20-Nov-20: I wish Malki were here to encourage me

Malki was three years old when we celebrated
Israel's Independence Day for the first time in our
Jerusalem home after making aliya a year before

Frimet Roth's op ed below originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post edition of August 12, 2020, the week that marked nineteen years since the massacre at the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. That's where the life of our daughter Malki, just 15, ended. And so did fifteen additional lives did too - 14 of them absolutely and immediately. And one more, the life of a young mother who was in the fast food place with her toddler daughter and has been in a a vegetative state ever since.

We're reposting it here now for a number of reasons, among them for the benefit of the members of Secretary of State Pompeo's entourage who have been here in Jerusalem since Wednesday and are flying out today. 

We would have very much wanted to discuss the Tamimi case with them - their strange and inexplicable silence in the face of Jordanian recalcitrance in particular. And their office's passivity. Perhaps next time.

Why is Ahlam Tamimi still free, 19 years after the Sbarro bombing?

The US has demanded her extradition from Jordan, Yet Jordan’s King Abdullah II refuses to accede to that demand.

By Frimet Roth | August 12, 2020 | The Jerusalem Post  

Nineteen years ago, our angel Malki was snatched from us in the Sbarro terror bombing.

Some may wonder how a pain can linger, oppress, ache and resist comfort for so long. Well, let me assure you, it can. And it does.

Sometimes, it feels more heart-wrenching to remember her life than it did when she was first murdered. There are so many family experiences and events from which she missed out.

The bombing that took her life and those of 14 other innocent Jews was uniquely horrific. It has spawned numerous “miracle” legends about lucky people who came eerily close to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It has even inspired a minor writer to fabricate an entire interview with me which he included in his published memoir as well as in a Los Angeles Times op-ed.

It is often the only one of many bloody attacks mentioned when the Second Intifada is revisited. Photographs of the site minutes after the explosion - it is the busiest intersection in Jerusalem’s city center – are often reprinted. The sight of baby carriages and strewn body parts is emphasized.

But for some reason what doesn’t attract press coverage is the travesty of justice that ensued.

To the bafflement of my husband and me, despite our years of effort to achieve justice for our Malki and the other victims, there’s remarkably little concern about how the mastermind, the main perpetrator of the Sbarro terror attack, is today a free woman.

Jordanian Ahlam Tamimi scouted Jerusalem’s streets during the summer of 2001 for a target that would offer the greatest possible number of Orthodox Jewish children. Having traveled with him by public transport from Ramallah, she escorted her “weapon,” a suicide bomber called al-Masri, on foot from East Jerusalem to the Sbarro location.

She boasts of how she spoke English to him during their walk in order to pass as tourists. Police were at that very hour combing the city’s streets for a terrorist about whom they had been alerted.

After instructing him to wait ten minutes before detonating so that she could escape unharmed, she fled back to Ramallah. There she calmly reported the attack on the nightly Arab language news program where she worked as the on-camera presenter.

In front of cameras, Tamimi has smiled to learn how many children she murdered and expressed dismay that the number wasn’t higher. She has urged audiences on Hamas TV and on social media to emulate her deeds. The depths of her evil are apparent to all.

My husband and I are astounded. Why is it that she is still free? Why does this not disturb people more than it appears?

The US has demanded her extradition from Jordan. It has an extradition treaty with Jordan that was signed and ratified by both countries and has been valid since 1995. Yet Jordan’s King Abdullah II – the totalitarian ruler of his kingdom – refuses to accede to that demand.
Nonetheless, the US State Department, the White House and US Congressmen from both sides of the aisle persist in praising “His Majesty” as they are wont to call him. The reverential tone they adopt when addressing him or referring to him is utterly cringe-worthy.

It is impossible to relate this outrage and omit our own leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. While he is now a footnote in the sequence of events, it cannot be overlooked that Tamimi is free in Jordan because he chose to send her there. The several pleas that my husband and I published, circulated and delivered to Netanyahu to remove Tamimi from the list of freed murderers included in the infamous Shalit Deal, were all in vain. He never responded to us at any stage or in any form.

What he did do was tell the press that he sent letters of apology to all victims after the Schalit Deal. His staff personally told me when I called his bureau in the weeks after the Schalit Deal that hundreds of such letters were mailed out.

That is a lie. None were mailed out.

And so the travesty endures. I would note that a faint glimmer of light at the tunnel’s end now uplifts us. Several US politicians, global celebrities and major Jewish organizations have joined us in demanding that the US pressure Jordan to extradite Tamimi by withholding the generous annual financial aid it receives from the US A new law empowering such a sanction was passed in December 2019.

Prior legislation entitles the US Department of Justice to arrest and try suspects for offenses committed against US citizens overseas. Malki was, as I am, a US citizen. That US law specifies that a suspect can and must be pursued by US law enforcement and brought to trial in the United States. Jordan has raised a single objection, which American authorities have told us is spurious. But the fact is she is still in Amman with her family and not in a Washington courtroom.

Malki left behind a detailed diary recording the events of the last year of her life. It makes for a painful read, not to mention an eye-straining one since she wrote it in microscopic script. She clearly wanted to pack in the maximum.

Each year as her yahrzeit approaches, I read a few more entries and publicize one of them:

“February 4, 2001: There was a mortar firing in Netzarim [Gaza Strip] and truly miraculously nobody was hurt. There was a one year old baby lying at the site where it fell! A miracle! A person from Karmei Tzur was killed on his way home, a father of small children... We had a talk about Kever Rachel [Rachel’s Tomb]... then communal singing. I cried a bit and it was hard for me to start singing so Shira and I just hugged and that really helped me. At the end we had a talk by Rav Elisha Aviner. He was simply amazing! He encouraged us so much about the situation in Israel.”

I wish Malki were here to encourage me.

10-Sep-17: Chasing the killer of my child

Mishpacha originally published this interview
in Hebrew

An interview of Frimet Roth by the Israeli journalist Michal Ish Shalom originally appeared in the Hebrew weekly Mishpacha, August 24, 2017. An English translation, the work of Rochel Sylvetsky whose contribution we gratefully acknowledge, was published today on the Israel National News website under the title "The non-extradition of our daughter's murderer". Our thanks go to Mishpacha for their permission to use their Hebrew article in this way. (The cross-post that follows has some minor editing changes and we have inserted hyperlinks.)

Malki Roth was murdered in what is called the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing 16 years ago. 

Her parents hope that her terrorist murderer, against whom the US has issued an extradition request, will be brought to justice. The family hopes the US presses for extradition, is disappointed that Jordan does not honor its legal obligations to the US, and blames Netanyahu for not caring about families of terror victims.

Arnold and Frimet Roth, the parents of Malki Hy"D, murdered in the Sbarro restaurant suicide bombing attack 16 years ago, were carefully optimistic on the day after the Purim holiday this year.

A delegation from the US Department of Justice came to Jerusalem to inform them that the United States was about to make an announcement later that day: a request for extradition had been presented to the Jordanian government. Jordan, which signed an extradition treaty with the United States in 1995, was being requested to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi, the terrorist who planned and executed the suicide bombing in which their daughter was murdered. Tamimi was being added that day to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list.

