29-Apr-25: US leadership must secure justice in the Jordan/Tamimi case: A call to action

As an invited speaker on its Legal Affairs Forum, Arnold Roth addressed this week's Jewish News Syndicate 2025 International Summit in Jerusalem. Here's the speech he delivered.

Decades after becoming a lawyer, I find myself involved in a legal process that is spectacularly paralyzed.

This summit comes at a moment demanding moral clarity and courageous leadership from the United States. Today, I focus on a case that encapsulates these issues. It’s about Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian terrorist who orchestrated the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, murdering 16 innocents, including three Americans. One was my daughter Malki, 15.

The Jordan/Tamimi case exposes a troubling truth: Jordan, a US ally, has failed on two fronts—refusing to condemn Tamimi’s terrorism and violating a cornerstone treaty made with the US under President Clinton. This injustice has festered in silence for years. It’s time for the US to lead with principle and hold treaty partners accountable.

Tamimi is no repentant fugitive. She scouted Jerusalem for a target rich in families and children, settling on a crowded pizzeria during school vacation. She accompanied the human bomb to the site, then rushed back to Ramallah to present the evening television news. Since then, she has lived freely in Jordan, celebrated as a hero. She hosted a TV show, addressed rallies, and appeared on social media, bragging about the lives she ended—lives like my daughter Malki’s, an American citizen whose memory demands justice.

In 2017, the US Department of Justice charged Tamimi with terrorism and added her to the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list, offering a $5 million reward for her capture. Yet Jordan, bound by the bilateral 1995 extradition treaty, refuses to hand her over. Jordan’s courts claim the treaty is invalid—a technical argument contradicted by facts and disputed by the US. Meanwhile, Jordan’s leaders remain silent, unwilling to condemn Tamimi’s crimes.

This silence isn’t neutrality—it’s complicity. Jordan accepts billions in US aid, pledges cooperation against terrorism, and even outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood last week. Tamimi is aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jordan continues to harbor America’s most wanted female fugitive, prioritizing political convenience over principle. This makes a mockery of justice and erodes trust in international law.

The United States cannot afford ambiguity on terrorism. After 9/11, Washington demanded allies stand with the US or step aside. It’s time to apply that same clarity here.

My family and the families of other victims deserve more than sympathy—we deserve action. Treaties are not guidelines; they are solemn promises. Jordan has extradited other terrorists under this treaty. Why is Tamimi different?

Today, I announce that nearly 27,000 people have signed a petition urging the US Secretary of State to press Jordan to extradite Tamimi.

From this podium, I call on you—America’s thought-leaders, storytellers and conscience—to bring this painful affair into the light.

The White House, Congress, and State Department have tools at their disposal: diplomatic pressure, economic incentives, even aid conditions. They must use them. And the media must challenge them to act.

Terrorism thrives when nations waver. By insisting on Tamimi’s extradition, America would reaffirm that terrorists cannot escape accountability. When justice is shoved aside, the foundations of civilized society are undermined. But it’s not too late. We yearn for leadership that is principled, determined, and unwavering. And for media reportage that respects the doctrine of “neither fear nor favor”.

Justice for Malki and the other innocents must matter more than the savages who took their lives. Let us unite to make that happen.

22-Jul-22: The loneliest battle of my life

An edited version of the article that follows, written in English by Frimet Roth, was published in Hebrew in the pages of Haaretz and on its Hebrew website last week [here]. The title, translated into English: "The woman responsible for my daughter's murder remains free."

My husband Arnold and I never expected to be involved in political activities of any kind, and certainly not at this stage of our lives. 

We have raised children who are now raising their own children. By our own standards we have lived constructive lives. And we have kept away from politics and politicians the whole time.

Now, more than thirty years after we settled in Jerusalem as olim from Australia and the United States, we find ourselves in one of the loneliest battles it’s possible to imagine.

There is a woman who lives about an hour from here, a woman we have never met. We have spent years trying to get her imprisoned for the rest of her life.

On March 14, 2017, the Department of Justice in Washington charged Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi with “conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals outside the US, resulting in death.”

Her weapon of mass destruction was a human: a man with an explosives-and-shrapnel-filled guitar-case on his back. He detonated while standing at the counter of the crowded Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem on August 9. 2001. The powerful blast decapitated him and destroyed the bustling premises and everything inside. Tamimi later called the massacre “my operation” in one of her many triumphant social posts.

