16-May-20: The friends of Jordanian fugitive Ahlam Tamimi, including her lawyers, are speaking up. But not all of them.

This appeared on Instagram today. We explain it below.

There's a serious degree of interest and concern in Jordan over the letter that seven US Congressional lawmakers sent to Jordan's ambassador to Washington three weeks ago.

As far as we know, the embassy hasn't responded so far.

The text of that letter and some examples of the rising anxiety demonstrated by Jordan's news industry are both in this long post we put up on Thursday: "14-May-20: In Jordan, they're standing with confessed bomber Tamimi but worried".

In tonight's update, there's an Arabic report (machine translated to English) from a Jordanian news site, Addustour, that was published this afternoon (Saturday):

Quote

Amman: The Legal Defense Committee formed by the Jordanian lawyers for the liberated prisoner and Jordanian citizen, Ahlam Al-Tamimi, followed the news that circulated about Republican Party representatives in the American Congress who sent a message to the Embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Washington, its content a threat to impose sanctions on the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to hand over Jordanian citizenship. 

The freed prisoner, Ahlam Al-Tamimi... is considering a case brought by a group of Zionist Jews against Ahlam's citizenship. In this regard, the defense establishment asserts the following:

1. This request comes in the context of the movement of the American Zionist lobby to pressure the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the context of the deal of the century.
2. This request is not separate from the US administration's support for the Zionist entity that seeks to annex the settlements of the West Bank and the Jordan Valley.
3. [Tamimi's] legal defence team confirms that the Jordanian judiciary previously said its clear and unequivocal speech in rejecting the request to extradite [Tamimi] via criminal case number 16685/2016 which was appealed and dismissed by the highest judicial body in Jordan on the basis of lack of fulfillment of extradition conditions, the most important of which is the absence of an approved extradition agreement under law from the National Assembly [Jordan's parliament] and compliance with its constitutional requirements.
4. The defence team confirms that the Jordanian judiciary will address this Zionist pressure with its known patriotism to prevent any step towards handing over Jordanian citizen Ahlam Tamimi which affects Jordanian national sovereignty. It affirm its previous decisions not to surrender in line with the directives of the Jordanian state, leadership, government and people.
5. The defense team confirms that it trusts Jordan's leadership, government and people to not accept the extradition of its citizens, to not accept abuse of Jordanian national sovereignty, to not become subject to blackmail or coercive policies, that the dignity of its children is not subject to bargaining, that the Jordanian state will not do anything contrary to what was decided by the Jordanian judiciary and represented by Jordan's highest judicial authority.
6. The defense team confirms that it stands behind Ahlam Tamimi in defending her and will spare no effort in taking all legal measures to prevent any step in this direction.

Head of defence

Advocate Hikmat Al-Rawashada

Unquote

The same defence lawyer is quoted in an outrageous (even by their standards) Aljazeera profile of Tamimi. You might want to read our analysis of it: "24-Mar-17: Our daughter's grinning killer is shocked the US is pursuing her and for no obvious reason"

Also today (Saturday):

Dima Tahboub, is quoted in Albosala, another Jordanian news platform. She's a Jordanian lawmaker who happens to block us on Twitter (we're not offended) and who serves as spokesperson for the Islamic Action Front, the political wing of Jordan's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and closely aligned with the terrorists of Hamas.

She reacts in that article to what she terms American threats to Jordan By threats she evidently means the April 30 letter to Ambassador Dina Kawar from the GOP Congressmen. Plainly identifying with the unrepentant bomber and killer of children, Tahboub praises Tamimi for having moved from victim to initiator, from defence to attack, and to becoming a person who continues the struggle, advancing the role of Palestinian women martyrs.

Neither the clever lawyers nor the Islamist spokesperson bother to address what Tamimi happily confesses to doing at Sbarro. They have nothing to say about the people murdered there that day, our daughter Malki among them. Or about any of the simple, well-framed questions that Jordan's ambassador in Washington has not yet mannaged to answer.

In Tahboub's case, that's not so surprising given that three years ago [link] she took the opportunity of an interview (in English - she has a doctorate from a British university) on Germany’s international Deutsche Welle platform to express her support for Ahmad Daqamseh, the Jordanian soldier who in 1997 opened fire across the border at a group of Israeli teenage girls from Bet Shemesh (or "human trach" as she referred to them in the media) on a school excursion, killing seven of them. We assume her support comes from the same dark place that brings her to stand up for Tamimi. Daqamseh, like Tamimi is free and living a charmed life in Jordan.

She told Tim Sebastian, formerly a BBC luminary, in that DW interview that many Jordanians “still see him [Daqamseh] as a hero. So if you are incriminating my viewpoint, you are also incriminating the viewpoint of the Jordanian people”. This is true. We see the same adoration at work with the Sbarro massacre fugitive, except that it's the US that wants her in custody now.

And also today, it's instructive to see who's not yet speaking up. Tamimi, who is adept at, and depends on, social media, is currently operating yet another Instagram account. Her previous accounts there as well as on Twitter and Facebook have been shut down one after the other. This one - which we prefer not identify at this stage - is still going and we have asked for it to be taken down too.

She posted a video clip there this afternoon (that's a screen shot at the top of this post with the identifying particulars blurred out) from the Turkish government's official TRT media platform - a totally-supportive video message that starts with the question "Will Jordan hand Tamimi over?"