The Roths had initiated this process by meeting with US officials in Washington five years earlier – in February 2012. The Jordanians had been served with the extradition request months earlier, right before the High Holidays, and Interpol was involved. But now in mid-March 2017, the US were going to publicize the extradition request, leading the Roths to believe that justice was going to be done at last.

Frimet with our daughter Malki, April 2001

Malki, born in Melbourne Australia, came to Israel as a young child. Her mother is an American citizen, and as such, could obtain American citizenship for her daughter. That was not a significant part of Malki's too-short life, all of it lived in Israel. She grew up in Jerusalem, a happy, kindhearted teen, especially attuned to special needs chidren – her youngest sister Haya Elisheva suffered serious neurological impairment when she was a year old, a fact which caused Malki to volunteer with such children unstintingly.

On that unforgettable, bitter day, the 20th of Av (August 9, 2001), Malki went over to a friend's house.

"See you later, have a good time," said her mother Frimet, whose eyes were shut due to a severe migraine; she couldn’t even open them before her daughter left the house. "How I regret not looking at her that morning because the last time I saw her was the day before it happened," she says painfully. The loss of her daughter is palpable throughout our conversation; it gets harder to bear as the years pass.

Malki called from her friend's house to say that she was going to a get-together in the Talpiyot neighborhood and received her mother's permission to go. "I love you," the conversation ended - three words fated to become the last ones Frimet and her beloved daughter would exchange with one another.

And then – suddenly the terrible news - a major terrorist suicide bombing in the middle of downtown Jerusalem. Frimet’s thoughts were instantly with locating her children.

"I worried about them, because they left without taking a mobile phone. Malki had one with her, so I was less worried, " recalls Frimet. "Besides, she said she was going to Talpiyot and I knew that she would only be in town for as long as it took to switch buses."

Malki's siblings were located quickly – they were safe. Malki did not answer her mobile phone.

Anyone who remembers the chilling "routine" of the period in which suicide bomber attacks took place with horrendous frequency, knows that the cellular phone connections were always down, for security reasons, in an area in which an attack occurred. Since everyone had become used to that happening, they urged Frimet not to worry.

But a good deal of time passed, and then it turned out that Malki had never reached the get–together she planned to attend, nor did her friend Michal – who also could not be found.

"I still didn't get it. She was not even supposed to be in Sbarro," says Frimet. She and Michal's mother, along with Frimet's soldier son, a newly-enlisted hesdernik (in the 5 year yeshiva-army program) who had returned home to help, decided to go to Shaarei Zedek Hospital to look for their daughters.

On the way there, corroboration came in: Malki had been at Sbarro, she had sent a text message to someone to meet her there - a meeting that never took place.

"I began to scream," recalls Frimet. "I realized it was all over. At the hospital, we separated and each one of us searched for her own daughter. Michal's mother found her daughter still alive, but we did not find our Malki. In the office into which I was taken, they had me speak to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute so I could describe her, and for some reason they said there was no one who fitted my description."

This unbearable day continued, with family and friends searching other hospitals. Much later that night, on the advice of social workers in another of Jerusalem’s hospitals, two of Malki’s older brothers went there with a national insurance social worker.

"At 2 a.m. they called to tell us they had identified her."

Malki and her friend Michal were
always inseparable. Now they are
buried side by side.

Her friend Michal had been found barely alive, but she didn't make it and those were her last moments in this world. 

Malki and Michal, "beloved and pleasant during their lifetimes”, (as King David said of King Saul and his son) were buried side by side in Jerusalem's Har Hamenuchot cemetery.

That day marked the start of the Roth family's struggle. To memorialize Malki, they soon created the Malki Foundation which helps fund treatments for seriously disabled children who live at home and are cared for by their parents. Parents can choose among occupational therapy, therapeutic horseback riding, speech therapy, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy with 85% of the costs covered by the fund. It also lends special equipment to those children via a partnership with the Yad Sarah organization.

But along with the generous deeds associated with Malki's memory, the Roth family is engaged in fighting to have the terrorists brought to justice. This struggle is focused on Tamimi, the daughter of an infamous riot-inciting Arab family ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?"]. Tamimi was a communications student at Bir Zeit University who was born and raised in Jordan and had come to Israel to do her post-high school studies. She became Hamas’ first female terrorist.

Some days before the Sbarro attack, Tamimi tried to carry out an attack on a smaller scale, which failed because there were not enough explosives in the bomb she used. That made her prepare the Sbarro attack more carefully. Her press card (she did part-time work for a TV station in Ramallah) gave her free and easy access to Jerusalem ["5-May-13: Self-confessed jihadist murderer: "With my media card, I was able to enter back and forth, undetected..."].

In recent years she has described with chilling lack of emotion how she looked for a place where she could murder as many… women and children as possible. She found it in one of the fast food places at one of the most congested intersections in Jerusalem.

Malki, the talented classical flautist

Tamimi hid the bomb inside a guitar case, passing right through the IDF checkpoint on Jerusalem’s northern edge and along Jaffa Road with her lethal weapon – the suicide bomber. The two were dressed like ordinary English-speaking tourists and succeeded in looking completely harmless. She brought the suicide bomber to the Sbarro entrance and told him to wait until she got far enough away. She wanted to live.

"My daughter played guitar and flute. She played the classical flute beautifully and was in Jerusalem’s youth orchestra," Frimet said sadly. Malki was right next to the terrorist when he blew himself up. She probably stood near him, thinking: “Here is another music lover like me with a guitar on his back.”

Tamimi worked as a TV news-reader and in that evening’s bulletin impassively reported the terrorist attack - the attack she herself had just perpetrated.

There seems to be no limit to the evil with which the Roth family has to deal. Ahlam Tamimi, who continues to this day to boast of her crimes, was arrested about a month after the bombing and sentenced to 16 life sentences. Officially, 15 human beings were murdered in the attack, but in reality, there are 16 dead, Frimet emphasizes. One critically wounded victim, a young mother, has never came out of a coma.

Those 16 life sentences came to an end very quickly: Tamimi was freed six years ago as part of the Shalit deal ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"].

"Even after Tamimi was freed, we did not get a response from anyone in the government, certainly not from the prime minister or his office," Frimet says, visibly upset. "Binyamin Netanyahu said publicly when announcing the Shalit deal: 'I sent letters to the families who were hit by terror'. That never happened. It is an utter lie. After his declaration, we took the initiative and called his office multiple times to ask which letters he meant, since we had never received one and neither had any of the many victim families we asked. The officials lied to us, making up stories about how the PM’s letters were in the mail. When I asked them how many letters were sent, and how come none of the terror stricken families I knew had received one, I heard someone in the background saying 'Tell her there were hundreds.' They simply fabricated an answer. No bereft family ever received a letter."

"We also never heard a word from the Shalit family telling us that they understand our sorrow and pain," she adds.

This, however, does not end the inexcusable behavior of the Netanyahu government towards terror-stricken families. After Tamimi was expelled to Jordan as part of the conditions for her release, she announced that she had become engaged to her cousin, another Shalit deal freed murderer-terrorist, another Tamimi. The conditions under which he was freed stipulated his remaining on the "West Bank" and not leaving the region. The conditions of her release were that she could never go there. The terrorist couple had the nerve to declare that the "cruel Israeli government" is the only factor preventing their marriage.