Intending to kill as many children as possible, she came to Jerusalem on August 9, 2001, age 21 and dressed in clothes that made her look Israeli instead of the Islamist zealot that she really was. She had already chosen the pizzeria as her target and brought the bomb right up to its door. Instructing her young male companion on when and how to explode, she ran from the scene. By the time he did what she told him, she had already escaped to safety.

A few hours later, she was the reader of the evening news at a Palestinian TV station in Ramallah called Al-Istiqlal. We weren’t watching.

* * *

We buried our smiley, talented, much-loved Malki, 15, the next afternoon.

Tamimi descended into Israel’s military courts system and then prison in the weeks and years that followed. No one from the government ever contacted us; we knew only what the Israeli public knew. Our sources were the same as everyone else’s.

Then something incomprehensible happened. 

In October 2011, Netanyahu announced that he had done a deal to get back Gilad Shalit, a soldier held for ransom by Hamas. The price: freedom for 1,027 convicted terrorists, most of them killers. We turned to the media to express the incomprehensibility of what was being done and our rejection of the idea that the Sbarro bomber should ever be released under any conditions.

No one from the government of Israel informed us or asked us what we think – and Tamimi’s sixteen terms of life imprisonment ended just like that. Eight years after she was sentenced, the monster walked free.

* * *

Frimet was interviewed by Haaretz on the day
the Shalit Deal was consummated

The awful reality turned unbearable just a couple of months after Tamimi settled back in Jordan where she was born and educated: she was given her own shiny new weekly television show, beamed by satellite every Friday night into all parts of the Arabic speaking world via the Al-Quds TV channel operated by Hamas.

"Naseem Al Ahrar" (translation: “Breezes of the Free”), encouraged its audience to admire and support terror and those who do it. It became a hit that ran for five years.

The week it started to appear on television, my husband went to Washington. I couldn’t travel but I went with him in the form of a video clip we recorded at our home the night he traveled. Together the two of us tried to persuade a room full of senior Department of Justice and FBI officials that criminal charges should be brought against the Sbarro mastermind. No case of Palestinian Arab terror leading to the murder of Americans in Israel had ever been prosecuted by the US government before, though a law enabling this had been on the books for years. The key factor was that Malki had dual American and Israeli citizenship.

***

That Washington DC chapter happened in February 2012. We felt it went well, but no one told us that a federal judge signed the criminal complaint on July 15, 2013. We didn’t know US diplomats were negotiating with Jordan to extradite her. We were given no sign that the charges even existed.

We learned about them in a March 14, 2017 private meeting with DOJ representatives in Jerusalem. They came here to tell us. Tamimi became an FBI Most Wanted terrorist a few hours later, only the second woman ever to be put on that list. An arrest order and extradition request were delivered to the Hashemite Kingdom at about the same hour that we met with the Americans.

We imagined a road ahead leading to trial and imprisonment. In less than a week, we learned how naïve we were.

***

The five years that followed have been hard. The DOJ people making the Tamimi announcement in Washington seemed righteous and determined. But they very soon became unreachable, at least to us.

Jordan’s highest court ruled later that same week that the 1995 Clinton/King Hussein Extradition Treaty was invalid. The reasons were absurdly technical and as we have since learned, don’t hold water. We learned this by suing the US State Department two years ago. If we had any doubt before, we now knew that the Jordanian government was concealing the truth in order to keep this immensely popular figure safe from the Americans.

In the years since March 2017, the US has stated formally — but very quietly — that the treaty actually is valid. But they have never made a single public call telling Jordan to hand her over to US law enforcement. Meanwhile Jordan has become one of the three largest recipients of massive US foreign aid. Tamimi lives free in Amman, never in hiding for even a day.

It’s not only Washington that’s lost its voice. America’s major Jewish organizations have almost entirely failed to urge the US to enforce its own criminal code or its own treaty to bring Tamimi to justice.

Through writing, blogging, speaking via video conference wherever we are invited, we keep the campaign alive. We wrote to President Biden last Sunday asking him in a private letter to meet with us, to talk with us about how it can be that America’s most wanted female fugitive remains free to keep inciting other people, especially children and teenagers, to do more terror. The White House has not responded but told Associated Press on Monday that they have no intention of responding to the Roths’ letter.

