in violent crime, something that was rare until recently. They point to the recent proliferation of violent street gangs, car thefts and drug trafficking rings that have dominated some sections of Amman with impunity... ["Jordan bank robberies rattle Amman, activists blame government", Al Jazeera, April 21, 2018]

While Al Jazeera speaks of four heists, you probably know the Jordanian media speak of a larger number ["6th bank robbery in Amman since start of year", Jordan Times, April 18, 2018]. This surely worries you and your ministerial colleagues.

The specific way you chose to address this problem caught our attention and made us want to get in touch. Here's the full text of a report we spotted in an independent Jordanian newspaper from a few days ago, quoting you:

AMMAN: Government spokesperson and State Minister for Media Affairs Dr Mohammad Momani condemned the sweeping sympathy for bank robbers on social media today, Thursday, and described sympathisers as criminals. During the Minister’s weekly appearance on Radio Jordan, every Thursday, he said that publically [sic] condoning criminal activity is a crime. The same goes in various countries around the world, he claimed. On Jerusalem, Mr Momani reaffirmed that Trump’s decision to relocate the US Embassy from Tel Aviv is illegal and hurtful to the peace process... It feeds radicalisation as it only fosters frustration and desperation, he underlined. ["Gov’t Speaker: Sympathising with Bank Robbers is Crime", Al Ghad, April 19. 2018]

You make some good points here. But if condoning bank robberies is a crime, Mr. Minister, then what do you say about protecting and honoring an unrepentant killer of children - the woman we describe below? And how do you justify allowing her to spread a lethal message of ultra-violent bigotry from the safe haven of Amman, Jordan? Why is she still living free in your country and sheltered by your legal system?

We traveled to Jordan a couple of times before - but not after - our child's murder at the hands of a Jordanian woman in 2001. These were brief stays and we weren't tourists. The meetings we had were with impressive decision-makers and thought-leaders. We enjoyed the experience. But to be clear, we don't claim special knowledge of your country. On the contrary - much about it puzzles us.

To illustrate: you underline (using Al Ghad's words) that radicalisation "fosters frustration and desperation". That sounds right to us. For what it's worth as non-Jordanians, we would encourage you and King Abdullah II to keep radicalisation of Jordanians as much under control as possible. Radicalisation is a widespread problem right across the Arab world. But it's not without solutions, provided the government leads the way. 

Dr Momani [Image Source]

But then what Jordan is doing to lead the way doesn't seem very well-advised. How your country has dealt with Ahlam Tamimi, Mr Minister, illustrates the point dramatically.

There's no need for us to tell you that among Jordanians, she's a celebrity, a figure of huge admiration, who has appeared often in your media and has a high public profile. As you surely know, she shared a public platform with several Jordanian lawmakers and a former Jordanian prime minister just a few weeks ago [We documented it here: "05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin"].

But this is an open letter. So we will explain to our readers that Mrs Tamimi is an admitted agent of the widely-outlawed jihadist organization Hamas, the first female to be recruited by them and – in terms of lives extinguished and grief inflicted – one of their most productive.

She boasts explicitly and often of the killings she masterminded and executed at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. She takes credit for choosing a site where significant numbers of children could be blown to pieces. Jewish children, of course; she makes clear that for her the conflict and the homicides are all about religion.

Tamimi faces Federal charges brought against her by the US government that were unsealed just a year ago, in March 2017. She is on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list with a reward on her head of $5M. Her extradition has been requested by the US government under the fully-in-force and undoubtedly valid 1995 extradition treaty your kingdom signed with the Clinton administration. By the way, several Jordanian felons have been extradited by Jordan to the United States since the treaty came into effect. Jordan and its courts pretend this is not so and journalists seem to be cowed into accepting the pretense.

For reasons most Jordanians understand and which your country's leadership obfuscates, Jordan says it will not hand her over to the US authorities. Tamimi herself understands how valuable your government's help has been to her and has publicly thanked the Kingdom of Jordan and its courts for this. She appreciates Jordan standing in solidarity with her. Her family has explicitly praised Jordan's judiciary - which of course is answerable to the king - for its "integrity, justice and patriotism" [source]. They recognize that they owe Jordan's leadership a large debt of thanks.

