04-Feb-21: The BBC is sorry they showcased a terrorist. But do they actually grasp the problem?

The presenter of BBC Arabic's Trending tribute to Ahlam Tamimi
introduces the fugitive terrorist [Image Source: Screen Capture] 

Arnold Roth writes: 

I’m not a broadcaster, not a journalist, not a policy-shaping official. But I have things I feel ought to be heard and known about one of the world's most important media platforms, the BBC. 

I am writing now because there is an important, sober and factual expose of the problems there in today's edition of a British weekly ["Shame of BBC Arabic as systematic bias revealed | A JC investigation shows a pattern of anti-Israel bias and inaccuracies", Jewish Chronicle, February 3, 2021]. 

I am quoted briefly there but want to raise some larger aspects of the deeply disturbing affair.

On November 9, 2020 I took part in an intense meeting with senior executives at the BBC. The subject was a complaint I had published some weeks earlier [see “Why does BBC‏ ‏promote my daughter’s murderer?” Arnold Roth/Palestinian Media Watch, October 13, 2020] about a Jordanian woman, a fugitive from US justice, being given the celebrity treatment before a global audience tuned in to a BBC show that has a huge following among Arabic speakers.

The meeting by video conference was at my request. 

I was and continue to be impressed that the senior executive at BBC World Service responded positively to me and without hesitation. He could easily have ignored or deflected what was clearly an uncomfortable proposal. That’s pretty much what the vast majority of media organizations and their editors and management with whom I have tried to engage have done during the past four years.

Is this because I am rude? Nasty? Perhaps, but I believe it has more to do with how I bring disturbing messages with me.

* * *

But first some needed background.

My daughter, Malka Chana Roth, a beautiful high school student with a sunny disposition, was one of 15 innocent people murdered in a pizzeria attack carried out by Islamist terrorists in the center of the city where we live, Jerusalem, on August 9, 2001. A sixteenth victim remains in a coma all these years later.

That Islamist terrorist, who was 21 years old at the time and responsible for selecting the target and planting the bomb, was a part-time news-reader at a Palestinian Arab TV station and personally reported the news on camera some hours after engineering the massacre. She went on to publicly call the savagery “my operation”. She has been explicit about how she wanted her victims to be children and took pains to ensure that is what happened. In this she succeeded on a monstrous scale.

My wife and I are battling to see the woman whom the BBC so generously profiled in its October 2020 broadcast, Ahlam Tamimi, locked up for life in a maximum-security prison. Dedicated investigators, prosecutors and agents in the US Department of Justice are too.

This is a battle we have waged – in the literal sense, a fight for justice – since February 2012. There have been meaningful achievements along the way, most notably the unveiling of terror charges against Tamimi on March 14, 2017. 

But what counts is that Tamimi remains free. She’s based in Jordan’s capital, living a life of privilege, influence, public adulation.

Jordan is a monarchy with friendly ties throughout the Western world. It happens also to be a tightly controlled state with famously unfree media. Despite the restrictive policies and willingness to silence the regime's critics, it has extended a rare degree of generosity to Tamimi. Most notably this has extended to the privilege of allowing her to host her own television program devoted to promoting terror and terrorists. 

That show, distributed and watched globally via Hamas satellite TV from a studio in Amman every week for five years, allowed Tamimi’s unique incitement to terror to reach Arabic-speaking audiences in virtually every country on earth.

The Jordanian woman not only spearheaded the atrocity and has never stopped boasting about it. She boasts on camera of slipping into Jerusalem multiple times by means of her media credentials, of selecting the target with great care; of personally planting the bomb. And in due course she celebrated the many deaths and injuries with manifest glee. On any reasonable view, this is a monster.

That along with her years of exposure via frequent public appearances – live and via television – in large parts of the Arab world have made her a global celebrity. (I can barely type those words.)

It’s a crushing reality made much worse by foolish political decisions and the moral cowardice of a long line of public and media figures. In practice, the outrage tends to be somewhat muted largely because, unless you are fluent in Arabic, you may well have had no idea of ay of this till now.

* * *

This is not how we thought things would turn out.

Malki was just 15 years old - a lovely, almost-young-woman, brimful of musical talent, sweetness, empathy - when she stood with her lifelong friend Michal Raziel at the counter of the Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Israel’s capital on a hot school holiday afternoon in the summer of 2001.

Sbarro immediately after the attack [Image Credit:

Avi Ohayon and Israel Government Press Office]

The human bomb (a term I urge people to think about and use), a religious zealot in his twenties from a family of well-off Palestinian Arab restaurateurs, was brought right up to the shop’s entrance by Tamimi. She fled the scene before he walked in.

Had anyone stopped the young, ordinary-looking man at the door to check the contents of the guitar case slung over his shoulder (but guards were not posted in those more innocent days), they would have been shocked.

Instead of a musical instrument, it was filled with kilograms of tightly packed explosives, grotesquely augmented with a large quantity of human-flesh-ripping nails.

The explosion that ensued was thunderous; the outcome utter carnage. An Israeli court convicted Tamimi on terror charges after she admitted to all of them.

But eight years later she walked out, thanks to a deal made by Israel with Hamas for the freedom of an Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, held by the terrorists for more than five years.