"We began to hear rumors that the government was about to allow him to cross into Jordan and we hired a lawyer to stop the government via an injunction. Wait a bit, the prime minister's office told us, don't take it in front of a High Court judge yet. We had the fleeting thought that the government was actually going to do something. While we were politely waiting, someone ensured the groom quickly crossed over the Allenby Bridge into Jordan. That's Netanyahu," she says. "They could not have allowed him to cross into Jordan without Netanyahu's authorization.”

Tamimi's wedding took place the following week ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"]. They flaunted it. It was a highly-publicized victory for them, covered live via several Jordanian TV stations and the social media.

And what about us? How do we look? Victory after victory. Netanyahu will never do anything about our ludicrous justice system.

Perhaps the next prime minister will be able to do something, she says with faint hopes. "I hope he is coming close to the end of his stint as prime minister, because the things he did are unbelievable."

Chilling. Ahlam Tamimi, the murderer, recounts with heated enthusiasm
the circumstances of her ride from the scene of the bombing to her
work place, a TV studio in Ramallah

“Now that the terrorist who murdered our daughter is a married woman and evidently the mother of a young child - although that has never been publicized - she continues to make fun of us. She is a popular speaker, tells the story of her atrocity with obvious pride, is a broadcaster and used her own globally-broadcast TV show ["27-Apr-17: Satellite TV and other basic rights of terrorist life behind Israeli bars"] to allow incarcerated terrorists to make contact with their families. Officially, terrorists in Israeli prisons are not permitted to view the Hamas channel that broadcasts her program, but we learned via our own sources that mobile phones have been smuggled into their cells enabling them to watch the programs.”

Giving up hope on Israeli justice, the family turned to the US government.

Malki Hy"d was not the first American terror victim. Another young American woman, her parents' only child and pregnant with her first baby, was also murdered in Sbarro. The woman in a coma since the Sbarro massacre is also an American citizen. The Roth family turned to the American Department of Justice in the name of the three US terror victims, requesting that Tamimi be charged under US Federal law and brought to the US to stand trial for her crimes. American law expressly permits this.

Roth says that since they initiated this in 2012, various Justice Department lawyers, investigators and FBI agents have met with them several times.

There are people who really care there, she says, in contrast to the way we were treated by Israeli officialdom.

Meanwhile the Roths have won several battles against Tamimi, small but significant ones. Twitter shut down her account twice so she was prevented from tweeting her evil thoughts to the world ["12-Apr-17: A modest step toward justice: Twitter today suspended the account of our daughter's murderer" and "25-Jun-17: A voice of lethal, bigoted hatred is silenced... for a while"].

Last Purim's joy at having the request for extradition in Jordan's hands lasted just two days, after which it became clear that Jordan does not intend to extradite Tamimi for various evidently-bogus reasons despite an extradition treaty dating from 1995 which was used several times in order to extradite terrorists to the US ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The Roths feel that Tamimi is being used as a propaganda tool vis a vis the Palestinian Arab majority in Jordan, who consider her a heroine.

Political interests that have no connection with justice at all, such as the gas deal, are what the Israeli government worries about. They need King Abdullah as a regional power and will not pressure him to make the decision to extradite, one which only he can make. No pressure and she is still free.

March 21, 2017: Lead story in Al Jazeera [here]

The ball is now in the hands of the US State Department, says Roth. "The State Department has a great deal of power, more than the president does in certain areas. There are things they could do, things they should not have done and we are still awaiting answers about certain actions that we can still not talk about. However, it is clear they are not trying to extradite at this point.”

"Until Tamimi is extradited," Frimet declares, "we will not stop what we are doing. It is of utmost importance to us. The present situation only exacerbates our endless pain."

The pain, it must be said, along with the feeling of helplessness in the face of the Israeli government's behavior, the long wait for justice from the US – all have taken their toll. Frimet suffered a heart attack a few months ago at a relatively young age.

Question: If the extradition does take place, will Tamimi spend the rest of her life in an American prison? What will that accomplish?

Frimet: That will not erase the pain of losing our daughter, of missing her constantly. But it will take away the outer layer of that pain caused by the injustice done to us. Malki is so lacking in our home, our pure and sweet natured talented daughter would be 32 today. I see her with a husband and children, spending her free time doing good deeds. She used to help people and come home with her face shining with joy, and she was really close to Haya Elisheva, her sister, and with the girls in the mainstreaming class at school. In fact, the very summer in which she was murdered, she worked as a counselor in a summer camp called Etgarim, Challenges, for disabled youngsters.

She has left such an empty hole in our hearts.

23-Mar-16: Frimet's new blog

Frimet's new blog

This Ongoing War is where Frimet and Arnold Roth write about terrorism and its victims. We have posted more 3,000 times since starting in June 2006.

In January 2016, Frimet began writing at her own blog as well. It's called "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly | Frimet Roth writes from Jerusalem". Here's how she describes its scope:

The Good is outnumbered two-to-one in the title of my blog. So too it is outweighed on this planet by The Evil, The Corrupt and The Seamy. For the most part, I focus here on those negatives - along with a light sprinkling of The Good. When I address The Bad and The Ugly here, it’s mainly in relation to two topics: (a) Terrorism and the current Israeli government’s pathetic handling of it; and (b) Children with disabilities and Israel's pathetic handling of them. (I have blogged about this for some years, but under an assumed name.) Also expect occasional digressions to other Bad and Ugly topics that plague Israel. I hope readers will share their thoughts here too.
The murder of my precious daughter Malki, aged fifteen and a half, in the massacre at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, colors this blog intensely. The life and challenges of my youngest daughter Chaya, profoundly disabled physically and cognitively, colors my discussion of disabilities.
In 1988, I moved to Jerusalem from Queens, NY, following a 12-year-stopover in my husband's hometown, Melbourne, Australia. The law degree I earned decades ago has lain mostly unused ever since and portrait sketching is one of my passions, so those sketches are likely to appear in my posts now and then.

We would be glad if you would take a look at today's post. It's called "On Brussels, Sbarro and moral clarity".

11-Dec-15: The price of the Shalit Deal and the countries that help it keep rising

Mutual admiration society: Hamas' Haniye, Turkey's Erdogan
[Image Source]

It was always clear that the release of 1,027 convicted and imprisoned Arab terrorists from Israeli jails in the ill-conceived Shalit Deal would lead to, and has in fact caused, the deaths of numerous innocent Israeli victims.

What is less clear even now is the enabling role provided by certain countries in empowering a cohort of Shalit Deal graduates to emerge as key figures in a campaign of anti-Israel terrorism by remote control. The note below focuses on just four: Turkey, Qatar, Jordan and Malaysia.