One might hope that there are large numbers of Jordanians who are sickened or at least embarrassed by this. Sadly not so much, it appears. For the past several years and up to today, we and several Jordanian friends who help us check the Jordanian media closely have not yet found a single instance of a Jordanian official or judge or religious leader or political commentator distancing your country from the horrific slaughter which elevated Ahlam Tamimi into a Jordanian hero.

We don't claim deep knowledge of your country. If we're mistaken and there is in fact meaningful outrage over the admiration she attracts among Jordanians, please do tell us.

We're left to wonder about all of this. Not one word of criticism in any part of your media. No public arguments. No evident self-examination. No dissent from the popular view that this homicidal sociopath is a champion of Jordan, a figure for your society's children to grow up and emulate.

Then there's the disturbing matter of one of your country's most admired educational centers, the Jordan Media Institute.

As the political official responsible for Jordan's media, you're surely aware of the matters we described here ["10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred"]. Your government created a school for training a new generation of Arabic-language journalists along what were to be Western lines, and right there on their website those best-and-brightest budding editors and reporters declared that Ahlam Tamimi was their role-model.

That astounding, appalling veneration for a confessed mass-murderer of Jewish children remained on view and uncontradicted right up until we publicized it. We successfully persuaded several (not all) of its foreign supporters to back off and to discontinue their funding.

The school's response was to silently, without any public explanation or attention, take down the entire site and pretend the scandal never happened. We documented all of this in articles we published on December 11, 2014; January 11, 2015; January 16, 2015; January 19, 2015; January 23, 2015; and February 4, 2015. 

By the way, we tried to speak directly with the JMI. Our attempts to get into a dialogue with its leadership were rebuffed in a blunt, ugly and completely unacceptable way. For all anyone knows, the students who graduated from the JMI since 2015 have taken up positions in the Arabic language journalism industry fully committed to the idea that their professional role-model is a mass-murdering Jordanian female who is on the run from the US legal system.

What impact will that have on your plans to reduce radicalisation and counter all the frustration and desperation? Perhaps not much given that Jordan's press freedom is in such bad shape:

Jordan drops two places on World Press Freedom index | Jordan Times | Mohammad Ghazal | Feb 12, 2015 | 21:44 | AMMAN — Jordan has dropped two places on the World Press Freedom Index 2015, ranking 143rd among 180 countries, as the government said it will continue to develop media freedom in the Kingdom. The Reporters Without Borders annual index released Thursday showed that Jordan continued a decline in press freedom, as it was ranked 141st in the 2014 index and 134th in the 2013 index. At the Arab level, Jordan ranked 11th... Commenting on the report, Minister of State for Media Affairs and Communications Mohammad Momani said: “We will continue to develop our freedom of expression.”

You are quoted there yourself, saying you will "continue to develop [Jordan's] freedom of expression". That was three years ago.

So how well did you do in the following years? Not too well. In the most recent index, Jordan is in 138th place - lower than in 2013, lower than in 2016. Jordan's press freedom is almost at the bottom of the world league... and sinking, as we wrote here.

Here's something else we wrote back then that deals directly with how to defeat radicalisation:

A society claiming to be at war with the terrorists and aspiring to "continue to develop" its "freedom of expression" and "media freedom" has to have a strategy that goes beyond self-aggrandizing press statements. It also needs to be substantially more upfront with the outside world - and with itself, it seems - about the lethal support for jihad that infects the ranks of key parts of its population, including some of the journalists whose future careers it is proudly hailing... ["13-Feb-15: Jordanian accuracy"]

It's still relevant today. 

We still hope and expect to see Jordan comply with its international treaty obligations described well here ["Pressure on Jordan: Refusal to extradite mastermind of deadly 2001 Sbarro suicide bombing in Jerusalem contravenes international law and agreements", Michelle Munneke - American University Washington College of Law, National Security Law Brief, October 28, 2017] and hand Tamimi over to the US so she can be brought to justice.

If Jordan's leadership is sincere about suppressing radicalism, it will share that aspiration.