Tamimi returned to Jordan and her family and was received there as a triumphant conquering heroine and role model. Her wedding less than a year later was a live TV event.

For us, things then went downhill quickly. From bad to worse to literally unbearable.

In March 2017, the US unsealed terrorism charges against Tamimi. They had been issued in 2013, but at the request of the prosecutors they were kept confidential and secret by order of the court.

The charges were based on a Federal law that applies to acts of terror committed outside the territory of the US that cause the death of American nationals like my Malki.

The Jordanian was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list the same day and is still there – the second female ever to be on the list - along with a multi-million-dollar reward for her capture and conviction.

The Hashemite Kingdom response came, to our astonishment, just six days later.

Jordan’s highest court handed down a ruling that the extradition treaty signed by the late King Hussein - the widely admired father of the current king - with the Clinton Administration in 1995 was invalid. It was therefore unenforceable, the judges declared. And Jordan, as a result, not only would not, but in their explanation could not, hand Tamimi over for trial. So said the highest tribunal in the land.

For their part, King Abdullah II and his diplomats and ministers found it unnecessary to say a single public word. With two small exceptions, they have remained silent ever since. 

A handful of news stories blandly and briefly reported the legal decision. But no questions were ever asked by any reporters – questions like: how could Jordan protect an admitted mass murderer and, in the process, thumb its nose at its American benefactor? And what about the string of fugitive terrorists whom Jordan had in fact extradited to the US when so requested?

And that was that.

The woman who confesses happily (the videos show how literally true this is) to blowing up children in a fast-food place morphed into arguably the most protected fugitive alive.

* * *

With all its exhausting frustrations, the situation is not static.

Tamimi learned this past September that Jordan intended to deport her husband, Nizar Tamimi. He is a convicted murderer who was released in that same deal as Ahlam Tamimi despite having been sentenced to a life term.

On October 1, 2020 he appears - though the matter is not clear - to have left Jordan to take up residence in Qatar.

The US State Department posted a $5M reward, still in effect,

in January 2018 [Image Source]

It appears he went alone. His wife, the FBI’s Most Wanted. fugitive -- has said noisily and repeatedly that she calls Jordan home and will not leave. Let’s note that Qatar has no extradition treaty with the US or, as far as I can tell, with any other country. The Tamimis have both visited Qatar several times in the past few years and have said to the media that each of them was given residential rights there.

Ahlam Tamimi quickly embarked on a campaign demanding the restoration of her right to live in Jordan with her husband. The female fugitive who has boasted for years of spearheading a slaughter of children says her entitlement to have him back is enshrined in Jordanian law. That it’s a matter of elementary human rights.

With a perfectly straight face, she presents herself as the victim of an incomprehensible injustice.

It’s a message she delivered personally by calling-in to various Arab media outlets, including a high-profile talk-radio station in Jordan’s capital, Amman, called Melody FM.

On October 6, she phoned the presenters of a popular program there and managed to start explaining that she wanted to address Jordan’s king over the airwaves so he would know about the abridgement of her rights and would restore them.

The presenters, claiming there was an audio problem, abruptly cut her off.

The barely-disguised silencing of one of Jordan’s best-known voices instantly became a major issue. On social media, an Arabic hashtag meaning “Your voice is loud and clear, Ahlam Tamimi” got tremendous traction.

* * *

Which brings us to the United Kingdom.

Some 48 hours later, the daily edition of a prime-time current affairs TV show called Trending produced in London went to air on BBC Arabic, amplified by global distribution via YouTube.

The Trending program included a six-minute segment overviewing some of what I have just written. The core message was Tamimi’s demand for her infringed rights to be restored, delivered by the $5 Million woman herself speaking straight into the camera.

In a disturbing example of ill-conceived advocacy, what was conveyed is that here was a Jordanian woman, deprived of something fundamental, deserving support, sympathy, intervention.

A brief video clip overviewing the back-story then drove home to viewers the notion of Tamimi as a victim of cruel injustice, a detainee (that’s a key word) eventually released from imprisonment… and now, being victimized all over again by her own royal majesty!

What possessed the BBC reporters and producers to put this abomination to air? [1]

Screen cap from the Palestinian Media Watch

English translation of the Ahlam Tamimi appeal
promoted in the BBC Arabic program

From senior levels of the world’s largest broadcasting organization [2], the BBC has expressed its apologies. The media, including Britain’s major Jewish news platforms, have duly reported this. The Jewish News, another British-Jewish weekly gave this front-page coverage in October: "22-Oct-20: Whose business is it if BBC engages in advocacy journalism?"

It’s my opinion that the apologies mis-state what’s happened here. They are not directed at the actual problem and fail to adequately deal with how the problematic sequence of events presages a problematic future. The one carried in the UK Jewish News weekly put it this way:

“Following an editorial review, we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.”

By my count, to this point the BBC has issued at least five Tamimi/Trending apologies. All of them are framed as a breach of the BBC’s editorial guidelines, as a failure to meet the BBC’s own standards, as a mistake.

All are inadequate because, failing to identify the problem they therefore do not address it.

Not one of them details Tamimi’s crime. Or her explicit and repeated admissions of guilt. Beyond that, they fail to ask what the British public needs to know: Given the BBC’s history, scale, standing and massive resources, how could this have happened?