In Israel’s power circles, our voices get close to zero attention, and not for lack of trying. Israel has done nothing to help bring Tamimi to American justice.

We understand the political calculus: terror bad, King Abdullah good, mustn’t undermine him. But if you see justice as a supreme value, it’s hard not to feel betrayed.

***

Four weeks from now, we will mark our precious Malki’s 21st yahrzeit, the anniversary of her murder. With time, it strangely becomes ever more painful to think about her. Perhaps this is because the list of milestones she has missed grows with each day for me.

I imagine her as a mother and wife. A musician perhaps - she played the classical flute exceptionally well already at the age of fifteen. As an occupational therapist – the field she told me she hoped to study.

Malki

I imagine conversations where I share personal experiences with her. She was not only my oldest daughter but a friend as well.

Kindness, empathy and generosity were second nature to her - towards her parents, her six siblings, her many friends. She even extended those traits to her youngest sibling, Haya, who was and remains profoundly disabled: blind, unable to speak, to stand, to sit, to respond in any way.

But Malki lavished love and attention on her and reached out as well to other children with disabilities in our neighborhood, at her school, in summer camps.

At school, she didn't excel but did passably well. Studying for exams only stole time from her other activities - artwork, heart-to-heart conversations at the youth group where she was an enthusiastic madricha.

I long to do more for her. But all that is left for me is to honor her by bringing her murderer to justice. With every letter my husband and I write to powerful and influential people, with every phone call we make, with every interview we give to the media, I feel that I am giving a gift to our Malki.

POSTSCRIPT: More than 20,000 justice-minded people from all parts of the world have already answered our request to sign our petition. It urges the Secretary of State in Washington to do what should have been in 2013 when a federal judge signed a criminal indictment against Tamimi: tell Jordan to hand her over to the still-waiting US law enforcement officials so she can be tried in a court of justice under US law as the Jordan/US extradition treaty explicitly requires. To sign the petition, go to change.org/ExtraditeTamimi. Thank you. 

19-Apr-22: To our friends in the Democratic Party

Twitter is where much of our messaging appears these days. It has lots of advantages - you can say things briefly, it gets immediate attention, the audience is large. But once your tweet appears, it's often a matter of a few days at most and sometimes just hours before the attention and the audience move on.

Last week, we posted a thread of tweets that addressed supporters of the Democratic Party. The introduction said this:

We're not involved in US political life. We don't favor GOP over Dems or vice versa. And as parents of a murdered American child, we know our fight for justice is non-partisan. But if you stand with @TheDemocrats, please take 2 mins to read the heartfelt appeal in this thread:

The thread got gratifying attention. 

But it's an important message, one which so far has not attracted any response at all from the people we especially want to reach: the decision-makers among US Democrats. So here it is as a blog post.

____________

To our friends in the @TheDemocrats:

The extradition of @Sbarro monster, @FBIMostWanted fugitive #AhlamTamimi, has been blocked for years by Jordan. It obscenely opposes US efforts to prosecute her and says the 1995 extradition treaty obliging them to hand her over is invalid.

/2

The Sbarro pizzeria is where our daughter Malka Chana Roth was murdered along with many other innocents, most of them children, in a 2001 Hamas outrage spearheaded by Jordanian fugitive Ahlam Tamimi. Click for background.

____________

But it is valid. #Tamimi doesn't deny her key role in the murder of our daughter Malki, 15. Since 2012, my wife and I have pressed the relevant parties to end this charade and get the fugitive into @FBI custody. That we haven't succeeded isn't for lack of trying. 

/3

Malki's fresh grave, the day after her murder. Beside it, the grave of

her closest friend Michal [Image Source: Getty Images]

____________

To our dismay, the @StateDept keeps wanting what we want - #Tamimi in US court facing US justice as US law requires - but says it via what we view as pointless mantras... while routinely praising and rewarding Jordan at every opportunity. Clearly something's wrong.

/4

____________

In the past four months, helped by devoted allies, we asked Members of Congress to sign a letter asking fair and respectful questions about this. It's published here: https://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/2022/03/30-mar-22-lawmakers-to-secretary-of.html

It's one of the few ways we can draw US gov't officials' attention to the injustice.

/5

____________

There's nothing about the murder of our child and the other American victims in the @Sbarro massacre that ought to divide Americans. This can't be a partisan issue - not if justice means anything. And yet not a single Democrat lawmaker consented to sign. This stuns us.