Then she added the Arabic text on the right:

"We are still awaiting the Jordanian official response to the latest escalation"

And to round out this review, there is this manifesto (below) issued in the name of something called "the family of the freed prisoner, Ahlam Al-Tamimi" and published in Arabic here (machine translation):

Quote

Image Source: http://www.rmix.ps/archives/269277

Based on what has been circulated recently of the Kingdom being requested to hand over Jordanian citizen Ahlam Al-Tamimi to the United States of America, we clarify the following:

1. On April 30, 2020, seven lawmakers from the Republican Party in the US Congress sent a letter to the Embassy of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Washington threatening to impose sanctions on the Kingdom if it refused to hand over our daughter Ahlam Al-Tamimi.
2. This message comes within the framework of the continuous American endeavor to pressure the Kingdom to surrender which the kingdom, its king, government and people, categorically reject. And this is what it clearly expressed in the past and at this time in line with its steadfast national position to protect its sovereignty and preserve the dignity of its citizens, and its persistent political and legal positions that are not subject to prejudice or derogation by any country.
3. This latest endeavor on the part of some American bodies with a legislative role - even if it intersects with the efforts of all other American and Zionist parties that seek to fulfill the demand for extradition - carries a great danger of exploiting the law to achieve political interests. In exchange for [the US] continuing to provide financial aid to countries [Jordan], it is considered a political pressure card to compel these countries [Jordan] to accept, which raises great concern and many fears among the family despite its belief that Jordan will not be subject to extortion or coercion policies, and that the dignity of its citizens is not compromised.
4. We, as a family, are confident that the response to the message of the Republican representatives will not deviate an inch from this national constant... Despite all the pressing efforts in this matter, money will not be accepted to be politicized in order to waste the dignity of the nation.
5. Ahlam Al-Tamimi is Jordanian by birth, origin and citizenship, and Palestinian by origin, the daughter of this sacred Jordanian soil and its patriotic clans whose authentic roots lie deep in this pure land from its north to its south and from its east to its west. She is the ambassador of her country, Jordan, and her conscience in the struggle to regain the usurped right.
6. Ahlam Al-Tamimi is not responsible for any statement attributed to her from some websites, news agencies, and many pages on social media bearing her name and states are attributed to her are statements she never uttered and are exploited by the abusers.
7. Ahlam Al-Tamimi does not have any social media accounts.
8. This platform will be the only expression of the position on the issue of Ahlam Al-Tamimi, and only through it can the correct information be reached.
9. Your rallying around the just cause of Ahlam Tamimi and your support and support for it is the real immunity, and the sure guarantee that she remains safe from and unreachable by foreign hands.

As long as you and as long as your tireless struggle for the elevation of the nation and the victory of its children...

The Tamimi family
Wednesday May 13, 2020

Unquote

Points 6, 7 and 8 pretty clearly indicate that people looking out for the murdering fugitive's interests realize she has been too free with her public opinions, particularly those that insult or offend Hashemite King Abdullah II of Jordan. So to those whom it may concern, the message is simple: she didn't say it even if you think she did, and she couldn't have said it because (among other reasons) she doesn't have any social media accounts. 

This is patent nonsense.

Evidently with all the media activity going on in her support, Tamimi is still waiting for the people who count, those in Jordan's royal palace a short distance from her home, to step up. And as we point out here, she gives the impression of someone who's running out of patience.

15-Apr-18: On Israel's violent Gaza border, a battle of narratives

Friday's action on the Gaza side [Image Source]

We're into Week 3 of the Hamas-driven violence on Israel's Gaza border. And despite some serious efforts by Al Jazeera and others to "keep it in the forefront of the Arab public agenda" [Washington Post, April 13, 2018], the signs are that those Gazan riots do

not dominate the Arab media to the extent one might have expected. The events erupted in the middle of a crowded regional political agenda. In previous Arab-Israeli crises, popular Arab media outlets would have typically broadcast wall-to-wall coverage accompanied by furious talk shows and mobilizational programming, drowning out all other issues. This time, while most Arab media did cover the Gaza protests and subsequent violence, many key outlets covered it as one issue among many. These changes are rooted in fundamental alterations in the structure of the Arab media and the underlying political conflicts that have evolved since the 2011 Arab uprisings... [Washington Post, April 13, 2018]

Official Israeli sources are said [here for instance] to believe there is a gradual decrease in the number of Gazans participating in the "protests". And there are signs of news media weariness - even in the Arab world - with how Palestinian Arab "victimhood" is being milked in these staged Gaza border events. Here's an illustration.

It's not usually recognized by news consumers far from the scene but those reports of Arab casualties - the dead, the wounded on the Gazan side - always emanate from the Gazan Ministry of Health. Sounds reasonable, right? And would they lie?

But that ministry is an operating arm of the terrorist organization called Hamas. The name is an acronym based on Ḥarakat al-Muqāwamah al-ʾIslāmiyyah whose English translation is Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas is a Palestinian Arab Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist organization which was formed by and remains affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Mid-afternoon today (Saturday), this report was published by one of the Palestinian Arab news agencies:

Four people were killed and others injured on Saturday in an Israeli artillery attack targeting a group of citizens who were riding a three-wheeled tuk tuk motorcycle east of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Eyewitnesses and a medical source in Rafah said that Israeli artillery shelled the eastern border of Rafah targeting a group of young men who  were moving rubber tires near the eastern border of the city. Dr. Ashraf al-Qadra the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza said that 4 Palestinians were  killed & several others wounded  in different Israeli shelling, pointing out that the martyrs and injuries arrived to  Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospitals. ["Four Palestinians were killed in Israeli artillery shelling east of Rafah", Palestine News Network, April 14, 2018]