A small flurry of media attention in the past day indicates that the worst of the deadly consequences of the 2011 Shalit Deal are still ahead:

Palestinian prisoners released and deported to Gaza, Turkey, and Qatar as part of the Shalit deal are organizing their own terrorist cells in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, according to a report on Thursday. The deported prisoners, who are members of Hamas’ military wing, are providing guidance and funds to these cells, Hamas sources told Ynet...  The operation is being run by senior Hamas official Saleh al-Arouri, who is based in Turkey... The exiled Hamas members also have created their own cells in the West Bank to incite, protest and clash with Israeli security forces... The sources said, according to the report, that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is pushing for suicide bomb attacks to be carried out in the West Bank and east Jerusalem...  Israeli officials are convinced that Hamas will make every effort to execute a large-scale attack by using whatever means are available to its men in the field. Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior figure in Hamas' political bureau, told an Islamist-affiliated web site in Gaza in October that he was hopeful the current violence would escalate into "an armed intifada." ["Freed Hamas prisoners from Schalit deal forming independent terror cells, says report", Jerusalem Post, December 10, 2015]

Al-Zahar, Hamas foreign minister [Image Source: Reuters]

(We would add that Mahmoud al-Zahar, mentioned above, is more than just a senior Hamas figure. He's usually identified as Hamas' foreign minister in the media. Not being part of Hamas' armed "wing" doesn't prevent him from saying he is hopeful the violence now happening here daily will evolve into "an armed intifada".)

Quoted in the little-noticed Jerusalem Post article, the Ynet report written by Elior Levy, describes a shadow organization, largely independent of both Fatah and Hamas and with an intense focus on doing terror. Members of its leadership, taking advantage of the unjustified freedom handed to them via the government of Israel and the extortion made possible by the Shalit transaction

are using the connections they made in the villages and cities of the West Bank and East Jerusalem before they were arrested. They each operate separately, working with a contact in the territories, each in a different area. The expelled prisoners provide their contacts in the territories with funding and guidance, while the contacts form the cells. The fact the communication between the expelled prisoners and their contact in the West Bank is done directly makes these military cells decentralized and compartmentalized. These operations are led and financed by the head of the Hamas military wing's West Bank Division, Saleh al-Arouri, who is located in Turkey... According to the Hamas source, an escalation of the situation in the West Bank will provide the terror organization with a way out of the crisis it faces in the Gaza Strip. [Ynet, December 10, 2015] 

This emerging branch of Palestinian Arab terror has been evident for some time. The existence of an amorphous terror structure operating from Judea and Samaria and led by released Palestinian Arab prisoners was documented this past summer in a monograph [here] published by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, directed by Dr. Reuven Erlich (it's often called ITIC). The report focuses on three men, all sentenced by Israeli courts to long prison terms for terror, all freed and all currently engaged in plotting fresh murders from the safety of other countries. Two were released in the Shalit Deal; the third was released from prison in 2010 and took an active, perhaps key, role in the Shalit negotiations.

• Turkey-based Saleh Mohammed Suleiman Al-Arouri is a founder of Hamas' so-called military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He spent 18 years behind Israeli bars until being freed in the year before the Shalit Deal. He was then deported to Jordan, moving on from there to Syria from where he had a hand in the Shalit negotiations. When Hamas abandoned Damascus, he moved on to Turkey. He's based there now as the person in charge of Hamas terrorist operations in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. He's also a member of the Hamas political bureau. He claimed credit in a public speech last year [here] for the June 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens. (Hamas' strategy of having ostensibly separate political and military "wings" aims to shield its terror-spouting leaders from from responsibility for Hamas terrorism - a shabby form of plausible deniability that confers fig-leaf protection for reporters and politicians seeking a cost-free engagement with the blood-lusting Islamist terrorists.) 
• Hussam Atef Badran, released in the Shalit Deal, living and operating freely in Qatar from where he often appears in global news media as Hamas spokesman. An Islamist terror insider, he has responsibilities in the fields of terrorist network management and recruitment in Judea and Samaria. ITIC says he also spends terror-related time in Turkey.
• Ahmed al-Najjar, convicted for the terror-related shooting murders of six Israelis, was also released in the 2011 Shalit Deal. He holds US citizenship, according to ITIC quoting an Arabic-language report from March 19, 2011 on the amin.org site, shortly before being let loose. Deported to the Gaza Strip, he moved on to Jordan from where he oversees terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria. The murder of Malachi Rosenfeld in July 2015 ["19-Aug-15: The road to Malachi's death and the decisions that made it possible"] is one of them. 

Hussam Badran, Hamas's Qatar-based spokesman, appearing on
Turkey's TRT television, June 2014 [Image Source]

Many of our readers live in countries that have ongoing diplomatic and friendly ties with the states that host these terrorists and their operations. ITIC describes how those states play an invaluable role in anti-Israel terror:

Communication between the handlers and the operatives in Judea and Samaria is mainly by phone or via the Internet. Money transfers are performed by utilizing people who hold an entry permit into Israel (for example, for medical treatment) and the Palestinian Authority. In some cases, meetings are held outside Judea and Samaria by means of a courier who goes abroad. In the ITIC’s assessment, Turkey and Jordan are the two countries of choice for these meetings. This is due to their geographical proximity to Judea and Samaria and the relative ease with which one can create a suitable cover story in order to travel to them. [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 7]

Turkey also provides a congenial setting for field training of freshly-recruited terrorists

Saleh al-Arouri and additional operatives at the military headquarters in Turkey are also engaged in training operatives recruited by Hamas. Some of the terrorist operatives exposed in Judea and Samaria in August and September 2014 had received training in Turkey on planning military operations and methods for carrying out attacks against targets in Israeli territory, in Judea and Samaria, and abroad. After completing their military training, the recruits were given various tasks and assigned to squads by senior Hamas officials in Turkey... [ITIC Report, August 4, 2015 - page 11]

We noted in a blog post a year ago ["27-Nov-14: Hamas terrorist ring is busted; Israel says the handlers operate from Turkey; Qatar is involved"] that several bloody attacks - along with even more that were thwarted thanks to good Israeli intelligence - would probably have been labeled "lone wolf" terrorism if not for the now-exposed role, mostly ignored outside Israel, of these terror manipulators working unhindered from Jordan, Qatar and Turkey.

And before anyone makes holiday plans for Turkey in particular, here's a reminder of some thoughts we shared here some months ago? ["25-Feb-15: Talking Turkey on terror"]

ITIC has collected evidence that Malaysia provides the Hamas terrorists with covert support (though Malaysian sources deny this), partly based on things the Shin Bet has said. Wasim Qawasmeh, a resident of Hebron and one of numerous Qawasmehs to be mentioned in this blog over the years for their passion for murdering Jews, was recruited by Hamas in Malaysia [details here], as were numerous other Palestinian Arabs studying there. Other reports have mentioned Palestinian Arabs having undergone hang glider training in Malaysia, intended to be applied to terrorist attacks against Israelis.

When we wrote about Malaysia here some months back ["28-Apr-15: In Malaysia, years of anti-semitic exhortations along the path to anti-Israel terror"] we referred to the nauseating incitement that has emanated at intervals from the country's prominent, though it has to be said somewhat bizarre, former leader Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad. He was his country's prime minister for 22 years between 1981 and 2002:

"I am glad to be labelled anti-Semitic... How can I be otherwise, when the Jews who so often talk of the horrors they suffered during the Holocaust show the same Nazi cruelty and hard-heartedness towards not just their enemies but even towards their allies should any try to stop the senseless killing of their Palestinian enemies..."