/6

____________

We also reached out to prominent Democrat figures who aren't in Congress. We have no wish to embarrass them but they could hardly have been less helpful. We're now afraid @TheJusticeDept effort to bring #AhlamTamimi to US justice is becoming a US domestic football. 

/7

____________

We must not let that happen. Doing justice is a sacred mission. But if half the US political spectrum is acting as if it's opposed but never saying so, that's alarming. We ask you to stand up and support this important cause. And we're asking your voters to sign our petition:

/8

Screen shot source: The New York Times, July 19, 2021

____________

To express support and to stand with us as we keep urging the government of the US to explain to Jordan what the 1995 treaty requires it to do, please sign here: change.org/ExtraditeTamimi

Together we will make this happen.

* * *

If you know people who are decision makers in the Democratic Party, people who have a passion for making justice happen, we would very much appreciate you passing our message along to them. Thank you.

27-Feb-22: The Jordanian woman who bombed Sbarro has earned another title

Ahlam Tamimi

We pay a lot of attention in this blog to an Arab woman called Tamimi. Starting a decade ago, we devote ourselves to seeing her removed against her will from the Arab country where she lives and brought in chains to the United States where a federal prosecution has awaited her since 2012. It's an ongoing effort. 

* * *

Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, born in Jordan in 1980 and living today in its capital, was named five years ago to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. That elite collection currently features the names and mug-shots of 25 fugitives. Only two are females.

She is also the killer of our daughter Malki, one of the many innocents, most of them children, murdered and maimed in the Hamas bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. Our child was 15. 

(A side note about the other woman on that FBI list. A member of the ultra-violent Black Liberation Army, Joanne Chesimard became the first female to be put on the list. That was in 2013, evidently to recognize the fortieth anniversary of the cold-blooded 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper, a terrorist act for which Chesimard was convicted and then imprisoned in 1977. Two years later, she escaped and was never recaptured. Though there is a $1 Million reward for information about Chesimard, there's no expectation she will ever be back behind US bars since, according to the FBI, she was given political asylum in Cuba.)

The State Department's Rewards for Justice unit posted a multi-million dollar reward on Tamimi's head in early 2018. It's not obvious why; the law enforcement officials assigned to the Tamimi prosecution have at no stage needed anyone's help in finding her. She resides in a modern apartment in Amman, Jordan's capital, where via online videos we have watched her interviewed by the likes of Associated Press and Aljazeera. We have clips and photographs of her front door, her living room, the view from her balcony and even her coffee mugs; all can be easily found on the web. (Links on request.)

The Jordanian fugitive calls the massacre of Jewish children in a Jerusalem pizzeria "my operation", a claim that makes sense when you know the details. She has never expressed the smallest degree of regret for the lives she destroyed. Quite the opposite: she is triumphant.

In 2017, she formally became subject to US federal charges announced on March 14, 2017. But unlike most fugitives, she hasn't been in hiding for even a day. Her life is public, her influence pervasive and toxic.

As Fox News reported two years ago [link], Tamimi

is the most wanted woman in the world, with a $5 million bounty for information that leads to her arrest or conviction... Despite being on the run from American authorities, Tamimi has been hiding in plain sight for years - under the eye of one of the United States' longest and closest allies in the Middle East: Jordan.

* * *

Even before the FBI put her face on its posters, she was honored closer to home by a different kind of tribute.

This happened a year after the criminal complaint was signed off by a federal judge in a Washington court, but before anyone knew about it. That's because those charges were sealed in 2013 at the US government's request. They stayed secret until unsealed nearly four years later in March 2017. 

Quickly removed from the JMI website, this tribute

on every page of the students' portal calls the Sbarro

bomber their "success model"

In a stunning decision, the students of a prestigious Jordanian center for journalism studies, Jordan Media Institute, declared Tamimi to be their success model. Literally.  That's the exact term they used (in Arabic). Given that she's principally known for the murdered children, that should have been a show-stopper. 

They plastered it all over their website (see image on the right). It was a position statement they wanted people to know about.

What the JMI students did was never reported by any mainstream news source - not  then and not since. But we certainly publicized it. 

We also publicized how about a third of the JMI's foreign funders and partners (we listed them here) reacted almost immediately by terminating their funding and discontinuing their partnering. 