Ma'an News Agency's version

And this version from the notorious Ma'an News Agency:

Four Palestinians were killed and others injured after Israeli artillery shelling targeted an auto rickshaw in the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza Strip, on Saturday afternoon. Locals told Ma’an that Israeli artillery stationed along the border with Gaza fired missiles at the auto rickshaw, killing four and injuring other passers-by. The four slain Palestinians were identified as Amjad Qartous, 18, Ayed Hamaydeh, 23, Hesham Kallab, 18, and Hesham Abdul-Al, 22. All four victims are from the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah...  Despite widespread outcry from international rights groups who have condemned Israel’s excessive use of forces against the civilian protesters, Israeli has maintained its open-fire rules for the Gaza border. ["4 Palestinians, 2 teenagers, killed after Israeli artillery fire targets auto rickshaw", Ma'an, April 14, 2018]

Turns out this is not, in reality, another case of Israeli artillery liquidating innocent and unarmed Palestinian Arabs - two teenagers! - going about their ordinary weekend activities.

From Arab media April 14, 2018, the Al Quds Brigade
(Islamic Jihad) "accidental martyrs" [Image Source]

The IDF (according to this source today) usually declares military strikes on the Strip but said today that "contrary to reports" it had not carried out any military activity in Gaza at the time. Now a Times of Israel report this evening explains:

Palestinian terror organization Islamic Jihad said Saturday that four of its members were killed in an accidental explosion near the Gaza Strip border with Israel. The group said in a statement that the four died during “preparations,” without giving further details. Army Radio reported that the terrorists were killed while carrying explosives in an all-terrain vehicle, suggesting the blast may have been a “work accident.” AFP said they were riding a tuk tuk vehicle which exploded a few hundred meters from the border with Israel. The four fatalities were named as Hisham Abdel Al, Elias Al Katrous, Ae’d Al Hamaydeh, and Mohammad Al Krinawi, according to Palestinian sources. Islamic Jihad is an ally of terrorist group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. The group, which is supported by Iran, has fought alongside Hamas against Israel in multiple wars, most recently in 2014. ["Four Islamic Jihad members killed in Gaza explosion", Times of Israel, April 14, 2018]

(There's nothing unusual in the names of the dead Palestinian Arabs being different from one account to another.)

Some aspects of what was reported about yesterday's (Friday's) chapter in the planned six-week-long agitation on the Gaza side of the Israel border

• "One Palestinian, Ahmed Hirzallah, 28, was shot dead and 416 others were injured" [Palestine Chronicle, April 13, 2018]
• "One Palestinian was declared dead after being shot by Israeli gunfire Friday evening. Another 968 were wounded as another day of clashes erupted between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli forces along the Israel-Gaza border. The Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza identified the 28-year-old as Islam Rushdi Hirzallah..." [i24News.tv, April 13, 2018]
• Israel once again "used extreme violence to brutally crush these peaceful protests... More than 900 Palestinian protesters were wounded in the violent Israeli crackdown, according to Gaza health officials... During the April 13 protest, the violence was once again clearly premediated. Media reports noted that, in advance of the peaceful demonstration, the Israeli military had deployed tanks, drones, and snipers to the border.Israel has claimed that the peaceful protests, which are known as the Great March of Return, are being used to cover up so-called terrorism. However there is no independent evidence that Palestinian demonstrators have used the demonstrations to launch any attacks." ["Israel Mows Down Unarmed Gaza Protesters for 3rd Week as US Blocks UN Investigation", IMEMC, April 14, 2018]
• "At least four Palestinians were killed in Gaza Saturday, Palestinian Health Ministry confirmed saying the deaths were the result of a tank shell attack by Israel’s Army just east of the city of Rafah. However, Reuters reported an Israeli military spokesman saying “we have no knowledge of any Israeli strike in the area,” denying involvement. Local residents told Reuters the four men were members of the Islamic Jihad group, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet." [Telesur, posted this afternoon]
• "The “Great March of Return” protests that Hamas and Gaza activists launched on March 30 saw their lowest turnout in three weeks and the smallest number of casualties in clashes with Israeli forces, with one Palestinian killed and 528 reported injured on Friday. Israeli authorities have been steadfast and on message about the protesters being a cover for violent action, while Hamas and the local activists have attempted to keep up the momentum. The proportion of those injured by live fire has declined by half, indicating a major reduction not only in the size of the protests but the level of violence along the border... [On Friday] the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza published a list of casualties from the past two weeks, stating that 3,078 Palestinians had been injured, including 1,236 from live ammunition. It claimed four people had lost legs. Of those injured 445 were under 18 and 152 were women. Thirty had been killed. It also said 30 paramedics had been injured and 14 journalists... ["Three weeks: How Gaza's mass protests are failing to make an impact", Seth Franzman in Jerusalem Post, April 14, 2018]

It's unlikely the Hamas organizers of this campaign are going to allow it to dwindle into insignificance. Unfortunately since the tools at their disposal tend to be limited to focusing on violence and generating human losses on their side (on our side too but that's less in their control), there's no basis for breathing more easily at this point.

02-Jul-17: PA, vowing it will never, ever cut Rewards for Terror payments, is cutting hundreds of them

Image Source

The Palestinian Arab Rewards for Terror landscape is suddenly going through some changes.