Sincerely,

Frimet and Arnold Roth

Jerusalem

(A version of this open letter appeared originally in Times of Israel on April 23, 2018 under the title "Extradite Tamimi: An open letter to Jordan’s media minister". If you are a friend or acquaintance of the minister, please pass this along to him. He's sure to want to respond to us.)

20-Jan-18: Shutting down media critics in Jordan isn't quite the challenge it might seem to be

As a large delegation of American officials headed by Vice President Mike Pence makes its way in the coming hours to Jordan, we're thinking about what goes on over there. What do people think in Jordan? How free are they to express themselves? And why aren't these matters talked about more?

They're important questions at multiple levels. Jordan is, for all practical purposes, the largest and most important of the three Palestinian Arab entities. The other two of course are the almost-state of Palestine, the one run by the Mahmoud Abbas clique from Ramallah; and the unspeakably monstrous Hamas polity operating mainly, but not only, from the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Arabs are a majority of Jordan's population but it remains a challenge to get firm data and meaningful definitions. (For some valuable background, see this 2014 Gatestone Institute post by Khaled Abu Toameh: "Why Jordan Doesn't Want More Palestinians".)

It's hard to know what Jordanians think or believe because they have one of the most tightly controlled news reporting industries in the world. And by control we mean the power exercised by the king and those who are with him.

Here's a relatively minor but fresh instance from a non-Jordanian source:

Jordan arrests two journalists after complaint by finance minister | Critics say arrests are assault on free speech and call for release of journalists
Middle East Eye | Wednesday 17 January 2018
Free speech advocates are calling for the release of two Jordanian journalists who were arrested on Tuesday over a complaint by the country’s finance minister after a report accused him of tax evasion. Omar Malhas, the minister, said the report by Shadi al-Zinati and Omar al-Mahrama on news website Jfranews was false. Now they face charges of violating the country’s Press and Publication Law and Cybercrime Law... Khaled Qudah, the chair of JPA’s Freedoms Committee [JPA is the Jordan Press Association] said the cybercrime law shackled journalists. “JPA is working diligently to release Zinaty and Mahrama because of our belief that these arrests strike at the heart of freedom of expression in Jordan,” Qudah was quoted as saying by Jordanian newspaper Alghad. He wondered why the two journalists were in jail while the case was pending.

It goes on to quote a member of parliament:

Jordanian MP Saddah Alhabashneh said the arrests "disgraced" freedom of expression in Jordan. He accused the government of "muffling" criticism after its latest economic decisions that aim to impoverish Jordanians, Jfranews reported...

Freedom of expression in Jordan has a nice ring to it. But it's an oxymoron. In its Freedom of the Press 2017 report, Freedom House calls Jordan's media "not free" with a score of 68 out of 100. That might sound reasonable - till you learn that the Freedom House scale gives a country 0 points if its media are completely free and 100 if they are completely unfree.

Out of 199 countries evaluated by Freedom House, Jordan is ranked at position number 155. Those below it on the list include Qatar, Central African Republic, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Venezuela, Russia,  Kazakhstan, North Korea and Turkmenistan.

Yesterday's Jordan Times, a major media voice that appears to be close to the monarchy and reflects its view of things, gives us Chapter Two of the saga.

Two journalists arrested over defamatory tax evasion claims released on bail
Rana Husseini | Jordan Times | January 18, 2018 | AMMAN — The Amman prosecutor on Thursday decided to release on bail two journalists arrested for allegedly publishing tax evasion accusations against the Finance minister earlier this year... Editor-in-chief of Jafra news website Omar Maharmeh, who is also a board member of the Jordan Press Association (JPA) and reporter Shadi Zaynati were ordered detained at Marka Prison by Amman Prosecutor Abdullah Abul Ghanam on Tuesday. Minister of Finance Omar Malhas had filed a complaint against the two journalists... On January 9, the Income and Sales Tax Department (ISTD) Director General Bashar Nasser refuted as “inaccurate” the Jafra report accusing Malhas of tax evasion during his service at the HBTF.... Nasser explained that, according to Article 12 of the Income Tax Law [followed by lengthy technical explanation of Jordan's tax law]...  “This proves the inaccuracy of the news reported by several websites,” he concluded.