BBC Arabic is a very serious media business with a weekly audience, according to the BBC’s own data, of some 43 million. Its Twitter account alone has 7.7 million followers. It broadcasts programs and hourly news bulletins 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on radio and via cable, satellite, streaming video and BBC News Arabic television. It has an impactful web-based presence on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

Far from being some minor add-on to a mainstream media operation, BBC Arabic is a full-blown world-class competitor to the likes of Aljazeera, SKY News Arabic, Al Arabiya, Iran’s Alalam, and Arabic channels from France and Russia. Friends familiar with the Arab world have told me it’s considered the most credible and least problematic of the pack.

Then there’s the matter of public resources that have been placed at its disposal. In October 2017 (according to a BBC media release: “BBC Arabic launches Trending”), the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – the UK’s foreign ministry – handed £291 million, equivalent to US $387M at today’s rate, to BBC management as part of the biggest expansion of BBC World Service since the 1940’s when all it did was radio.

BBC Arabic is the largest beneficiary of that funding. And the Trending program is singled out for special focus in the media advisory.

With more than 250 staff (some estimates say 400) in London and bureaus in (at least) Cairo, Baghdad, Ramallah and Washington DC, it’s seen as having a serious role in British foreign policy and projecting British influence into strategically important demographics.

Now zoom down to the BBC’s October apologies and you are left wondering how one of the world’s most important Arabic-language media platforms, controlled and funded by Her Majesty’s Government, could have thought it right to give the world’s most wanted female fugitive a sympathetic platform so as to portray her as a victim.

* * *

Some aspects that bear on that question:

• The BBC Arabic Trending show’s presenter introduced Tamimi, the confessed bomber and fugitive murdering terrorist, by calling her “the Jordanian prisoner of Palestinian origin [who] has returned to the headlines.” That’s it – the entire description.
• A subtle but related point: the Arabic word usually translated as prisoner is more accurately rendered as detainee – meaning a person captured or held for one reason or another. And maybe for no reason at all.
• They made no mention of the death toll. Deaths don’t even get a mention in this report. The production people could have framed this as being about fifteen innocent people, Israelis and tourists, adults, children and infants, murdered by the Jordanian. And that more than 130 others were injured, some horribly. That the dead included a mother and a father and three of their children under the age of ten – five members of a family, leaving young, orphaned children at home. Instead, they breezily air-brushed all these realities out.
• They did not say Tamimi specifically chose a pizzeria filled with children. Or that, based on previously checking out the area to plant a different bomb the previous month, she decided this was the most child-rich target to be found that day (school holidays) at that hour (lunch time) in Israel’s bustling capital.
• They concealed how, for Tamimi, this attack, from the outset of its planning, was all about murdering Jewish children and mutilating (think of those nails) as many as possible.
• That she has no regrets: “You know how many casualties there were? This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today and in the same manner.” [Source: An earlier published interview]
• With absurd delicacy, Trending whitewashes Tamimi as someone “accused of participating in the bombing”. Accused? Tamimi confessed to the Israeli court that tried her for terrorism, admitting all the charges against her and denying none of them. She was then convicted and sentenced. In a different context, calling her accused might be disingenuous. Here, it’s simply an attempt to deceive.
• Tamimi has gone on to publicly admit, to boast about, to regale in the celebrity that comes with being the cause of so many horrific deaths.
• This, along with her current freedom – a finger in the eye of the Zionists -  is what has made her the figure of adulation that she has become,  without any doubt.   
• BBC Arabic did not say that Tamimi, speaking to a documentary film maker, framed the massacre as part of a religious struggle between Islam and the Jews.
• They did not say Tamimi is currently the most wanted female fugitive in the world with a State Department reward of $5M for her capture and conviction.
• They did not say that an Extradition Treaty was signed by the present king’s father and the Clinton State Department in 1995. That the US says it is perfectly valid today - despite a Jordanian court ruling that cites a dubious technical defect (and suggests no other basis) for its finding.
• That no court in Jordan goes so far as to claim Tamimi is innocent or “accused” or suspected – only that, whatever she is, Jordan is not obliged to do anything. No legal source outside Jordan has supported the logic of the Jordanian judges.
• The Trending people did not spend even a moment telling viewers about the unremitting misery that the destruction of so many lives – mostly of children and infants – inflicted on ordinary Israeli, American, Australian, French, Brazilian and Dutch families. Or that Tamimi smiled happily into the camera when informed by an interviewer how many children (eight) perished at her hands.  
• They did not name Malki or Michal or any of the other luminous lives this beast snuffed out. For those packaging and marketing it, they don’t advance the tale of Tamimi’s victimhood. So, who cares?

It’s simply stunning that, in the considered judgement of BBC’s leadership, what happened here amounts to a mere breach of guidelines, some kind of technical error. As if they were saying, “Perhaps a rule or two may have been infringed. But now leave it to us to see it doesn’t happen again,” et cetera.

* * *

Totally missing in the BBC’s public statements on this scandal is any sign of introspection.

What, you might want to ask, is wrong with the BBC staffers who put this to air? Were they brought up to think this way? Is this what they learned in journalism school? Is this how the BBC trained them?