And this from Mahathir's speech to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit in 2003, published in The Malaysian Insider:

"[T]he Nazis killed six million Jews out of 12 million (during the Holocaust). But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them"... adding this time that any sympathy accorded to the victims of the Holocaust was "wasted and misplaced".

Worth noting that Malaysia currently occupies one of the non-permanent-member seats on the
United Nations Security Council.

We plan to come back to the roles of Jordan and Qatar shortly.

05-Oct-15: On safeguarding a nation

Our plea addressing the prime minister - one of numerous
such unheeded letters and articles we published prior to Israel's mass
freeing of convicted killers in October 2011 [Source]

In the flow of reports tonight about the apprehension of a terrorist gang from Nablus in relation to the murders of Naama and Rabbi Rabbi Eitam Henkin this past Thursday night, there's now this official statement by Israeli prime minister Netanyahu:

We have brought an additional four IDF battalions into Judea and Samaria, and thousands of police into Jerusalem. The police are going deeply into the Arab neighborhoods, which has not been done in the past. We will demolish terrorists' homes. We are allowing our forces to take strong action against those who throw rocks and firebombs. This is necessary in order to safeguard the security of Israeli citizens on the roads and everywhere. We are not prepared to give immunity to any rioter, inciter or terrorist anywhere; therefore, there are no restrictions on the action of our security forces. We will also lift restrictions regarding action against inciters. We will act against the Islamic Movement which, together with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, is the main source of incitement.

Sounds like the right approach. We only wish that the same prime minister, faced with the opportunity to sound as determined as this, had acted with equal purpose before these latest murders instead of after.

Perhaps a sincere-sounding apology for some of those past catastrophically bad Israeli government decisions might have been in order today.

Terrorism requires uncompromising determination, and a clear-eyed view of the people who incite and the messages of incitement they propagate. Far too many Israeli families are today paying the hugely-painful price for unforgivable, irreversible errors on these matters by officials of our government.

05-Oct-15: More on the perpetrators of the Henkin killings

Nablus city center (from the municipality's website)

Information is emerging in stages. And both Hamas and Nablus take a starring role.

The text of an official statement made by the Government Press Office tonight includes some key pieces of information for those, like us, concerned to spotlight the role of Hamas in ongoing terrorism warfare against Israelis. These are all verbatim quotes from that report:

• The ISA [better known as the Shin Bet], IDF and Israel Police have arrested members of the cell that perpetrated the attack. The detainees have been transferred for investigation by the ISA and have admitted their involvement in the murder of the Henkins.
• The cell – affiliated with Hamas in Nablus – numbered five terrorists, each of which had a defined role. One terrorist checked the route. Three terrorists were in the attacking vehicle – a driver and two attackers. The cell commander was not in the vehicle. Several additional suspects have been arrested on suspicion of aiding the cell.
• The cell commander was Raeb Ahmed Muhammad Alivi [we think Alawi might be a better transliteration], born in 1978, and active in Hamas's military wing. He recruited the members of the cell, instructed them and provided them with weapons.
• Members of the cell included: Yehye Muhammad Naif Abdallah Haj Hamed, born in 1991, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he carried out the shooting in this attack and has been active in others. Samir Zahir Ibrahim Kusa, born in 1982, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he drove the attacking vehicle. Kerem Lutfy Fathi Razek, born in 1992, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he set out on the attack armed with a pistol but was mistakenly wounded by his colleague during the carrying out of the attack. Zid Ziad Jamil Amar, born in 1989, a resident of Nablus. A Hamas member, he checked the route.
• During the shooting, one of the cell members was accidentally shot by one of his colleagues and dropped his pistol, which was left at the scene and found by Israeli forces. After carrying out the shooing, the terrorists fled toward Nablus.
• The cell members also said that they had been involved in two shooting attacks in recent weeks, neither of which resulted in casualties, including the 30 August attack near the entrance to Kedumim.
• The investigation of the cell members is continuing.

Fatah, Hamas' sworn enemy, earlier claimed credit. Such is life among the savages.

Ynet is reporting that Alawi, the ring-leader, spent time inside Israel's prison system but does not elaborate. Was he released in a deal? We are checking.

There's some graphic security-camera video [via YouTube] from inside a Nablus hospital of armed Israeli forces entering and apprehending an injured attacker. Ynet is reporting that the person being arrested is Karam al-Masri, 23. (He is not named among the five arrested suspects.) Al-Masri happens to be the name of the human bomb planted by the infamous terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, whose explosion in the center of Jerusalem on August 9, 2001 destroyed the Sbarro pizzeria and the lives of dozens of Jewish families. We don't know whether there is a close relationship, but we're checking.

From social media posts tonight, we see that the hospital where the suspect was picked up is Arab Specialist Hospital, Nablus which

was established in 1997 and included the most important sections multiple medical treatment center and cardiac surgery center and blood diseases and bone and runs these sections Kadrozifa trained and qualified and has a high efficiency. Runs the hospital Arab specialists with expertise and high efficiency and management of distinctive always strives to be the best. [The hospital's website]

Haaretz is reporting tonight that four additional Israel Defense Forces battalions have now been sent in to Nablus which is now locked down to facilitate the ongoing search for the terrorists responsible for the attack.

27-Aug-15: Sometimes a knife attack is more than just a knife attack

President Mahmoud Abbas sharing the triumph of freshly-released Palestinian Arab terrorists, all of them
convicted, unrepentant murderers - and proclaims them heroes. AFP image from August 14, 2013

How people with power deal with terrorism gets our attention to an extent that some might find surprising. It should not be hard to see why. We have learned that being wrong on how to deal with terror has serious life-and-death consequences. Terrorism has become very personal to us.

Something happened here in Jerusalem last night that has again triggered our need to be heard on the subject.

A young Israeli was stabbed. He is in hospital as we write this, getting treated for knife injuries as a result of an attack on Wednesday evening. That's when (according to Ynet)

a Palestinian man attempted to attack a group of border guards near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem. The guards managed to overpower the Palestinian, who stabbed one of them in the leg, wounding him lightly. The suspect was arrested. The wounded policeman was taken by ambulance to Hadassah Medical Center. The suspect in the attack is a 56-year-old resident of Hebron, who does not have a permit to enter Israel... [Ynet, today]

No ordinary "Palestinian", this Hebronite has a stunning back-story. Times of Israel says his name is Muammar Ata Mahmoud, and that he

was released in 2013 as part of an ultimately unsuccessful round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority... [Times of Israel, today]

Peace talks? No, not exactly. As The Daily Beast pointed out in August 2013:

The prisoners were freed as an inducement for the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to participate in the peace talks. Since 2009, Abbas has said he would participate in negotiations only if Israel stopped settlement activity after President Obama imposed the condition on Israel in the first year of his first term. But Abbas has moderated his position at the behest of Secretary of State John Kerry... Some families of victims of prisoners who have been released in the past are now seeking a meeting with Kerry to explain to him what they see as the dangers of pressuring Israel to release to release Palestinians from prison... [The Daily Beast, August 14, 2013]

So was Abbas induced? Again, not exactly. In fact, Abbas himself explained that the freeing of 104 convicted terrorists, absurdly labeled "Pre-Oslo prisoners", all of whom were serving unfinished prison terms for involvement in acts of terrorism-related murder, mostly against Jews and Israelis, actually had nothing to do with that:

...Mahmoud Abbas told a visiting group of (Israeli) Meretz MKs in Ramallah on Thursday… that the release of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails was unrelated to the launching of the peace talks. ["25-Aug-13: Wake up call for those who thought the terrorists are walking free for peace"]

Don't blame Times of Israel's writers and editors for being wrong on this. Almost everyone was during those dark days of 2013. Over and again, the freeing from Israeli prison cells at the urgent and insistent behest of the US government and Secretary of State John Kerry (though his staff denied this from start to finish) of convicted, unrepentant murderers was said to be for peace - to jump start the peace talks, to show compromise in the name of peace, to trigger a peace eruption.