That's not the official name of the long-running Palestinian Authority payments scheme that provides lifetime cash rewards and meaningless, well-paying jobs for convicted terrorists. But in the interests of calling a spade a spade it's how we have referred to it for years. (Others call it Pay-to-Slay which captures the nuance of this ugliness well.)

Some background from a June 16, 2017 on-line paper published by Middle East Media Research Institute [link]

Since its establishment, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been paying allowances to Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, both past and present, as well as to the wounded and to the families of individuals "martyred," including in carrying out attacks against Israelis... The allowances paid by the PA to incarcerated and released prisoners and to the families of "martyrs" were described in detail by MEMRI president Yigal Carmon in a July 6, 2016 testimony to the U.S. Congress (See MEMRI Daily Brief No. 97, MEMRI President Yigal Carmon's Testimony To House Committee On Foreign Affairs, July 6, 2016: Palestinian Authority Support For Imprisoned, Released, And Wounded Terrorists And Families Of 'Martyrs,' July 6, 2016)... The support for the prisoners is mainly anchored in two laws from 2004, Law No. 14 and Law No. 19, and in a 2013 amendment to the latter law... The laws and amendment stipulate that the PA must provide the prisoners with financial support and with education for them and their children, and that upon their release it must see to their rehabilitation and employ them in PA institutions. The laws grant the prisoners a series of benefits, including exemption from various fees for education, professional training and healthcare, as well as a monthly allowance during their incarceration, as well as a clothing allowance. The laws state further that, in case of released prisoners employed as PA civil servants, the years spent in prison are to be calculated as part of their tenure...

Both the Trump administration and Israel have been making increasingly urgent calls in recent months for Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority's president-for-life, to stop the program.

The raucous Palestinian Arab responses have not been slow in coming. They keep hammering away on the same well-known themes: the payments "are not going to be stopped"; supporting the "prisoners" and the "martyrs" amounts to a "national duty that cannot be compromised"; they are "a red line", a "fundamental principle"; the mere raising of the issue is "U.S.-Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people and the PA". And in the words of an especially odious "senior foreign policy adviser" to Abbas, anyone who expects the Palestinian leadership to halt payments to Palestinian prisoners serving sentences in Israeli security prisons must be "mad".

Whatever.

In the meantime, as a report ["PA cuts salaries to Hamas prisoners"] published by the Al-Monitor site on June 23, 2017 explains, payments to certain parts of the Palestinian Arab jihadist ranks have indeed stopped. Quoting

Hamas leader Abdel Rahman Shedid, himself a former prisoner who was exiled to the Gaza Strip and currently serves as the head of the prisoners’ media bureau in Gaza...

it turns out the salaries of some

277 prisoners released in the 2011 prisoner exchange deal and affiliated with Hamas... were cut off by the Palestinian Authority (PA) without specifying why. Although this decision was not officially announced by the PA, it was implemented in early June [2017]. He told Al-Monitor that the decision will negatively affect former prisoners because many of them have no alternative sources of livelihood, especially those exiled abroad, while others are sick and depend on the salary in order to secure the cost of treatment, describing the decision as “unpatriotic and immoral.” Shedid, whose salary has also been cut off, said he was informed by PA officials, which he refused to name, that the salaries of the 277 former Hamas prisoners released as part of the 2011 swap deal were cut off... [Al Monitor]

Is this due to Israeli pressure? Or US persuasion? Perish the thought!

The decision to stop paying the 277 former prisoners falls within the context of the Palestinian division (Fatah-Hamas) and comes as part of the PA’s pressure on Hamas to cede power in Gaza to the consensus government. Issa Qaraqe, the chairman of the Palestinian Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs (formerly the Ministry of Prisoners), told Al-Monitor, “The PA is still paying the stipends of the families of prisoners and martyrs and will continue to do so. This issue is considered a red line.” As for the salaries of the 277 former prisoners that were cut off, Qaraqe said, “This decision was taken by the PA amid the ongoing dispute with Hamas. The decision is part of the [PA’s] pressure on the movement and has nothing to do with the United States and Israel calling on the PA to stop paying the Palestinian prisoners [currently in Israeli jails]...” Meanwhile, the PA has yet to comment or explain the decision it took.... [Al Monitor]

While the Abbas people stay firmly non-committal, their official "government spokesperson", Yusuf al-Mahmoud, gave Al-Monitor some insight into the mutual backstabbing that is a constant feature of Palestinian Arab politics:

“I'm not sure how accurate this is, and that's why I cannot comment on the issue because no official decision was issued. But the government would never take any action that does not serve the interests of the Palestinian citizens and prisoners.” He explained that the government’s general stance would always take into consideration the people’s best interest... In addition to cutting off the salaries of former prisoners on June 1, the government cut off the salaries of nine members of the Fatah bloc in the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) who were dismissed from the movement for having “other allegiances,” in reference to dismissed Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan... [Al Monitor]

Reduced circumstances? Mass murderer and FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi

It's pleasing to note that one of the unrepentant thugs whose Rewards for Terror payments have been stopped for now is the barbarian, currently sought by the FBI for masterminding the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, who murdered our daughter.

This Arabic media report [link] appears to have gotten little or no coverage in any language but indicates, according to our indispensable Arabic-language helpers, that the cashflow which has underpinned Ahlam Tamimi's very comfortable lifestyle in the Jordanian capital Amman for the past five and a half years (click to view some video of her living room) has just been substantially downgraded. She has been cut out of the Rewards for Terror. (She's closely aligned with Hamas. Is that why? We're digging.)