Malki, of blessed memory

I don’t know where the foreign ministry of the United Kingdom stands on any of this. I wish I did. While they are the channel through which very large slabs of tax-payer money are poured into BBC Arabic, giving it a voice of unmatched authority and tremendous reach, they have deferred to the providers of “Sorry, we’ll do better next time” to handle the flack.

The BBC incomprehensibly handing one of the world’s most powerful megaphones to a terrorist isn’t a procedural issue. It’s not a marginal disciplinary matter. And it is surely not some trivial search to find the most efficient words.

Reasonable observers making an honest assessment would see, I believe, that the Trending show and its well-funded staff have just served up an unblinking validation of Tamimi’s demand to be heard and supported. This blood-drenched celebrity jihadist, on the run from Interpol and the FBI, is promoted as an icon of resistance. The unimpeachable BBC brand is there to seal the credibility of the framing.

* * *

But there’s more.

While rejecting the steps my wife and I urged them to take in our meeting, BBC management in mid-November sent me a video clip along with an Arabic-to-English translation of what it says. It’s one more apology – but this time, one they told us went to air on the Trending program itself at the end of October.

As reported in today's 
Jewish Chronicle UK cover story

They were good enough to email me the actual video of the on-camera Arabic-language apology, but I am unable to find it found online now. I believe it's not there - not anywhere. There is also no mention of it on Twitter, Facebook or elsewhere in BBC’s social media world. I certainly believe the BBC when they say it went to air. I’m just not sure how impactful it could have been and wondering how much impact they wanted it to have if they made it disappear the instant after it was delivered live. In any event, I have it because they gave it to me, and I plan to ask for permission to publish it.

This on-air BBC apology has some odd features. 

First, it’s devoid of any on-screen headline. It has no photo of Tamimi or of the massacre or of anything else that would catch an audience’s attention. There's no visual link to convey that this is important. No sign other than the rapidly spoken flat-toned words of the cold-faced presenter herself that it’s about Tamimi. Or about anything else of significance.

On the positive side, it’s delivered by the same journalist who was the program’s presenter when they showcased the Sbarro monster a few weeks earlier. That on its own is important. But her tone is monotonous and uninflected, and her brief recitation lasts just a minute.

I showed the BBC’s transcript along with the video clip to an expert Arabic-to-English translator who pointed out some problems. The biggest was in the opening words. On screen, the TV presenter speaking Arabic says this:

“Our viewers, I read you a message from the BBC”.

The transcript that the BBC gave me does not have those words or anything like them.

The omission leaves me feeling that the non-Arabic speakers at the world’s most important broadcast enterprise, including its top management, don’t realize that this (now expressed in my words, not hers) is what their audience heard from Trending’s presenter:

“Friends, what I’m about to say is not me speaking but something the BBC people have obliged me to say. So here goes and we’ll get this out of the way in a minute and get back to our show.”

In the wake of a searing experience, watching incredulously as the killer of my child (roll those words around in your own minds) is presented to millions of viewers as if she were the overworked head of some worthy charity in need, the pro forma apology underscores how, sorry to say, I fear BBC management has lost the plot.

The professionals who formulate and deliver BBC Arabic content don’t need more rules, guidelines or direction. Whatever may be called for, it’s surely not another apology.

What’s just happened and what it says about a precious British resource is far too serious for that. Getting the world’s most important broadcaster to understand this ought to be at the top of some senior UK government official’s list of things that - once and for all - need to be gotten right at the BBC.

UPDATE February 6, 2021: If you have read this far, we want you to know of an update post ["05-Feb-21: The Sbarro savagery: The on-air apology BBC Arabic broadcast to its viewers [Video]"] with additional revelations that expose unacknowledged dysfunctionality at the BBC.

UPDATE June 21, 2021: In a major expose into ongoing malfeasance by BBC management, Hadar Sela at CAMERA UK ["BBC Arabic Employees breach corporation's social media guidance"] reminds us how, in our words and not her's, BBC Arabic's journalistic staff - or significant parts of it - continue to treat the BBC's rules, guidelines and values with utter contempt. With the passage of years and in relation to how it deals with the Middle East's various conflicts and especially with Israel and the challenges we face here, more and more the massive BBC enterprise has become a by-word for genteel bigotry masquerading as something more serious and objective. It's time serious-minded people, perhaps from the UK's Jewish leadership, perhaps from its parliament, perhaps from its designated regulators, brought this multi-billion pound rogue operation under effective control and back in line with its own declared values and mission. 

Footnotes

[1] I amplified my criticisms of what the BBC did in several other published pieces during October 2020. See  “‘BBC lost its moral compass’ by giving mass murderer a platform” [Jewish News UK, October 21, 2020]. And “Father of murdered daughter condemns BBC for giving platform to Ahlam Tamimi” [Jewish News Syndicate, October 14, 2020]. And via a televised interview with SKY News Australia [“Father of murdered child ‘nauseated’ BBC gave terrorist killer a platform”, October 18, 2020]

[2] 22,000 staff of whom 16,000 plus are in public sector broadcasting). Add in part-time, flexible, and fixed-contract staff and it’s 35,402 [Wikipedia]

24-Aug-18: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime ($1 million and growing) have done for savages who kill Jews

The only portrait we want to show in this post is this one of our
daughter, Malki. She was 15 years old when these barbarians carried
out their evil plot.