In truth, we have no idea - and don't much care - if the Finance Minister of Jordan cheated on tax payments. But the idea that investigative reporters can be thrown into jail for saying he did essentially removes the mask from a totalitarian regime that - before most other things - looks after its insiders and their interests.

Image Source

They're are out on bail now. But the Jordan Times says the two hapless journalists are going to stand trial "next week as the prosecutor has already heard several witnesses and experts in the case".

Next week? That's revealing. Justice might not be perfect over there. But it moves remarkably fast - when that's what the insiders want.

(The case of our daughter's murderer, the Jordanian FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, came before Jordan's highest appeals court this past March a mere handful of days after the US announced last March that it wanted her extradited under the 1995 Jordan/Israel Treaty. The court pushed off the American request on grounds that expert non-Jordanian legal observers say are "without basis".)

Now notice how the Jordan Times gives its readers no sense at all of the outrage these arrests caused among civil libertarians, international journalist's rights groups and people who worry about the right to express yourself freely and other fundamental human rights.

People living outside Jordan know that claims of the kind made against that Jordanian politician are daily fare in the civilized world and its media. But in Jordan, there's no editorial comment about how they were thrown into prison even before charges were heard before any court. These are sanctions of the kind a state might use when violence has been done or alleged. But tax evasion?

There's a clear message here for any Jordanian thinking of going public with revelations that might affect Jordan's most powerful people. The affair leaves you wondering how anyone expects well-informed but dissenting Jordanian viewpoints to ever be heard on issues larger than government ministers avoiding taxes - allegedly.

Jordan is home to what's regarded as the most ambitious and interesting experiment in professional training for journalists in the Arabic-speaking world: the Jordan Media Institute. As we have shown in this blog over and again, we hold very negative views about the values on which it is based and have written about them. Not the values it claims to hold - those seem fine and are sorely needed. But those which the world actually gets to see. And those are two very different things. 

We don't know if JMI has said or done anything on behalf of this week's two arrested reporters. But since its founder and prime mover, Princess Rym Ali, is a sister-in-law of the king, we're not wildly hopeful of it taking courageous stands for freedom of the press. (Though you never know.)

If you're not already familiar with Jordan Media Institute (and especially if you're a member of Vice President Pence's entourage making its way to Jordan as we write these words), here's a short list of some posts we blogged about it - and by extension about the unique interplay of extreme violence and professional aspiration that we think the school represents:

• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred
• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?
• 16-Jan-15: Incubating terror-minded journalists in Jordan but they have an answer to the criticisms
• 19-Jan-15: The dilemmas of funding and enabling terror

We wrote these right after discovering that the students at this prestigious institution had declared Ahlam Tamimi, the Hamas agent who killed our daughter Malki ["17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices"], masterminded the Sbarro massacre in 2001 and now a free citizen of Jordan ["03-Dec-17: Understanding Jordan's king and his "holistic" approach to terror"], as their role-model. The details are in the posts above.

What happened at the Jordan Media Institute and the scandalous way it was hushed up ought to be factored into people's thinking when they wonder about the state of democracy, human rights and terrorism in the Arab world - and even (especially) in the parts of it that people think are moderate.

15-Jun-16: Contemplating a Pal Arab lust for terror, The Economist goes for whitewash

Villagers in Nabi Saleh prepare to celebrate the release (via the Shalit Deal)
of the most celebrated of the clan's numerous murderers, the woman who
engineered the Sbarro pizzeria massacre [Image Source]. For obvious reasons,
the adoration of its murderers is generally absent from
agenda-driven reporting about the odious clan.