But there's no need to be passing the hat for this loathsome and thoroughly remorseless murderer of Jewish children so quickly. We're told by reliable sources she continues to be well-taken-care-of - and funded - by Jordan's powerful and resurgent Muslim Brotherhood. This must be a great comfort to her and her circle as they fight to frustrate the efforts of the United States Department of Justice to have her extradited to stand trial in a Federal court in Washington.

On the other hand, this can't have been the happiest of weeks what with a downgrading of her credit rating and her Twitter account having been shut down (for the second time) just a few days ago ["25-Jun-17: A voice of lethal, bigoted hatred is silenced... for a while"].

12-Apr-17: A modest step toward justice: Twitter today suspended the account of our daughter's murderer

Two of our daughters are in this family snapshot.
One is Malki who was murdered in August 2001. She's
cuddling her very disabled, and much loved, youngest sister

Readers of this blog know that Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria massacre lives freely as a cherished and very public celebrity in Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

From there, she has had access since October 2011 to the kind of mass-media platforms that aspiring cigarette manufacturers can only dream of: Facebook, Twitter, her own weekly television program, frequent invitations to speak in front of public gatherings of university and high school students, trade unionists and professional guilds not only in Jordan but in other Arab world destinations including Algeria (December 2011), the Gaza Strip (via live video link, addressing a mass rally in January 2012); Kuwait (July 2012 and again March 2014); Lebanon (April 2012 and again January 2015); Qatar (April 2012, again December 2013); Tunisia (April 2012 and again November 2015); and Yemen (April 2014).

Her message is sharp and focused: encouragement for the fighting spirit of the Palestinian Arab terrorists behind bars in Israel, and of their families; encouragement for more frequent and more deadly terror attacks on Israelis and those who stand with them; encouragement of a pro-Hamas, pro-Moslem Brotherhood absolutist message of rejection and destruction directed at anything and everything Jewish and Israeli.

Two weeks ago, she posted a rare English-language message via her Twitter account (her communications are almost exclusively in Arabic):

[Source: Archive]

Hate messages don't really come much clearer than that. No beating around bushes with talk of two states, compromise or peace. For Tamimi and the many who stand with her, the war is ongoing and even one "Israeli enemy" means more fighting.

And no one should be in doubt about Tamimi's sense of where "in Palestine" is located; her sustaining vision is of a Middle East free of Jews. As the convicted, but currently free, murderer of fifteen of them - our beloved daughter Malki Z"L included - Ahlam Tamimi is a full-fledged member in good standing of the savage ranks of Islamist terrorist barbarians.

When the FBI added her to their "Most Wanted Terrorists" list a month ago (after a five year campaign waged by our lawyers and us), we turned to Twitter and asked that they shut down her Twitter account. Facebook had already shut her down some months ago, and she stopped presenting the weekly TV program "Breezes of the Free" in September 2016 when her high profile caused some specific problems. But she kept busy on Twitter.

Until today.

This morning, something happened and that Tweet above was her last, at least for now. All we can say with confidence is based on what we see at her Twitter page:

Thank you @Jack @Support @anthonynoto @vijaya and thank you @Twitter

We think this means the many requests we and our followers and people seeing a similar request at MEMRI filed with Twitter were heard. Whatever the case, the world is a better and safer place with Ahlam Tamimi's voice lowered by several notches.

Next step: Tamimi's extradition to the United States to face federal criminal charges. The obstacle preventing that for the moment is that Jordan is refusing to honor its 1995 extradition treaty agreement with the United States.

29-May-16: An ally in the fight against terror and the questions that don't get asked

Allies and partners in defeating the jihadists: Abdullah II
and Obama [Image Source]

The sale of one of the world's major repositories of news photographs recently means that it has suddenly gotten a lot harder (we discovered just today) to locate many archived images of news events from the recent past.

This is relevant to us. (Us meaning Frimet and Arnold Roth of Jerusalem. Read on.)

We are passionate about wanting people to be aware of some of the less-well-publicized aspects of terrorism and what it means when it's done to you.

Three news photos were published in October 2011 that recorded an event connected to our lives but basically unknown to almost anyone else.

In October 2011, the notorious chief engineer of our daughter's murder, sentenced a few years earlier to sixteen terms of life imprisonment with a recommendation from the judges that she never be considered for parole, was set free by Israel.

The following day, she arrived in another country where most of her family had lived since before she was born (and still lives). She herself was born there. Joyously received as a returning hero, she was greeted with pomp, ceremony and emotion at a gala reception in the Family Court of that country, located in its capital city.

The on-line photos we mentioned above that record the reception in the court house may be the only evidence that it happened. Now, with the sale to a Chinese firm of the major news photo archive that housed them, that evidence will inevitably become hard to find. That is a great pity because those pictures reveal something worth knowing.

Before going into the background, please notice that we have just posted those pictures at the foot of this article. We have mentioned them numerous times in this blog. It's important they be seen. People need to appreciate the painful and damaging double-talk that is integral to the global conversation about terrorism.

Here's the back-story. Our daughter Malki, a beautiful and accomplished 15 year old, was murdered in a horrifyingly effective terrorist attack done by Hamas on a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001. The attack's chief planner and engineer - and also, in a literal sense, the bomber - was a young woman of 21, a university student and a news-reader on television. She was soon arrested, tired and convicted. A panel of three judges in an Israeli court sentenced her to several lifetimes behind bars.