Yesterday, we published a post ["23-Aug-18: New data: How the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro pizzeria fared financially"] focusing on the sums of money that, according to computations done by the fine team at Palestinian Media Watch  (for whose input we are very grateful), have funded the lifestyles of the Sbarro bombing gang and, where relevant, their heirs.

Those Sbarro-related payments stand at close to a million dollars and increase every month. And by the way, the massively corrupt Palestinian Authority, which pays out the cash granted to them, is perpetually insolvent.

The incentive value of sums like those paid out, and continuing to be paid, month after month, in encouraging ever more Arab-on-Israeli terror is clear. Note also that the Fatah-controlled PA has had no problem in the past making payments to Hamas terrorists, even with the deep and frequently lethal rivalry that reigns among them. Abbas and Fatah bestowed the Al Quds Mark of Honor, the PLO’s highest medal, to Ahlam Tamimi (briefly profiled below) while she was imprisoned in an Israeli jail for her central role in  the Sbarro massacre. As this source notes, "Conferring the Al Quds Mark of Honor is decided at the discretion of [Abbas] the Palestinian Authority’s president, and he alone has the final say when choosing the Palestinians to be honored with the medal."

He later reversed the award because of the outcry that it attracted, but that doesn't change the point: payments and medals to terrorists and encouraging more terror remain a consensus issue in their deeply dysfunctional world.

There's much to be learned from knowing more about those Hamas terrorists - what they did, what's become of them. It's regretable that even people relatively well-informed about Israel's experience at the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists seem to be unaware of much of the detail below. 

We offer brief profiles of the terrorists named below - with the exception of the one who appears at the bottom of the list - all of whom took part in the 2001 Battle of the Sbarro Pizzeria (names are listed alphabetically by surname). 

We also note how they have fared since setting out to execute a massacre on a 'battlefield' deliberately chosen by the plot's barbaric mastermind, Ahlam Tamimi, for its attractiveness to Israeli children during their school holidays.