Over at UK Media Watch ("Promoting Fair and Accurate Coverage of Israel") they have just published a critical analysis of what it takes to pull the wool over the eyes of the editors at one of the world's best-regarded weeklies:

The Economist fancies itself a sophisticated magazine, one which “offers authoritative insight” into news, politics, business, finance, science and technology.  However, as it pertains to Israel, they've sometimes proven themselves just as vulnerable to the mindless group-think plaguing the rest of the media. A case in point involves their review of The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine by Ben Ehrenreich (The view on the ground, June 11), a book featuring the Tamimis of the West Bank town of Nabi Saleh.  Though some British media outlets have caught on to the family’s well-choreographed ‘Pasbara’, the anonymous Economist critic barely shows even a hint of journalistic skepticism in the face of Ehrenreich’s risible narrative... ["‘Sophisticated’ Economist duped by Pallywood tale starring the Tamimis", Adam Levick, UK Media Watch - today]

Ehrenreich, who created what the editors at the Economist call "an elegant and moving account", came to our attention three years ago with a cover story he wrote for the New York Times Sunday Magazine - an appalling confection spun from fantasy, carefully-phrased half-truths, wishful thinking and adoration of the redemptive power of murder. 

We hated it. And not only because of the connection of the people of whom he was writing with the murder of our daughter Malki - a tight, meaningful, ongoing and ugly connection.

We wrote two responses at the time. One was in the form of a letter from Frimet Roth to the editors of the NY Times ["To See the NY Times Gloss Over this Travesty of Justice is Journalism of the Most Amoral Sort"] which they declined to publish. The other was a post on this blog - until today the most widely-read piece we have written ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"].

Ehrenreich's previous round of
canonizing the Tamimi clan
[background]

Adam Levick's fine UK Media Watch piece today refers back to that, noting how Ehrenreich:

romanticized the culture of terrorism in the Tamimis’ ‘little village’ and whitewashed the crime of its most infamous resident, a woman named Ahlam Tamimi, one of the main terrorists responsible for the deadly Sbarro bombing in 2001. The Economist review makes no mention of Ahlam Tamimi or the disturbing fact that, according to Ehrenreich in his NYT Magazine feature, she is still quite admired in the town. It’s actually quite extraordinary that a publication which prides itself on peeling off the superficial layers of a story to reveal the story behind the story published a review of a book featuring the Tamimis without giving readers even the slightest inclination that the family, and the protests they stage, represents something akin to Palestinian street theater, a Pallywood production packaged as real news.

The village of Nabi Saleh, almost all of whose inhabitants are Tamimis (owing to a deep attachment to ensuring members marry within the small clan) is far from being an idyllic pastoral hamlet. But it very much wants to be seen as one and goes to extraordinary lengths to conjure up a Potemkin village facade, an illusion replete with contrived legends of a struggle for decency, respect, human rights and a beleagured little pond of spring water. 

It's mostly invented, and cultivated assiduously. We explained some of the how a few months ago ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?"].

The true facts are not hard to get at. Yet no journalist we have met or whose work we have read appears to have made that effort. In fact, we can't recall even one published mainstream analysis where highly appropriate and seriously troubling questions were raised about the Tamimi narrative.

We're left to ponder, and not for the first time, the manifest decline in the mass media's commitment to careful, factual, non-partisan, well-researched writing and respect for the common values of democratic societies - above all the value of human life.

25-May-16: Wall-to-wall agreement at last: The Pal Arab kleptocrats and the devastation they wreak

Luxury and privilege in Ramallah's so-called "diplomatic
compound", reserved for PA insiders. The AP caption reads: "The
gated community of villas with well-tended flower gardens... may help
explain why Palestinians almost universally believe there is
corruption in the government of President Mahmoud
Abbas. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)"

One of the open-secrets about the seemingly-never-ending nature of violent Palestinian Arab hatred of Israel, Israelis and Jews is the sustaining role played by money and power.

That's one of the reasons we mention often how the Palestinian Arabs live in a society ruled by kleptocrats - those aggressive and powerful Abbas/Arafat regime insiders whose well-being and wealth depend on keeping the flames of hatred going and their fellow-citizens under their heels.

Yesterday (Tuesday), Associated Press syndicated a somewhat rare look at what the ordinary folk think of their Palestinian Authority overlords, and how that translates into action.

The original AP version of the article (under the headline "In tough times, most Palestinians view government as corrupt", Karin Laub and Mohammed Daraghmeh, May 24, 2016) is archived here.