In front of the judges, she boasted of her central role in the killings, admitting everything, denying nothing. She grinned and gloated at the death toll. She declared that sooner or later she would walk free.

Sadly, these were prophetic words. This confessed multi-murderer lives a charmed life of total freedom today, living in a city a mere 90 minutes drive from us in a country that enjoys good diplomatic relations with the United States and with virtually all of Europe. It has relations as well, not warm but nonetheless proper and ongoing, with Israel.

That country is Jordan. 

Jordan says it is opposed to terrorism and to terrorists. As we noted here three months ago, the State Department of the United States agrees vigorously. In its annual survey of the war against terror, State singles out the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for special praise. The most recent edition of "Country Reports on Terrorism", an annual survey published in Washington, said this in June 2015:

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL... and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts... Jordanian prisons have a religiously based de-radicalization program that seeks to re-engage violent extremist inmates into the non-violent mainstream of their faith.

We don't make foreign policy, and to state it mildly we have different priorities. We don't understand the State Department's enthusiasm for its Jordanian key ally and model partner. In addition, we are appalled [as we noted in "18-Feb-15: Countering Vacuous Euphemisms"] by the vague and cloudy view expressed by key State Department people on terrorism. Plainly, we feel more invested in the issues at a personal level than many US government officials do. That's human nature. We tried to convey a sense of how that works in this post: "14-Sep-13: Memo to Secretary of State Kerry: Your staff need some urgent guidance".

Gloating, inciting, seriously happy: The homicidal 
engineer of the Sbarro massacre and proud murderer 
of our 15 year old daughter, Malki Roth
[Image Source: Screen shot from this MEMRI video]

How opposed is Jordan to terror? Frankly, it's a very selective kind of opposition.

Sometimes - certainly not always - it acts like a government that holds a tough, uncompromising view of terror and its practitioners. We took a look at how that works, for instance, in another blog post of ours last year: "04-Feb-15: The stunningly different fates of two terrorists in Jordan and what they reveal about how the war against terror is going".

We described there how the Jordanians had hanged a female terrorist that week. and we said:

Regular readers of this blog know about another Jordanian female, an ex-prisoner, also a terrorist, with a different fate: Ahlam al-Tamimi. Unlike Mrs al-Rishawi who was hanged today, Mrs al-Tamimi is a Jordanian, born, bred, educated and (following an 11 year-period spent outside Jordan) now living with her husband/cousin, in Jordan.
Tamimi has never spent time in any Jordanian prison, and never will. Quite the opposite: she was honored with a reception in Jordan's Family Court in October 2011 when she returned home... She has her own weekly television program... recorded in Jordan by her friends and employers in the Hamas terror organization and beamed throughout the world on the Al-Quds TV Network. And she is free to travel throughout the Arab world which it seems she does often, giving lectures and being an honoured guest...
Tamimi has over and again confessed [via this video interview, among numerous other instances] freely, proudly and happily to the massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in 2001 for the engineering of which she was convicted. She was sentenced to 16 life terms in prison with a judicial recommendation that she live the rest of her life behind bars with no possibility of a commutation of sentence.
That is not how it worked out. She was one of 1,027 terrorists set free in the extortion-driven 2011 Gilad Shalit Israel/Hamas transaction, despite a campaign we personally waged for years. We urged our government to stand firm, to not give in, to keep this particular sociopath behind bars so that justice could be done... Today she is a globally-influential instigator of jihadist terror - an icon of hatred.
What Jordan - a sovereign state at least half of whose population defines itself as Palestinian Arab, and ruled by a dynastic family from Saudi Arabia - ought to do with its terrorists is emphatically not our concern. Jordan's laws that purportedly outlaw terrorism... don't get the critical attention in the West that they richly deserve.

Actually, there's a lot about Jordan that doesn't get scrutinized. And should. 

We wish there was wider public awareness of what a congenial environment Jordan has given the woman who masterminded the murder of our daughter. Since returning to Amman in 2011, the authorities there have allowed her to operate unhindered. The examples are many: she is permitted to speak as an honored guest at its universities, its professional guilds, its law courts and a laundry list of additional venues. She records her own heavily-promoted weekly television program in Jordan's capital city; from there, its toxic message in praise of the power of murder is beamed to millions of Arabic-speaking households throughout the world. 

Thanks to Jordan's indulgence and acquiescence in the process, the convicted and unrepentant murderer of our child has become a world-class pan-Arab celebrity. It could never have happened without their ongoing co-operation.

She was the first female to join the ranks of Hamas terrorists, later graduating to become an eloquent figure advocating energetically - from Jordan to the world - for more violence, more murder and more jihad - all of it, let there be no doubt, directed at Jewish and Israeli targets. Inciting via television and a range of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and well-publicized personal appearances, she is one of the most widely-recognized, very public faces of the savage Islamist bigotry of Hamas and the Moslem Brotherhood.

People ought to know more about her.

En route to the Family Court, the woman convicted of engineering
the Sbarro pizzeria massacre

and convicted on 15 counts of murder including the killing of our daughter Malki

and busy today inciting more and more acts of murder (The two images above were
snapped at the Family Court in Jordan too)

The news report of which the three photos above from the Family Court of Jordan in Amman are a part is now accessible at this archive location. That's important because both the report and these photos can no longer be found via a regular Google search. 