• Jamal Abu al-Hija: Headed Hamas’ military wing in the Samaria city of Jenin. In addition to his role in the Sbarro attack, he had direct involvement in the bombing of a full commuter bus traveling from Haifa to Tzefat at Meron Junction (9 killed, 38 injured, September 4, 2002). After being arrested and tried, he was sentenced to 9 life terms of life imprisonment plus 20 years. Career status: For now, continues to reside in an Israeli prison cell.
• Qeis Adwan: Emerging as a popular leader in the student union of the notorious An Najah National University in Nablus (they honored the Sbarro bombers by erecting an on-campus replica of the destroyed pizzeria the month after the massacre), he became a senior manager in the Hamas terror hierarchy. Described by the New York Times as an "inventive bomb maker", he is said to have taken responsibility for the murdering of no fewer than 77 Israelis. He played a managerial role in several of the most savage Hamas atrocities including the Sbarro massacre, the bombing of the Nahariya railway station (3 killed, 94 injured, September 9, 2001), the Passover bombing of Netanya's Park Hotel (29 killed, 64 injured, March 27, 2002), and the bombing of the Arab-run Matza restaurant in Haifa (16 killed, 40 injured, March 31, 2002). Career status: Permanently terminated by Israeli security forces in the northern Samaria city of Tubas on April 5, 2002. 
• Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri: The human bomb planted by Hamas in general and Ahlam Tamimi in particular outside the Sbarro location. We described the circus-like spectacle of the very public funeral given to his remains here: "5-May-14: The making of a martyr: it takes more than a village". An extract from what we wrote: "Back in August 2001, starting just a day or two after the Sbarro massacre, al-Masri's father was 'marketed' to both the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corp as a lover of peace and as a worthy interview subject. We know this because both the [Australian] ABC and the [British] BBC approached us, astoundingly asking that we take part in double-headed interviews: on one side, the freshly-bereaved father [Arnold Roth] of a child blown up just a few days earlier by a human bomb; on the other, the parent of the human bomb himself. We declined both invitations with considerable puzzlement and anger. We soon had cause (as we wrote here) to wonder what kind of soul-less reporter thinks that sort of proposal is moral and professional. Are you reading this, Tim Palmer?"  Worth mentioning that reports of payments being made to al-Masri's parents have never been in serious doubt since his father, Shuhail Ahmed Al-Masri, comprehensively blurted out the facts in a television interview with NBC [archived here]. It's likely that the regular payments to the voluble, proud and honored al-Masri parents from Arab Bank were separate from and in addition to the Martyrs' Fund payment they presumably still get until today from the Palestinian Authority. Career status: Permanently terminated when he pressed the detonator on his chest inside the pizzeria and the guitar case filled with nails and explosives did its horrible work.
• Abdullah Jamal Barghouti: Manufactured the explosives-packed guitar case that al-Masri, the human bomb, carried into the pizzeria. We describe Barghouti and his egregious barbarism in this post: "1-Jul-13: 66 acts of murder make him a hero in parts of the Arab world. What does this tell us about parts of the Arab world?" He's "the self-confessed murderer of 66 people including 9 in the July 2002 bombing at the Frank Sinatra Cafeteria of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; 11 in the March 2002 bombing of Jerusalem's Cafe Moment; 10 in the December 2001 triple-bomb outrage on Jerusalem’s Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall; and 15 (most of them children, including our 15 year old daughter Malki) in the August 2001 massacre at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria in August 2001." His most famous quote: "I feel bad because the number is only 66. This is the answer you want to hear? Yes, I feel bad because I want more." [Quoted on a CBS site]. At his trial, evidence was produced to show that Barghouti's high-profile relative (nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with the enthusiastic backing of Desmond Tutu, a South African church figure) Marwan Barghouti - a prominent Palestinian Arab political figure now himself serving several life sentences for murder - paid Abdullah Barghouti $500 build the bomb. This came on top of the $117,000 he received for his troubles from Hamas, according to evidence given to the court. Career status: Currently serving a sentence of 67 terms of life imprisonment.
• Bilal Yaqub Barghouti: Recruiter and member of the Hamas cell and, according to Haaretz: “The senior Hamas activist behind the Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem, Bilal Barghouti, told interrogators that Marwan [Barghouti - the Nobel candidate] hid him for a few days while Israel was hunting for him and gave him a weapon when he left.” Convicted January 16, 2003 – sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment (see judgement), his only words to the court at the conclusion of his trial on terrorism charges, and this is a direct quote, were: "Thank God. I regret that I did not kill even more people than I did kill". Career status: Still in an Israeli prison. 
• Muhammad Wael Daghlas: Active member of the Sbarro attack team, taking a role in its planning and execution. Arrested April 9, 2001 and convicted on terror charges on January 16, 2003. Sentenced like Ahlam Tamimi and Bilal Barghouti to 16 life terms.. Career status: Released, like Ahlam Tamimi, in the 2001 Shalit Deal and now alive, unrepentant and completely free. (We're aware of reports that he currently lives in Qatar.)
• Ayman Adnan Muhammad Halawah: Also known as Iman Halaweh - a Hamas explosives expert. Took a lead role in the Sbarro assault, and was involved in other terror attacks on Israeli civilians including the March 28, 2001 attack on a group of boys waiting in the parking lot of the Neve Yamin gas station near Qalqilyah for a ride to their yeshiva in Kedumim (two were killed, one was critically wounded, another had moderate injuries) and the mass-casualty human bomb attack on the Tel Aviv beach Dolphinarium (June 1, 2001). Career status: Never arrested. Passed away from violent causes on October 22, 2001 - one source [Dawn] suggests Israeli forces were involved.
• Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi: Since we have written literally hundreds of posts about this vicious embodiment of female savagery, we will be brief now. Born in Jordan in 1980; moved to Nabi Saleh, north of Jerusalem,  in about 1998 to live there with fellow members of the notorious Tamimi clan. Then to Ramallah, while attending a nearby university, working as a part-time reporter and becoming the first woman terrorist in the ranks of the Hamas Islamists. Masterminded the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria after selecting it for the large number of Jewish children it attracted. Arrested September 14, 2001; convicted by an Israeli court on September 23, 2003. A 2006 report quotes Tamimi saying from her Israeli jail cell: "I'm not sorry for what I did. We'll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison." Sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment. Released October 2011 in the catastrophic Shalit Deal. Career status: Freed in the Shalit Deal and "exiled" to where her parents and most of her siblings live: Amman, Jordan. She is there today, living with a husband, Nizar Tamimi, who is also an unrepentant murdering terrorist, in his case for Fatah, and their child. The husband also receives monthly payments from the Abbas regime. Ahlam Tamimi was added to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list in March 2017; there is a $5 million prize for information leading to her arrest and conviction. She is not in hiding and for most of her years in Jordan she has been working in the service of Hamas, making a weekly TV program for them along with other special promotional appearsances. We are deeply into a campaign to have the US put real pressure on Jordan to extradite Tamimi under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty. So far, Jordan has refused on grounds that we, and many of the experts we have considered, consider bogus and an embarrassment to Jordan's relations with the West.
• Finally, the case of Nizar Tamimi, Ahlam Tamimi’s cousin and since 2012 also her husband. Both husband and wife are unrepentant terrorist-murderers. Both walked free in the catastrophic Shalit Deal. And both are beneficiaries of the Palestinian Authority's disgraceful, foreign-funded Rewards for Terror scheme. They may be the only double-income terrorist family to qualify under the blood-soaked incentive scheme. Nizar Tamimi was convicted of the 1993 murder of Chaim Mizrachi, along with two other close Tamimi relatives. (Another member of the clan, Bassem Tamimi, father of media starlet Ahed Tamimi and uncle of Nizar, was also charged but released under strange circumstances.) Nizar Tamimi was sentenced to life in prison but released October 2011 in the Shalit Deal. Career status: Nizar Tamimi now lives in Jordan with his wife Ahlam Tamimi and their family. How much has he earned from the Fatah/PA/PLO scheme so far? At least $92,057 from the time of his arrest until he walked free in the Shalit Deal. This is not included in the total on the PMW poster. What, if anything, did Nizar Tamimi earn from the PA in the nearly seven years after he walked free? The PMW experts say he would probably got a one-time release grant of $6,000 on top of the stipend he had been receiving during his 18 years behind bars. He would be entitled, as a released prisoner who served 15 to 20 years, to a privileged position and commensurate salary in the PA with the seniority of Colonel or higher. Calculating what this means in practice is complicated by the fact that he and his wife live in Jordan.