But about the headline: is it fair and accurate to say "most" when the proportion of Palestinian Arabs convinced of their governing regime's corruption is almost 96% according to the data quoted by AP. Given a 3% margin of error, that's about as close to unanimous as public opinion ever gets. What other consensus issues do we hear about anywhere where a trivial 4% of the total population disagree? Never happens.

Let's also note that massive Palestinian Arab corruption is neither new nor a secret. As the AP piece notes:

[T]he government hasn't submitted annual budget reports for mandatory audits for four years, effectively preventing scrutiny of how millions of dollars are spent, said corruption monitor Aman, the Palestinian branch of Transparency International.

How those millions are spent is precisely at the heart of the ongoing scandal via which willfully-gullible European governments, along with the co-operative United States, continue to fund the Arafat/Abbas Rewards for Terror scheme while pretending not to notice the array of fig leaves and overt lies. Those serve as cover for the jihadist murders - mainly of Israelis - that everyone involved knows is the actual purpose of the cash flowing into Ramallah.

If we have to choose one particular shortcoming in yesterday's news report, it's that AP could have depicted, but did not, Palestinian Arab corruption in ways that might have significantly changed people's perceptions. How? By photographs of those concrete expressions of corruption that we know about but that are rarely seen.

Pictures of villas for the powerful and well-tended, paved and - of course - guarded streets do that well. A shame that AP offered only one such image in its syndicated story (the photo at the top of this post), and that one shows no human beings. The text describing the exclusive neighbourhood ("built for senior Palestinian Authority officials on subsidized land") helps, but it's almost always true that pictures trump words for impact.

Modesty is not exactly at the top of their priorities. This lavish edifice
is currently under construction in Ramallah. The caption in
the Daily Mail article reads: "Grand: Ian Birrell at the £8 million
presidential palace on the West Bank - built by a country that
got £72 million in foreign aid 

There are probably many other concrete expressions of PA corruption that could easily have been caught on camera but were not, and perhaps never will. AP along with every other news company is subject to the reality that the production of photographic images from the areas under PA control has for years been subtly (and almost silently) controlled by the Abbas circle. By far the majority of photographers working in that field are themselves Arabs, who are the source of the photos syndicated out by Reuters, Xinhua, AFP and Associated Press.

What kind of images almost never emerge? How about photos or clips of PA insiders - the fat-cat ministers, the fancily-dressed bureaucrats, their privileged children - getting in or out of their fancy SUVs and limousines. We're thinking of that in particular because it's a reality we encounter when we make a weekly trip to the community south of Jerusalem to visit grandchildren. This involves our driving past Bethlehem, and sharing the road with drivers leaving or entering Bethlehem or Hebron or the surrounding villages.

If you have not made that journey recently, or visited other parts of the PA's domain, you might find the reality quite stunning. We do, seated in our seventeen-year-old Toyota Corolla and watching the procession of high-performance Audis, BMWs, Hyundais and Mercs glide by.

This video clip, made last year by a creative (and justifiably angry) Israeli individual with an activist bent, Ezri Tubi, delivers in simple in-your-face form an illustration of how badly people's ignorance and/or misconceptions serve them about non-trivial aspects of the lives lived by our Pal Arab neighbours.



Very rarely, images do emerge of the armed security men - many thousands of them, in at least eight different official organizations [source] - who keep the PA elite safe from their disenfranchised citizens. Sure, AP reporters can and do write (mildly) about this sort of thing, as we have just seen. And from time to time they can also remind the world that the Palestinian Arabs are not only exploited but their own power circles, but can do next to nothing about it since those same power circles have no interest in allowing them to exercise their democratic right to vote in elections. It's good to see those things written and said occasionally because they are true and meaningful.

But there's no substitute for producing images and the honest contexts that need to accompany them. (And yes, we know life and freedom are about many issues, not just villas and Volvos.) Photos really get into people's heads in ways that words rarely do. However that threatens those PA insiders and so their appearance is much rarer.

(In case it's not obvious, corruption in Gaza and among its Hamas ruling clique is as bad, if not worse.)

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Palestyńska kleptokracja i jej zachodni sojusznicy") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her again, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]