People wanting to understand how the war against the jihadists is going should (we suggest) now be asking these Jordan-centric questions: 

1. Which other key ally and model partner of the United States honors its terrorists via fancy receptions in its official courts of law? (And no one should be misled into thinking the US authorities don't know.)
2. What real messages are those partners and allies conveying to their masses - and especially to their children and adolescents and unemployed young men and women - when they do it? 
3. Why can't an autocratic state (Jordan) that is part of the coalition against the jihadists stop the torrent of bigotry, barbarism and calls to murder that their inaction empowers this woman to issue forth? (It's not credible to suggest, as some have, that the Jordanian authorities don't know. She's one of the kingdom's best known, most publicized citizens.)
4. Why are we, the parents of a teenage girl murdered by a fanatical agent of jihad, among a very small group of voices being heard (and mostly ignored) exposing and decrying this appalling state of affairs?

13-Feb-16: Three decades after a terror attack on a Paris restaurant, some things remain just as they were

Chez Jo Goldenberg, Paris [Wikipedia]

One of the tragic milestones of modern Jewish life in France is back in the news today. And as we note below, this says something about the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that most people - and especially the foreign policy experts of the United States - prefer not to know.

Chez Jo Goldenberg, a restaurant that no longer exists, was mentioned in an earlier post of ours ["20-Jun-14: Does Europe face the most serious terror threat ever? At CNN, they say yes and explain (poorly) why"] that looked at the decades-long history of lethal Islamist bigotry and terror directed at European targets. 

That June 2014 blog post was our reaction to some sadly superficial mainstream journalism suggesting that certain acts of terror that year - in particular the shooting murders at the Jewish museum in the Belgian capital - amounted to an "early indicator" that Islamism-in-Europe was becoming a serious problem and that it needed attention because, well, things might get worse.

An early indicator? That's absurd. Our point was that it is highly misleading - at least - to depict very recent European violence done in the name of Islam by Islamist terrorists as something new and freshly threatening. In reality, decades of acts of murderous violence have been directed at European targets by Islamists - Jews and Israelis naturally prominent among them. We quoted a handful of examples there. Then we said:

These instances are literally selected at random. The list of Islamism-driven attacks and attempted attacks of a terrorist nature on European targets is lengthy. It's not possible that the people at CNN are seriously suggesting this is a new process with its origins in the last eight weeks. We think a big part of Europe's problem - apart from a serious case of historical amnesia - is a self-imposed stupidity on this subject. Will Europe recover in time to address the very real existential challenges it faces? 

Events of the past few months show that addressing those challenges has not gone so well. Consider, in France alone, the bloodbath of the Friday 13th attacks in Paris this past November with 130 killed via multiple attacks on bars, a sports stadium and a concert hall. ["Paris attacks: What happened on the night", BBC]; the cold-blooded killings of Jewish hostages in a Paris kosher food store ["Paris killer asked victims if they were Jewish before firing", Times of Israel] in February 2015; the savage January 2015 murders at a French satirical magazine ["As it happened: Charlie Hebdo attack", BBC] also in Paris.

If being ready for "worse" means lower death tolls, then let's agree something is not working.

Goldenberg's was one of those now-mostly-forgotten "acts of murderous violence directed at European targets... from Islamist sources" that we mentioned in that June 2014 post:

The August 9, 1982 Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant attack in Paris: Islamist terrorists threw a grenade into the dining room and fired machine guns on a Jewish restaurant in Paris's Marais district, on 9 August 1982. They killed six people, including two American tourists, and injured 22 others - "the heaviest toll suffered by Jews in France since World War II".

Until it closed its doors for the last time in 2006, Goldenberg's (inaccurately described in many accounts - including the New York Times, AFP,  and others - as a kosher restaurant; it was not kosher, and did business on Sabbaths, but was proudly Jewish) served as a reminder of a different France, one barely recognizable in the country of the same name today.

Until the late 1990s its homely red banquettes attracted government ministers, film stars and celebrities dining on caviar, herrings, goulash or its famous chopped liver. On the Pletzl - Yiddish for square - Goldenberg's was symbolic of a neighbourhood where thousands of eastern European Jews arrived from the late 19th century, and which was the focus of Nazi round-ups during the occupation of Paris in the second world war. More than half of the local Jewish community would die in concentration camps. The restaurant founded by Jo Goldenberg, who lost his parents and all his sisters in Auschwitz, became a symbol of resistance and revival, a meeting place for Holocaust survivors and former resistance fighters. ["For Paris's Jewish quarter, a fight to save its soul", The Guardian, March 6, 2008]

France had some 700,000 Jews in 1982 (530,000 according to a different 1982 source) when heavily-armed terrorists of the Abu Nidal Group attacked Goldenberg's. Today's French Jewish population is estimated at about 478,000 [a 2013 source] and declining according to all observers.

Terror attacks directed at Jews and Israelis have a long French history. In their Arab/Islamist chapter an El Al passenger jet came under terrorist attack at Paris' Orly Airport more than forty years ago: hostages were taken, amid machine gun, bazooka and grenade fire (with the French government quickly providing the terrorists with safe passage via a plane that flew them safely to Baghdad). Yasser Arafat's PLO terrorists attacked Iraq's Paris embassy in July 1978 and seized hostages - evidently in an effort to persuade the same Abu Nidal Group to stop besmirching the good name of the Palestinians. And the Islamists of Hezbollah had launched multiple terror attacks on the streets of Paris, and especially in its large department stores, by the mid-eighties (Wikipedia listing of terror attacks in France). That's more than three decades ago.

Fast forward to this past week's news, and its background.