JMI's management flatly ignored our comments, polite requests and questions. We understand how embarrassed their actions must have made them feel. They notably include Princess Rym Ali, JMI's principal founder. As Rym Brahimi, she was for years an on-camera reporter for CNN before marrying into King Abdullah's family.

What we don't understand is those funders and commercial sponsors who chose not to disengage or cut funding to Princess Rym's school. They include the governments Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union - all of whom rejected our pressure and in some cases argued back. (We have never published those letters.) 

Lest you think public support for a fugitive bomber who confesses to mass murder could damage the standing of a university-level school like Jordan Media Institute, under royal patronage and funded by foreign governments - well, perhaps you don't get how Jordan works. 

Here's an example. Last month, according to the kingdom's government-controlled news platform Jordan Times, Jordan Media Institute proudly hosted White House Spokesperson Jen Psaki 

as part of the special guest speaker component of the ongoing Jordanian Government Spokesperson training implemented by JMI in partnership with the Office of State Minister for Media Affairs at the Prime Ministry and support from UNDP. 

This is the same Jen Psaki who this past July deflected the questions of an Associated Press reporter when Jordan's King Abdullah II got the red carpet treatment at the White House ["21-Jul-21: In welcoming Jordan's king to Washington, we wanted him to be reminded of the ongoing Tamimi extradition scandal"]. At a media briefing, the reporter asked her whether the Tamimi case came up in the Biden/Abdullah meeting. A reasonable enquiry given how seriously the State Department says it takes the whole Tamimi extradition matter as the slide below clarifies:

Source: "21-Jul-21: After Jordan's king visited the State Department yesterday"

But all the AP reporter got from Psaki was an unhelpful ear-full of we'll-get-back-to-you vagueness. Our understanding is she never did get back. 

Hard not to suspect that Psaki felt right at home visiting a school that views Tamimi as an inspiration and an icon. 

* * *

The latest Tamimi 'honor' came at the end of 2021 and has gotten surprisingly little media attention. Or perhaps not so surprising.

That's when Tamimi was included in the annual edition of The Top 20 Most Dangerous Extremists Around the World. The Counter Extremism Project which produces the list is 

"a not-for-profit, non-partisan, international policy organization formed to combat the growing threat from extremist ideologies... [It] builds a more moderate and secure society by educating the public, policymakers, the private sector, and civil society actors about the threat of extremism. CEP also formulates programs to sever the financial, recruitment, and material support networks of extremist groups and their leaders."

Positions 1, 2 and 3 are occupied by the heads of Hezbollah, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Hamas. In giving her position 18, CEP accurately calls Tamimi "unrepentant for her actions" and notes she has 

exploited media platforms to promote violence against Jewish people, Israel, and its allies. In an interview, al-Tamimi even went so far as to say, “I would do it again today and in the same manner.”

CEP says 2022 will bring new and highly dangerous threats. And that political leaders need to recognize this and ensure that intelligence services are prepared, resourced, and funded to match the danger. 

* * *

If the decision makers in the countries capable of sending Tamimi to trial are paying attention to the clear and present danger she poses via her ongoing influence in Arab society, they work hard at conveying the opposite - how little interest they actually have in the case. 

How else to explain the years of toxic influence and freedom this monster has been privileged to enjoy? Why is she still free?

Then there's the matter of justice and how it's thwarted. 

If any of those officials, political figures and media professionals are reading this, we want them to know how much pain they have brought into the lives of the families of Tamimi's victims. That's actually our whole message.

To stand with us, and we hope you do, in our years-long fight to see the US respect its own legal system and press a recalcitrant ally into living up to a strategic treaty, we invite you to sign our petition. It calls on the US Secretary of State to explain to the authorities in Amman, Jordan, what neither he nor a string of previous incumbents in his office have said since those terror charges were finally made public in 2017: Tamimi needs to be extradited to Washington without further delay. 

The petition is here. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not regret what happened. Absolutely not. This is the path. I dedicated myself to Jihad for the sake of Allah, and Allah granted me success. You know how many casualties there were [in the 2001 attack on the Sbarro pizzeria]. This was made possible by Allah. Do you want me to denounce what I did? That's out of the question. I would do it again today, and in the same manner. [Source Video]

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

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

19-Nov-20: Putting justice back on the agenda

Today's Jerusalem Post

We did something yesterday that we have never done before.