If there's outrage among Palestinian Arabs in whose name taxpayer-provided funds are donated so that killers can be rewarded, there's no sign of it at all. Quite the opposite: as a July 1, 2016 article by Eli Lake for Bloomberg ["The Palestinian Incentive Program for Killing Jews"] notes:

"[T]he prisoners and the families of the prisoners themselves are actually paid a higher wage than what most Palestinians earn for nonviolent work... [P]ayments to terrorists' families are exceedingly popular these days. Ziad Asali, the president and founder of the American Task Force on Palestine, told me that in recent years the media and politicians have elevated these payments to something "sacred in Palestinian politics." Asali said the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and others are too weak to stop it. "This is where we find ourselves now. The vast majority understand there has to be an end to violence; it's not serving the Palestinians in any way," Asali said. "But I think nobody really has the stature and clout to confront these issues publicly."

Sbarro: Tending to the maimed

We're less disposed to seeing Abbas' actions as due to lack of stature or clout. 

Here's what has happened in the wake of the Taylor Force Act, a US law that authorizes the American government to cut back portions of US aid to the Palestinian Authority

"until it stops paying stipends to terrorists in Israeli prisons, released terrorists and the families of shahids, the Arabic word for martyrs – terrorists who die while carrying out violent acts", 

in the words of a recent Jerusalem Post analysis.

From May 2014, Palestinian funding of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs was removed from the PA budget so that the Abbas regime could more easily

“disguise the fact that it is the PA that finances the payments to imprisoned and released terrorists... This institution was made subordinate to the PLO [instead of to the PA] in order to mislead the donor countries.” [source].

That same Israeli report from April 2018 now shows that

On March 4, 2018, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas approved the PA’s 2018 budget, in the sum of around NIS 18 billion (around USD 5 billion). The budget specifies the allocation of funds to government ministries and various bodies. The budget includes two items dealing with the allocation of funds to two institutions subordinate to the PLO that assist terrorists and their families...

Meaning the incentive scheme for more terror is once again openly included in the PA budget.  Reflecting the state of mind of the somewhat-dried-out Mahmoud Abbas, they no longer demonstrate any visible concern about being criticized. They do however care about Palestinian Arab public opinion. And their voters - little reported but demonstrably true - want more incentives for terror, not less.

Which surely means more terror ahead, not less.

Non-trivial footnote: The scale of the Abbas regime's investment in the Sbarro Massacre savages grows each and every month. 

23-Aug-18: New data: How the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro pizzeria fared financially

The numbers in the chart below are a dramatically-upward revision of data that were released two weeks ago. They take account of more members of the Hamas gang that carried out the August  9, 2001 atrocity at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria. The bottom line in this new chart - US$843,841 - is almost three times the first calculation.

Our thanks to the good people of Palestinian Media Watch who focus energy, determination and sustained effort on bringing to light the heavily-camouflaged, massively-destructive Rewards for Terror scheming that is at the core of the Palestinian Authority's ethos and actions.

[Since posting this, we compiled some background on which terrorists received generous payments from the PA for their involvement in the Sbarro atrocity. It's here: "24-Aug-18: Nearly $1 million: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime have done for the savages who kill Jews"]
The Mahmoud Abbas regime's slavish devotion to financially incentivizing ever more terror among its people is highlighted in this news report from ten days ago.

Headlined "Hamdallah: We are continuing to provide all types of support to the prisoners", the report carried by the notoriously pro-terror Ma'an News Agency on August 13, 2018, and reprinted by Palwatch here, says

"[PA] Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah met today (Monday) [Aug. 13, 2018] with a delegation from the [PLO] Commission of Prisoners' Affairs led by Director of the Commission Qadri Abu Bakr in his office in Ramallah... The prime minister again emphasized the firm position of the leadership – led by [Palestinian Authority] President Mahmoud Abbas and the government – and its commitment to pay the allowances (mukhassasat) of the families of the martyrs (shahids) and prisoners, despite the Israeli occupation’s decision and its threats to deduct these allowances from the Palestinian tax money [referring to Israeli law to deduct terror salaries from PA tax money]. Hamdallah emphasized that despite the challenges, the provision of all types of support to the Commission of Prisoners' Affairs in its lofty and patriotic activities for our brave prisoners in the occupation's prisons is continuing. He also emphasized that the prisoners are the spearhead of the Palestinian struggle, and that they are the ones who have sacrificed the years of their lives for our just cause."

Lofty and patriotic: words to keep in mind when thinking about the calculated Arab-on-Israeli murder of children.