Nearly a year ago, the French police announced that they had

at last identified three suspects and are seeking their arrest. Grenade-throwing Palestinians burst into the Jo Goldenberg deli on August 9, 1982, and sprayed machine-gun fire. Six people, including two Americans, were killed, and 21 injured. The restaurant, which has since closed, was a centerpiece tourist attraction in the famed Marais neighborhood. Paris prosecutor’s office spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre said Wednesday that international arrest warrants have been issued for the three suspects — now aged in their late 50s and early 60s — who were believed to be members of the Abu Nidal group. She says they are believed to be in the Palestinian territories, Jordan and Norway but declined to identify them by name, citing protocol. ["Suspects identified in deadly 1982 Paris Jewish deli attack", Times of Israel, March 4, 2015]

Then a day or two later it was revealed that

Jordan has rejected an extradition request from France for two suspects accused of carrying out [the] 1982 deadly attack... The alleged mastermind of the attack... Zuhair Mohamad al-Abassi, 62, was arrested in Jordan last year. The request was rejected because at the time of his arrest an extradition deal between Jordan and France had not entered into force, the source said... Jordan has also refused to hand over a second suspect, Nizar Tawfiq Hamada, 54, because the statute of limitations concerning the criminal allegations against him expired, the source said. The decision was taken in October, four months after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged Jordan to "respect international procedure" by extraditing Abbasi and Hamada. David Pere, a lawyer for the AFVT association that represents French victims of terrorism, said he was "astounded" by the Jordanian decision. "We were expecting the Jordanian authorities to send a strong message in the fight against terrorism," Pere said. He said Amman's decision not to extradite the pair was a "political" one aimed at "keeping social peace in Jordan"... ["Jordan rejects 1982 Paris attack suspects extradition", AFP, February 10, 2016]

Clearly some things just don't change.

And as for that comment above about the Jordanians needing to keep "social peace", that reflects some serious observations about the Hashemite Kingdom that we have addressed ourselves in the past. [Click here for our previous posts tagged with "Jordan"].

People who watch these things, and we are among them, know Jordan enjoys a special place in the affections of the US State Department. State's most recent "Country Reports on Terrorism" annual survey, published in June 2015, says of the Hashemite Kingdom:

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL... and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts... Jordanian prisons have a religiously based de-radicalization program that seeks to re-engage violent extremist inmates into the non-violent mainstream of their faith.

There's much we want to say about that key ally but for now we will be brief.

Jordan legislated its first anti-terrorism law in 2006, a year after a series of terrorist bomb blasts at three Amman hotels that killed dozens of people.

Under the new law, penalties for terrorist acts range from 10 years in prison to the death penalty, and the definition of terrorism has been expanded to include any act meant to create sedition, harm property or jeopardise international relations, or to use the Internet or media outlets to promote "terrorist" thinking. [Aljazeera, April 25, 2014]

That law has since undergone changes (summarized in this April 2014 AFP syndicated report) to take account of current, very real threats facing the Kingdom and its ruler, and made concrete by the hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Jordanians who have joined the ranks of the various Islamist forces engaging in the ongoing Syrian bloodbath. King Abdullah II signed those changes into law at the end of May 2014 ["Jordan amends, widens its anti-terrorism laws", Associated Press, June 1, 2014].

Massive political demonstration by members of Jordan's Muslim

Brotherhood, July 31, 2015 [Image Source: Getty]

But what the State Department report - and Aljazeera as well - fails to mention is how Jordan has carefully defined terror over the years so that acts of violence directed at Israelis are specifically, by definition, never to be considered terror. For instance:

Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism of 1999 (Ratified 28 Aug. 2003): "Jordan does not consider national armed struggle and fighting foreign occupation in the exercise of people’s right to self-determination as terrorist acts under art. 2(1)(b)" [Source]

Jordan's creativity with the definition of terror is not new and hardly a secret, but largely ignored nonetheless. Jordan's failure to hand over the alleged perpetrators of the 1982 Paris savagery is more of the same, and not so surprising.

At a very personal level, we wish there was much wider awareness of how Jordan has provided a friendly environment since 2011 for the woman who masterminded the murder of our daughter, allowing her to operate freely from within Jordan's borders; to speak as an honored guest at its universities, professional guilds, law courts and other venues; to record her television program "Naseem Al Ahrar" (translation: “Breezes of the Free”) week after week for beaming out to the Arabic-speaking world throughout the past 4 years; and to emerge as a genuine pan-Arab celebrity.

The convicted mastermind of the massacre in Jerusalem in which 

our daughter was murdered, along with 14 other innocents. 

The confessed killer hosts a weekly TV show that is recorded 

every week in Jordan [Screen shot from Oct 13, 2015 edition of
"Nasseem al-Ahrar"]

Touted as the first female terrorist to join the ranks of Hamas, this Jordanian woman advocates unhindered from Jordan today for more violence, more murder and more jihad - all of it directed at Jewish and Israeli targets. Inciting energetically via television, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and well-publicized personal appearances, she is a widely-recognized, very public face of the violent, Islamist bigotry of Hamas.

Hamas was formally banned in Jordan in 1999, and continues to have the status of an outlawed entity. However the Muslim Brotherhood - to which Hamas owes allegiance, as the Hamas Charter says explicitly - operates freely within Jordan. Reuters described the Brotherhood in August 2014 as "the ideological counterpart to Hamas and Jordan's largest political group". It is today a "major player" in the Jordanian political scene.

Perhaps the French will have some views to share with the US now on this "model partner".