We ordered a display advertisement in a mainstream newspaper: today's (Thursday’s) Jerusalem Post. Our message appears on its front page.

The timing of our ad is intended to coincide with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Israel that began yesterday afternoon (Wednesday November 18). 

Our hope is that he will see it at breakfast. And that perhaps he will think about the images we included, as well as the scriptural quote at the top of the text: “Justice, justice thou shalt pursue”.

The words from Deuteronomy (the Biblical book called Devarim in Hebrew) will be recited in the Jewish world's annual cycle of Torah reading when we get to Parshat Shoftim, the weekly portion called “Judges”. 

That happens next in August 2021. By coincidence, the same week will include the twentieth anniversary of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre.

There are two images in our Pompeo advertisement. One shows Malki. The other is of the devastated Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem, minutes after a bomb placed by Ahlam Tamimi exploded inside. 

Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who arrived from her homeland alone, soon joined Fatah. And then, in June 2001 and aged 21, she switched to Hamas. She was evidently in search of something and found it that summer: the opportunity to kill Jews on a satisfyingly large scale. It was an opportunity she grabbed.

On the morning of July 27, 2001, a Friday, Tamimi carried a smallish made-by-Hamas bomb embedded inside a beer can and surreptitiously placed it on a shelf in what was then a Co-op Supermarket. This was located in the basement of a building on Jerusalem’s King George Street that locals knew as Hamashbir. It's an office building today with some shops at street level. She quickly left the scene.

The bomb fizzed with no serious damage except to the ambitious bomber’s pride. 

By her own account, she raged in fury at her Hamas handlers right afterwards and demanded something much larger. She got it ten days later: a diabolical exploding guitar case and a young religious fanatic eager to carry it on his back into whatever target Tamimi chose.

Tamimi scoured Jerusalem and chose Sbarro. The busy pizzeria with the good hashgacha (certificate of being kosher) was popular among religiously observant youngsters like Malki. Tamimi has for years wanted it to be known that her choice was based on the large number of Jewish children reliably inside at that hour. We don't know why this single fact does not lead every report ever published about this exceptionally cold-blooded murdering Islamist. It should.

Mostly behind the scenes, we have pressed the United States to insist Jordan extradites Tamimi since 2012. She has faced serious federal terror charges since they were unsealed by a team of senior department of Justice officials in a public event in March 2017. They had been issued secretly by a judge four years earlier.

This evidently was known to the senior members of Jordan’s political and royal power structure. That’s because secret – and entirely unsuccessful - efforts were made by high-level American officials for several years to persuade Jordan to hand Tamimi over to the FBI. They knew Tamimi was charged even before we (or even the US Congress) did. And to be clear about this central element: there's been an active and totally valid treaty between Jordan and the US since 1995 for the extradition of fugitives like Tamimi. The State Department said nothing for years about the way Jordan breaches that treaty in the Tamimi case (though not in other cases). It started being open and explicit about it late last year ["03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice"]

Why should US charges and American justice even enter the Tamimi story? 

The simple answer: Because Malki had American citizenship via her New York-born mother. And there’s an American law that gives it the right and the obligation to go after terrorists who kill American nationals outside the territorial United States. Once taken into custody, the fugitive terrorist can be flown to the US and tried in a US court under US law. It’s what ought to have happened to Tamimi.

But first the FBI has to get its hands on the fugitive terrorist. 

The good news is the US and Jordan signed a treaty to facilitate extradition in both directions. That was in 1995, and in the years that followed extraditions were carried out on request just as the treaty stipulated. But something about the Tamimi case made it different for the Jordanians. They started refusing as soon as the requests arrived and have continued refusing right up until today [see "16-Nov-20: Justice, the Tamimi extradition and what Jordan tells Arabic media but not the world"]. The US has made clear its view that Jordan is wrong,

Tamimi not only lives in complete freedom under the patronage of the Jordanian government but has become a media celebrity there and in large parts of the Arab world. The details are chilling - almost beyond comprehension.

Our Jerusalem Post ad is a call to action to the Trump administration and specifically to its Secretary of State. There’s no political dimension to it - just a call to compel Jordan to abide by a bilateral treaty to which it is a party. And for pure and simple justice to be done.

We have made repeated efforts to recruit politicians to give our campaign some clout but they have borne no fruit. And it’s not that we’re on the wrong side of politics because we’re not on any side.