But not us:

“We don’t see this as a step towards peace,” Arnold Roth, one of the Israelis who helped organize a letter to the secretary of state, told The Daily Beast. “The objection is to the madness of positing the peace process on the prior release of murderers. We support a peace process.” Roth has some experience with the pain of seeing the killer of a loved one go free. His daughter, Malki, was killed in Aug. 9, 2001, in the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem. One of the planners of that attack, Ahlam Tamimi, who also broadcast the bombing for Palestinian television from Ramallah, walked free from multiple life sentences in 2011... [The Daily Beast, August 14, 2013]

Two weeks after that, reflecting on how those convicted, unrepentant killers of Jews were received as heroes in Ramallah, their arms held high by Mahmoud Abbas, we wrote here:

Israel's prime minister, in deciding to let the mis-named Pre-Oslo prisoners loose and thereby lifting Abbas's stocks among the Palestinian Arabs, did his calculations the way politicians do. He had a small number of options... The one he chose - freedom for 104 convicted terrorists - must have seemed to him and others in the cabinet as the least bad of several undesirable alternatives. And if this meant the victims of the terrorists would feel betrayed (we can imagine them saying in the cabinet room), so be it. Regretfully, a greater good is served. But speaking as victims of Palestinian Arab terrorists ourselves, we see it this way: justice was trampled, lives and sacrifices were demeaned, public opposition was ignored. In turning a deaf ear to the protests of the victims, our politicians threw down onto the negotiating table the cheapest, most disposable, of the cards in their hand. Not for the first time, we find ourselves saying that decisions like this one will be the cause of much long-term regret. ["27-Aug-13: Justice devalued, lives demeaned, principles cheapened: the high price of freeing murderers"]

It would be nice to think that there are political leaders with backbone, moral fibre and some conscience who might be thinking about regret at this moment. A politician willing to admit to having regrets could be someone worth knowing.

The man who stabbed a young Israeli man last night next to Damascus Gate and the walls of Jerusalem's Old City is the convicted murderer of Professor Menachem Stern.

Prof. Menachem Stern,
murdered in 1989
[Image Source]

Prof. Stern was a renowned historian, a member of Israel's prestigious National Academy of Sciences and Humanities. On the morning of June 22, 1989, he was briskly striding through Jerusalem's Valley of the Cross as he did nearly every day on his way to work at the Jewish National and University Library on the Hebrew University's Givat Ram campus. That day, he encountered this same Muammar Ata Mahmoud, equipped - as he was yesterday - with a knife. Mahmoud and an associate stabbed the historian for reasons that probably made great sense in terms of the savage blood lust and the terrorist creed to which the attackers subscribed. Prof Stern died of his injuries.

A group of first-graders, out for a walk with their teacher, found his body alongside one of the paths. The police came to Professor Stern's house on Tchernichovsky Street, and brought his wife, Hava, with them to the Valley of the Cross to identify the body. The police commander told Hava that he had had the privilege of studying with Professor Stern when he was a student at the university. Thousands came to the funeral, held at the Hebrew University... [Blog of Rabbi Carl M. Perkins, August 6, 2013]

One murder by knifing is never enough if you are that kind of human being. Hence the attack last night, made possible by a chain of awful political decisions based on self-serving logic and a fundamental lack of respect for principles of justice. (Yes, we did say justice - now please read what we said on that subject at the time: "25-Jul-13: Justice and morality and struggling to be healed from the bereavement disease"; and "14-Aug-13: Making 'peace' by celebrating the murders of children and of Holocaust survivors" and "27-Aug-13: Justice devalued, lives demeaned, principles cheapened: the high price of freeing murderers".)

Naturally that's not how it's going to be reported in the news. But it's the truth.

We noted at the top of this post how being wrong on terror has consequences. In that spirit, here is a reminder of an opinion piece Frimet Roth wrote for Times of Israel who published it on December 26, 2013. Less than a week later, yesterday's knife man - the murder of the famous historian - walked out of his Israeli prison cell, free, along with more than two dozen other sociopaths .

Some extracts from "Mr Netanyahu, how’s that working for you?":

Here we go again. The next tranche of terrorist murderer releases is five days away. Most Israelis will pay it no attention. True, polls show that 91% oppose it in principle but it takes more than principles to nudge Israelis off their couches...
We expect that when a prime minister experiments with a new “strategy” – which is what Netanyahu has labeled the releases – he will assess its efficacy at some point.  A drastic move like this – discarding judicial verdicts in favor of a Prime Minister’s preference – demands that. In short, the question that begs asking is: “How’s that working for you, Mr. Netanyahu?” Or, to be more precise: “How’s that working for your people?" ...Have they won Obama’s support against Iran? The releases may even have doomed Netanyahu’s campaign to galvanize the West behind his tough stand on Iran. Netanyahu committed a travesty of justice that those states would never in their wildest dreams entertain. World powers would have rallied around a firm Israeli prime minister. But a spineless leader who crosses his very own red line against releasing terrorist murderers demonstrates that all his ultimatums are shams.
Has it endangered Israelis? Do released terrorists return to terror?
Reports abound of terrorism’s resurgence in the West Bank. Much of it is orchestrated by Hamas – until now considered exclusively Gaza-based...
Bereaved parents grieve until the day they die. Bereaved parents who watch their children’s murderers walk free, grieve and seethe until the day they die.
But we will protest this upcoming release with no illusions.  Netanyahu, who has refused to meet with, speak to or even write to us, is impervious to reason.  He is a junkie of European and American kudos.  And for that coveted pat on the back from Kerry, Merkel, Hollande and co., Netanyahu is emasculating our justice system and destroying our democracy... [Frimet Roth writing in Times of Israel, December 26, 2013 - the article appeared less than a week before the release of the convicted murder who carried out yesterday's knifing attack]

Has it endangered Israelis? Do released terrorists return to terror? We have more questions like those. Getting political figures to address just these two could be a constructive start towards stemming the ongoing damage.

23-Aug-15: Do they understand the price of freeing the hunger-striking terrorists?

This photo of the notorious PA insider, Issa Karake, appears in a Jordan Times
article [here] under the headline "Palestinians call for release of 
hunger-striking prisoners". The face at the top of his poster
belongs to Abdullah Barghouti. Calling him "hunger striker"
somewhat misses the point. A confessed mass murderer, he wants to add to 
his current tally of 66 innocent victims. Naturally, they want him free.