04-Jul-18: An affront to Australian values: A welcome reconsideration of aid to the Palestinian Arabs

A front page story ["Australia freezes aid to Palestinian Authority | Our tax won't 'Pay to Slay'"] in the July 6, 2018 edition of the Australian Jewish News (we subscribe to the electronic edition which emerges before the print version does) deals with a welcome and important move to reconsider foreign aid funding of the Abbas PLO/Fatah regime.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said this past Monday, according to Haaretz, that she directed Australia's funding support to be stopped

after she wrote to the Palestinian Authority in late May seeking assurance that Australian funding was not being misspent. "I am confident that previous Australian funding to the PA through the World Bank has been used as intended. However, I am concerned that in providing funds for this aspect of the PA's operations there is an opportunity for it to use its own budget to (fund) activities that Australia would never support," Bishop said in a statement. "Any assistance provided by the Palestine Liberation Organization to those convicted of politically motivated violence is an affront to Australian values and undermines the prospect," Bishop added. ["Australia Ends Direct Aid to Palestinian Authority Amid Fears Money Is Going to Terrorists", July 2, 2018]

The Australian report focuses on the broad support given by Australia's Jewish community leadership to what it accurately calls a "landmark announcement": 

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim welcomed Bishop’s announcement but cautioned, “It would actually make matters worse if this reallocated Australian aid money freed up funds of Hamas to use against Israel in making rockets and building terror tunnels. “We trust that the government will ensure that cannot happen, and that Australian aid money will be applied directly only to projects that the PA or Hamas would not otherwise have to fund themselves, and from which they derive no political benefit.” Zionist Federation of Australia president Danny Lamm described Bishop’s decision as “a strong sign that the government is taking this issue very seriously and will take immediate action when the situation arises” ...But Bishop said her government “remains committed to supporting vulnerable Palestinians with access to basic services”... [The announcement] came just days after a report in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph that the MA’AN Development Centre, a Palestinian organisation receiving Australian aid through Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA, an Australia trade-unions charity, employed Ahmed Abdullah Al Adine, a senior figure in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has a decades- long record of terrorism. Al Adine was killed in May during rioting at Israel’s Gaza border... Bishop’s announcement drew praise in Israel, with Arnold Roth, whose Australian-born daughter Malki was murdered by Palestinian terrorists in 2000, describing it as “completely justified”. 

Completely justified is an accurate way of conveying what Arnold Roth said to the AJN reporter.

But here's the fuller, unpublished version of what he said:

The decision by Australia to call the Palestinian Authority's bluff is clear, strong and completely justified.  

For years, the Palestinian Authority has given canned answers to critics of its rewards scheme whose real purpose is clearly to encourage Arab-on-Israel terror. They call them pensions for "prisoners of war" and "social welfare" payments for their needy dependents. That this is sand-in-your-eyes nonsense can be seen from how the monthly payments and other benefits rise sharply according to the seriousness of the act of terror with the highest monthly salaries going to the vilest killers. 

It's not credible that governments, Sweden for instance, who accept the PA’s assurances, believe what they are being told. To me, it’s evident that they need to pretend to believe. Congratulations to Ms Bishop and Australia's government for showing they're made of much better stuff.

For a sense of how outrageous the PA's scheme is, my daughter Malki's murder in 2001 involved several terrorists who today have high public profiles in the Arab world.

I consulted Itamar Marcus of the authoritative Palestinian Media Watch organization who told me the terrorist who made the exploding guitar case for the Sbarro pizzeria attack where Malki was murdered, Abdallah Barghouti, has so far earned more than US $180,000 from the PA. He is serving 67 life terms.

Ahlam Tamimi, the Sbarro massacre mastermind, was sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment but walked free in the 2011 Shalit deal. She lives in Jordan today as a celebrity. My wife and I are working with US government authorities to have her extradited to Washington to face trial on US terrorism charges. Palestinian Media Watch says she was paid US $53,000 during her decade behind Israeli bars. Her husband, himself a murderer who spent nearly two decades behind bars, received much more.

The parents of Izz Al-Din Al-Masri, the human bomb whom Tamimi brought to Sbarro, are monthly beneficiaries under the PA scheme. Payments to them reached about US $50,000 as of last month.

(A brief synopsis of what Arnold Roth said to the AJN appears in a second article ["Israel, Australia tackle terror funding"] of the same edition written by their Israel correspondent Nathan Jeffay. That's not posted online.)

Much like the frenzied reaction of a drug addict when refused further access to narcotics, the official responses of the Palestinian Arabs have not been slow to come. Izzat Abdulhadi styles himself Ambassador of the State of Palestine to Australia. But in reality he is simply the Palestinian Authority’s representative in Australia and in New Zealand and some Pacific islands. He issued this statement:

This is a decision that follows months of anti-Palestine rhetoric and tendentious cherry-picking in the Australian government and media, and so while certainly deflating, it is not surprising. What’s most disappointing, though, is that Minister Bishop’s decision is not evidence-based, but rather a result of empty claims and speculation... [T]his decision is political in nature, for its justification has no grounding in facts. Whether it be to soothe factional tensions, meet electoral demands, or to simply appease a strong and formidable lobby, it has less to do with genuine concerns about terrorism and the stifled peace process than it does with domestic political expediency. To invoke a concern for peace and security while ignoring Israel’s ever-expanding colonial project ["Withdrawal of Australian government aid to the Palestinian Authority" via Medium.com, July 2, 2018]

and on it goes in the usual, sadly-predictable way.

Mr Abdulhadi probably hopes you won't look into his claims and become better informed about how the Palestinian Authority's long-established incentive scheme for more terrorism works.

We have written often about what we call the Rewards For Terror scheme - see these links. A good starting point for understanding what it does is "Palestinian Authority “Pay for Slay” Fact Sheet" from the fine Endowment for Middle East Truth organization in Washington DC.