It’s also not that people actually refuse our request or argue with us or give us cogent reasons why Tamimi ought to be left alone. That’s of course not true about Jordan. There its media, some of its public officials and citizens enthusiastically stand with her.

What mostly happens is we’re ignored. Many of those we approach don’t return our calls or emails or look right through us if we happen to be speaking face to face.

How likely is it that this time will be different? Hard to know but it doesn’t matter to us. Tzedek tzedek tirdof, as the scripture says. Justice, justice though shalt pursue.

That’s our role.

We’re not alone. As our ad says, we have a petition (here - and it's not too late to sign if you haven't already). Thousands of people from everywhere – a not insignificant number of them from Arab countries and even from Jordan – have signed. Their support encourages and empowers us.

“Secretary Pompeo, it’s not too late to act” reads our banner headline. “We ask that you do what needs to be done so that Tamimi is at last brought to justice in Washington.”

Next week, after the American visitor leaves, we will go, just the two of us, to Malki’s grave. We do that every year on her birthday. This next time, we are going to have to deal with the reality that she would have become 35 years old that day - but instead she was ripped from our grasp and will not come back. 

We remember her precious life when we get together with our children and grandchildren. And we feel gratified and proud when we look at the exceptional work done daily by the Malki Foundation, the charitable organization that for the past nineteen years has served as a non-sectarian memorial to Malki's short but remarkably impactful life.

And at night when we dream that she is alive and hug her lovingly.

Secretaries of State come and go as do ambassadors and presidents, prime ministers and kings. What never goes away is the absolute need to keep justice at the center of our lives as families and as a society. Our advertisement comes to deliver that message to the breakfast table of movers and shakers as well as to the hearts of ordinary people everywhere.

- O -

Here below is the advertisement as published this morning on the front page of the Jerusalem Post's paper edition:

Click to enlarge.

UPDATE December 5, 2020: Not a word of media comment from any of the many reporters traveling with the Secretary of State. And no response from Secretary of State Pompeo or any of his spokespeople, advisers, assistants or relatives.

UPDATE January 19, 2021: Just silence. Nothing but silence.

UPDATE June 16, 2024: As the US election cycle bears down on the first Tuesday in November, and a handful of well-meaning observers publicly tell us to put our faith in the Trump party (one example among many), be aware that Pompeo's contemptible silence - and not only his personally but the silence of those around him in the State Department and in the White House of those years - has continued until today. 

19-Jul-20: Extradite Tamimi: A call for your support

Source: New York Times

For followers of this blog who have already signed the petition we recently initiated ["22-Jun-20: We need your voice, we need your signature: Please sign our petition"], thank you!

More than 4,200 of you have already signed and in this way given support to our efforts to see long-delayed justice done.

This past week, we were gratified by an announcement that some of the leading US Jewish organizations answered our call and have declared their support for our campaign. The announcement, in the form of a media release, is online here.

Like us, those organizations are calling for the United States, which is by far Jordan's most significant ally, to press the Jordanians to change their stand. Jordan still harbors Ahlam Tamimi, pointedly ignoring all questions and demands about their unjustifiable stance.

The announcement received media coverage in the New York Times, Times of Israel, Breitbart and numerous other news platforms. It has gotten zero coverage to date in the Arab world. But we think that will soon change.

If you have signed, and are willing and able to get others to do the same, you might care to poinnt them to the video clip below: 

On a painful note, we know some of the people signing our petition were asked to "chip in". That's the term the people at change.org (the market-leading provider of petition services we chose to host ours) use to describe donations.

We want to explain that none of those donations come to us. We certainly did not request them. We have gotten no information about who donated. And of course none of the donation money has come to us - but to be absolutely clear: we do not need it and we do not want it. We assume it's how change.org makes its money. According to a venture capital source, change.org ("the world’s largest social change platform with over 150 million users in 196 countries") has raised some $72 million from high profile, extrenely-deep-pocketed backers. In 2016, when it made major changes to its business model (according to this report), the business laid off 100 workers representing 30% of their overall workforce.

So how do we know people are being solicited in this way. Several of them made contact with us to ask if the money reached us. That's the only way we know. 