Flush with the thrill of achievement, the imprisoned Islamic Jihad terrorist who has been waging a campaign against the Israeli authorities is back to making some improbable fresh threats from his Israeli hospital bed.

Muhammed Alaan (about whom we wrote on Friday: see "21-Aug-15: Hungering, thirsting, just dying for fresh victims")

told a Hamas journal: “I am free at the moment. If the Israeli occupation arrests me again, I will return to the hunger strike until they put an end to the travesty I am suffering, as are hundreds of administrative prisoners.” He added that the practice of detaining suspects without trial while refusing them the right to a lawyer and denying them visits from their family must be stopped “immediately.” Allaan was speaking from his hospital bed at Ashkelon’s Barzilai hospital. The High Court of Justice on Wednesday suspended Allaan’s administrative detention — a special anti-terror measure that allows imprisonment without trial on terrorism charges — after tests showed that he had sustained brain damage as a result of his two-month fast. There were conflicting reports as to whether the damage was reversible... Security officials believe Allaan, 31, is tied to the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Right-wing lawmakers and ministers reacted furiously to the High Court decision, with some accusing the court of setting a dangerous precedent that would lead to the release of other security prisoners being held in Israel. On Friday Allaan said in a video that his strike had been successful, and thanked his Israeli Arab “brothers” for their support. ["Terror suspect says he’ll renew hunger strike if rearrested" | Times of Israel, August 21, 2015]

It's unlikely to get much media coverage outside Israel (which is a pity), but some observations by an Israeli expert on how to treat prisoners, Orit Adato, emerged in an interview shown on Israel's Channel 1 on Saturday night. They were triggered by the ongoing Alaan case and the absurd and dangerous results it seems to be producing.

Odato, a specialist consultant whose privately-held business focuses on effective ways to manage the imprisoned terrorist population, is Israel's only female three-star army general, and a past commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service.

She said last night that the Israeli authorities have made two serious mistakes that have brought on the current fiasco.

1. Israel freed hunger strikers several years ago. This conveyed a clear message to the prisoners and their advocates that in Israeli eyes they hold a very effective tool in their hands. If Israel had wanted to release some administrative detention prisoners - and Israel was holding many at the time - it ought to have released several who were not on hunger strike, along with perhaps one or two who were. The point would be to make clear that the hunger strike was not the reason for the releases. Instead, Israel released only the hunger strikers.
2. The doctors who have refused to force-feed the hunger striking prisoners are utterly wrong. They have an obligation to save lives. They already save the lives of other terrorists who have no interest in living - for instance, human bombs (erroneously called "suicide bombers" - see "30-Jun-15: We need to be calling them what they are: human bombs") who survive. They save prisoners who are found hanged and are freed from the rope before death. The case of a hunger striker is no different from those other cases. 

We have quoted Odato several times in the past (in 2008, for instance). She has expressed some consistently smart views that, in retrospect, pointed in the right direction.

Here, below, is an essay published in 2006 in which she features. It's one of those now-forgotten (and always ignored) pleas we made to the Israeli authorities to re-think their plans to free terrorists from Israeli prisons in order to secure the freedom of Gilad Shalit, a hostage illegally held by Hamas for years.

This particular article was published in Front Page Magazine just before we started blogging here, and fully five years before the catastrophic Shalit Deal was executed. We're still sure it made sense then and feel it's helpful to repost it here, now.

"Reasonable" Suicide | Frimet Roth | FrontPageMagazine.com | September 12, 2006 

Prepare for another Israeli retreat. The prison gates are about to be flung open again and Hamas handed a victory greater than any territorial concession. Sources say that the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit is imminent. The ransom demanded by Hamas reportedly now stands at 800 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. The absurdly skewed numbers make plain that this will be no exchange. While the first Palestinian to walk through those prison gates will be swapped, the seven hundred and ninety nine who follow him will be handed over gratis.

A mass release of this kind, if it takes place, will be catastrophic for Israelis. In its wake, terrorists would be insane not to carry out more such abductions in order to reap such bonanzas. And past experience shows that released prisoners rejoin the ranks of their terror gangs with redoubled fervor.

Orit Adato, former Commissioner of the Israeli Prison Service, observed, in her 2005 article, "The Issue of Prisoner Release", that some security prisoners "left jail more extreme and better equipped ideologically and professionally." But these sacrifices have long been accepted as the unavoidable price of "bringing our boys home." Israeli soldiers and their families, facing the harsh realities of life here, know that no stone is ever left unturned in our government's pursuit of that goal.

Amnon Zichroni, a veteran negotiator for the release of Israeli soldiers, reflecting on this, said in a recent interview: "Perhaps the other side doesn't have the same attitude as we do to our people." Based on his past involvement in trying to free European hostages held in Iran and Lebanon, he is convinced that even "the Europeans placed less value on their citizens' lives than we [Israelis] do."

This noble attitude should not be tampered with. However, it is essential that candidate prisoners be carefully selected and their release wisely negotiated. Zichroni, a lawyer, has come by this wisdom over several decades. His experience in the field began in 1978 when PM Menachem Begin appointed him to handle the release of Israeli prisoners and hostages in Arab hands. He was also involved intensively with the cases of Ron Arad and the 1982 Sultan Yaakub MIA's.

Successful negotiation, he maintains, demands that government lay the groundwork immediately after the kidnapping. Interviewed by the Bitter Lemons forum shortly after Cpl. Shalit was taken hostage, Zichroni advised the Israeli government to "desist from targeted assassinations and deal instead with targeted kidnappings… of people who are close to the organizations holding Shalit, who could be bargaining cards... Without leverage, we fail."

His advice was not heeded. Prime Minister Olmert's initial public stance was to refuse to negotiate at all. Zichroni says this increased the danger to Shalit's life.

Having since flip-flopped and with no ground-work, Olmert is negotiating from a position of weakness. Consequently, the deal being weighed threatens to be more loathsome than all those preceding it. If closed, it will cross a critical red line that has been observed in all of Israel's earlier prisoner exchanges.

To obtain Shalit's freedom, Israel has reportedly agreed for the first time to hand over prisoners "with blood on their hands." But the deal's brokers and Israel's political leaders are attempting to conceal this with the lulling words "women and children."

The fact is that several of the women and sub-eighteen-year-olds who are candidates for release are no less lethal and murderous than the stereotypical twenty-something male terrorist.

Those who grieve – like me – for loved ones murdered at Jerusalem's Sbarro Restaurant are well aware of the dangers posed by female terrorists. One hot August afternoon five years ago, Ahlam Tamimi, then a twenty-year-old university co-ed, played a central role in the terror attack that took the life of my daughter and 14 other innocents, most of them children.

Tamimi selected the target and escorted the suicide bomber to the restaurant's door. 130 people were injured and maimed in that massacre.

Interviewed in her prison cell four months ago, she told reporters: "I'm not sorry for what I did. I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel's existence."

Tamimi has served less than five years of her 16 consecutive life sentences. Yet already in March 2006, she proclaimed, "I know that we will become free from Israeli occupation and then I will also be free from the prison."

I appeal to Prime Minister Olmert to resist the pressure of Palestinian and Western diplomats to succumb to the above terms. They are undoubtedly invoking populist comparisons between the IRA and the Palestinian prisoners and pointing to the success of the Good Friday Agreement, signed by the IRA and Britain in 1998. But our situation is fundamentally different.

The Good Friday document took into account several factors absent from the Palestinian case. First, there was no mass exodus of hundreds of Irish convicted terrorists. They were released gradually, in order of the severity of their crimes and the time remaining in their sentences.

In addition, only prisoners belonging to organizations that had signed the ceasefire accord were freed. The others were to be reassessed at a later stage in the peace process. And both sides, the Irish and British governments, were entrusted with re-integrating the prisoners both before and after release.

Clearly, none of those conditions apply in our region. No Palestinian terror organization has signed anything remotely like a cease-fire with Israel. On the contrary, they have reiterated, both in word and deed, their commitment to the destruction of Israel. There is no peace process to speak of.

Consequently, once the freed Palestinians have rejoined the ranks of their terror organizations, the only "re-integration program" they will attend is target practice and advanced Islamist indoctrination.

There is another significant distinction between the Irish and Palestinian experiences. InIreland, the victim families were involved in the process from the start. They were notified of pending IRA prisoner releases and invited to respond. The pain of the Israeli victims has never been a factor in the prisoner release equation.

With Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev still held for ransom by terrorists, prisoner release is a hotly debated issue. Now is the time for the government to reassess this tactic. Once fine-tuned, it can become the key to "bringing our boys home" without being suicidal: without strengthening our enemies, endangering Israel, making a mockery of justice or infuriating the victims.

The question is: Are our leaders up to the challenge?

Nine years later and in the wake of the deplorable events of October 2011, we have the tragic answer. And along with millions of other Israelis, we are left to live with its consequences.

19-Aug-15: The road to Malachi's death and the decisions that made it possible

Malachi Rosenfeld [Image Source]

Moderates are ruling in Ramallah. There are no Gazan rockets this summer (well, not so many). Hamas is ready for peace. Other than an outbreak of extremist violence among Israelis, things are basically calm. Why get upset?

Now back to reality.

Some weeks ago, we wrote here ["19-Jul-15: Another catastrophic outcome of the 2011 Shalit Deal"] about the cold-blooded shooting attack on four young Israeli men heading home after an evening of playing basketball. 

Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld Hy"d, 26, son of Eliezer and Sarah, a resident of Cochav Hashachar, an outstanding student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, died of gunshot injuries. He was riding home with three friends on the night of June 29, 2015 after playing basketball when their vehicle came under shooting attack ["29-Jun-15: Drive-by shooting attack near Shvut Rachel tonight"]. All four were wounded in the hail of weapons fire. Malachi died the next day.

The attack, the woundings, and the death of Malachi were yet more direct consequences of the tragically misconceived Shalit Deal. 

Several Palestinian Arab men, members of a terror-focused gang called the Hamas Silwad Cell (Silwad is a town), were arrested shortly after and confessed to that murderous assault as well as several earlier shooting attacks on Israelis. The commander of the cell is Ahmad Najar, a terrorist in the service of Hamas. 

Under the name Ahmed Mustafa Saleh Hamed al-Najar, he was convicted in December 2003 of involvement in multiple killings by shooting and was sentenced to seven life terms by an Israeli court. That sentence was - astonishingly - commuted by the government of Israel and along with 1,026 other convicted terrorists, among them the killers of our daughter Malki, he walked free in the disastrous Shalit Deal. We explained in that earlier post that

A condition of the commuting of his sentence (all these commutations were conditional) was that he be expelled to Gaza. But he soon shifted his base of operations from there to Jordan where he is said to have "been working to organize and fund terror attacks".

Ynet reports this morning that indictments were filed on Monday against the Silwad suspects arising from Malachi Rosenfeld's murder. With the exception of Ahmad Najar, the head of the gang and a Shalit Deal beneficiary, they can expect to go on trial shortly. (He remains free just across the river, as does the woman who engineered the murder of our daughter.) In the supporting material, the Shin Bet "reveals" what anyone who cares to look into how the Shalit Deal process worked, along with the effects of the notorious Rewards for Terror scheme conducted by the Mahmoud Abbas regime (the Palestinian Authority), already knows:

Ahmad Najar, the head of the terror cell that murdered Rosenfeld, was imprisoned in Israeli jail for the murder of six Israelis in 2004. After his release as part of the Shalit deal, he received a monthly stipend from the Palestinian Authority, which he used to train and arm his terror cell. After his release, Najar moved to Jordan. For the attack, he recruited his brother Amjad, who withdrew the money the PA deposited for Ahmad in a bank account in the West Bank... [Ynet]

Far too often, well-intentioned people, often with laudable humanitarian inclinations, express sympathy for the deaths of innocents in the ongoing war of terror waged against the world's only Jewish country (and its people) without connecting the lethal dots. Malachi Rosenfeld, one of the most recent of those murder victims, is dead because a convicted murdering terrorist with zero remorse and having been sentenced to spend the remainder of his life behind bars was let loose nearly four years ago by a decision taken here in Jerusalem. And month after month, thousands of other convicted and unrepentant terrorists are the recipients of rich cash rewards from the Abbas-dominated PA, and invented PA jobs along with a monthly PA cash payment specifically calibrated to reflect the tremendously high regard held for them and their barbaric deeds by Palestinian Arab society.

Ynet could have pointed out, but unfortunately did not, that Najar was not unusual. Every convicted and imprisoned Palestinian Arab terrorist prisoner receives cash and concrete rewards from the perpetually-bankrupt Palestinian Authority. Funding from (mainly but not only) European countries and from the European Union are essential to the continued viability of the Rewards for Terror scheme. Here's some background reading from our past posts -

• 20-May-11: Rewarding the Palestinian Arab terrorists: is this being done in your name? 
• 28-Jul-11: Taxpayer-funded salaries to convicted Palestinian Arab terrorists. What a good idea 
• 4-Sep-12: Where's the shame? How much of your tax dollars went to fund the pension of our child's murderer? More than you probably thought
• 21-Jul-13: In the debate over whether Israel should free convicted terrorists, one key argument is mostly ignored
• 08-Feb-15: Foreign money and the Palestinian Arab terror it buys
• 02-Jun-15: The obvious, petty lies that keep European money flowing into the hands of the PA's terrorists

Note also that many of these murdering (and would-be murdering) terrorist recipients of regular cash gifts are loyal to the Hamas arch-enemies of the Palestinian Authority, The money keeps arriving anyway, and in quantities that greatly exceed regular PA salaries.

Perhaps Malachi died as a victim of a tragedy. And perhaps that tragedy was engineered by humans who knew what they were doing. Or - worse - who considered the possibilities and concluded that the price was affordable.

The likelihood that mainstream media anywhere will point this out to their news consumers in Hebrew, Arabic, English or any other language is close to zero. It falls to people like us who have lived through it, to speak up and explain that, more than any other aspect, this is the tragedy of living at a time when the corrosive effects of terrorism are so poorly understood.