But we have learned - too late - that change.org does this and attracts considerable criticism for it. See for instance "Change.org accused of profiting from donations intended for charities" (Civil Society News UK, June 2020) and "The Business Behind Change.org's Activist Petitions" (Forbes Magazine, November 2012) among numerous other articles we failed to notice before starting our petition on their platform. 

The change.org people have failed to answer any of our numerous emails until now. It's troubling. If you are solicited by change.org, please ignore their requests. And if you did chip in at the time you signed, please let us know so that we can take this up with the authorities.

If you have suggestions to share with us about the Extradite Tamimi campaign, please be in touch by email: thisongoingwar@gmail.com

20-Apr-16: Parliamentary committee says UK govt doesn't fully know how taxpayer funds are spent

Session of UK parliamentary Public Accounts Committee
[Image Source]

A report [here] of the UK Parliament's Public Accounts Committee has concluded, according to a summary posted on the parliamentary website today, that the UK government - which in this case specifically means the UK's Department For International Development (DFID) and its Foreign Office - does not fully understand how taxpayers' money is spent when it intervenes in crises overseas.

Does does this have any bearing on the years of UK taxpayer funds being handed over as aid to the terrorism-addicted PA regime ["13-Apr-16: Parliament will debate UK funding of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme"]? Remember? Those millions of pounds of aid given annually to people about whom the Mail on Sunday published a blistering expose four weeks ago?

The scandal of how Britain fritters away billions in foreign aid – including paying salaries to convicted terrorists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people – is exposed today by a major MoS investigation. The shocking revelation that thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including men who have masterminded suicide bombings and murdered children, are given cash handouts from aid money will cause anger and disbelief, particularly in the wake of the Brussels massacres. Our probe exposed how huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash, that critics say should be spent in Britain, is being ‘squandered’ on wasteful schemes elsewhere by the Department For International Development (DFID) and Foreign Office. [Mail on Sunday UK, via the Daily Mail website, March 27, 2016]

It will be interesting to see how parliamentarians respond to self-justifying declarations from the UK's foreign aid bureaucracy like this one, quoted in the Daily Mail on March 26, 2016:

"DFID insists that the government is 'cutting wasteful programmes and making sure spending is in the national interest... Our aid programme is helping to create a more prosperous and stable world in which the UK can stand tall and flourish."

The man on the left, wearing a keffiyeh on which the Arabic words "Free
Palestine" are emblazoned, is Dr Alistair McPhail, the UK's Consul-General
to Jerusalem. The photo was published in 2014 [here] by Islamic Relief
Palestine, shortly after McPhail visited Gaza City to open a new laboratory
at Al-Azhar University, an Egyptian institution with a campus
in the Islamist-controlled Hamas enclave. The lab was part-funded
via British government foreign aid

We may soon get a better sense of how that whole stand-tall-and-flourish strategy is working out because, as we reported a week ago here, the full parliament, not just a committee, is going to be debating the issues raised by a petition [text here] triggered by the Daily Mail's expose. That's now due to happen on June 13, 2016. 

European - and British - foreign aid money, along with taxpayer funds from several other Western countries, have served as the indispensable fuel that has enabled more than a decade and a half of systematic Palestinian Arab acts of terror and murder. The connection between PA corruption, malevolence and mendacity through the Arafat and Abbas years has been there at all times for anyone who wanted to see. Now there's a chance for this to be stopped.

Please read and share our other recent pieces about this ongoing terror-funding scandal:

• 27-Mar-16: In UK, facing up to UK Aid's scandalous ongoing financing of Palestinian Arab jihad
• 27-Mar-16: The PA's "Rewards for Terror" scheme and the lies that keep the pounds flowing in
• 28-Mar-16: Is it time yet for UK's foreign aid office to come clean on their part in funding Palestinian Arab terror?
• 31-Mar-16: More on UK funding of Abbas' Reward for Terror scheme
• 12-Apr-16: Wasted lives, stolen futures, obfuscatory answers 



Image Source

• 13-Apr-16: Parliament will debate UK funding of the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme

Also: one small reminder (among many) of how utterly confident British public servants can sound about funding dangerous causes of an Islamic nature, right up until the moment when their mistakes (read: incompetence, arrogance, perhaps willful avoidance of the issues) are demonstrated to them in ways they can no longer dismiss, see this post from nearly a decade ago: "4-Aug-06: BBC Exposes Hamas' UK Terror Financiers".

How much better is everything been done now, ten years later? We might learn.