04-Oct-20: The Sbarro bomber's husband has been forced to leave Jordan: A snapshot of developments

Nizar Tamimi giving an interview in his Amman home

This past Thursday, reports emanating initially from Tamimi clan sources and then later via the Arabic media in Jordan said the husband of Ahlam Tamimi, the admitted bomber of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria in 2001, has suddenly been expelled from Jordan. 

He appears - that's what reports are saying - to be taking up residence in Qatar. But note that the government of Jordan has said precisely not one word. And no reports of him actually being in Qatar have emerged yet. There's room to be cautious in interpreting what's happened.

Where things appear to stand

Middle East Eye reported Friday (October 2, 2020) that 

Jordanian authorities on Thursday declared the liberated Palestinian prisoner Nizar Al-Tamimi persona non grata and asked him to leave the country, according to sources who spoke to Arabi21 news site. Nizar al-Tamimi is the husband of Ahlam al-Tamimi, who served time in Israeli prisons. Ahlam, who holds Jordanian citizenship, is wanted in the United States. Washington had previously requested her extradition, but Amman refused due to the absence of a law allowing the extradition of Jordanian citizens abroad. Her husband only has Palestinian citizenship, and is not on any wanted list by any country. A Jordanian source told Arabi21 that Nizar al-Tamimi had been renewing his residence permit every three months, but this time Jordanian authorities refused to extend his stay, and asked him to leave the country, even though his wife is a Jordanian national. The source said that Nizar left on Thursday to Doha [Qatar] despite attempts to mediate and solve the issue without having him deported. The source confirmed that “the decision to deport Nizar al-Tamimi is linked to his wife's involvement in a suicide attack against Israelis during the Second Palestinian Intifada, which prompted the US authorities to pursue her ever since”. The source also considered that “deporting Nizar al-Tamimi would cause major problems for the family, especially since his wife's departure from Jordan might threaten her safety and expose her to arrest”. The Trump administration indicated a few months ago its intention to cut off aid to Jordan as a way to pressure the kingdom’s authorities to hand over Ahlam to Washington, Arabi21 reported. In 2013, the US Department of Justice put Ahlam al-Tamimi on the FBI's most wanted terrorists list, and charged her with "conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against US nationals outside the United States". 

Nizar Tamimi, at the time a member of the Fatah terror organization and a resident of the Palestinian Arab village of Nabi Saleh ["17-Mar-13 A Little Village in the Hills and the Monsters it Spawns"] was charged in 1993 with his involvement in the murder of an Israeli student of Jewish religion, Chaim Mizrachi ["The murder of a West Bank student highlights the plight of the Jewish religious communities confronting Palestinian rule", Sarah Helm, The Independent UK, November 7, 1993]. The young Mizrachi had made the fatal mistake of buying eggs from a Palestinian Arab farmer. It's an appalling story. 

Tamimi was subsequently convicted for his part in the cruel and gruesome homicide and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two other Tamimi cousins were convicted at the same time. 

The extremely unlovely Tamimi clan

Nizar Tamimi's uncle, the prominent agitator Bassem Tamimi who was Nizar's mother's brother was initially thought, according to reports we have seen, to have been involved. (Worth noting that there is a huge degree of consanguinity - marrying within the clan - among Nabi Saleh's many Tamimis. Almost every resident of the village was born with that name, and Nabi Saleh's Tamimis routinely marry Tamimis.) 

Then after Bassem Tamimi suffered head injuries while in Israeli police custody, those homicide charges seem to have been dropped with no public explanation. They are almost never mentioned in media reports about Bassem Tamimi's otherwise quite public life. 

Bassem Tamim is also a cousin of Ahlam Tamimi, Nizar's wife. 

And he is the father of Ahed Tamimi, the previously very-high-profile young woman, often referred to as Shirley Temper in news reports ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"] for her availability, from early childhood onwards, to perform on demand when the media cameras were rolling. 

Nizar Tamimi walked free in the extortionate deal Israel did with the terrorists of Hamas in 2011 to secure the freedom of a young hostage, Gilad Shalit. So did his cousin Ahlam Tamimi. And so did 1,025 additional convicted terrorists. Those two Tamimis - Nizar and Ahlam - were married in Jordan less than a year later ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"]. 

Bassem Tamimi and his family traveled to Jordan to take part in the celebrations and appear in many of the published photos of the celebrations.

This past week

The London-based Arabic Al Araby news site (October 3, 2020) - which is the source for most of what Middle East Eye published above - under the headline "Ahlam Al-Tamimi appeals to the Jordanian monarch to allow her husband to return to Amman", reports from Amman, Jordan's capital, that Ahlam Tamimi has just sent a message to Jordan's ruler, King Abdullah II. 

She asks him to allow her husband Nizar Al-Tamimi to return to Jordan and go on residing there.

Addressing the king in traditional fashion as "the father of all Jordanians", she praises him fulsomely as one who extends "hospitality for everyone who sought asylum in this country and who took refuge in it, bearing all the economic, political and social consequences... Jordan has been a pioneer in embracing me and giving a safe haven for me and my husband after we were released from the occupation prisons". 

Tamimi, regarded in some parts of the news industry as the most wanted female fugitive alive, describes the nearly eight years she has lived in Jordan after being released by Israel in the Gilad Shalit Deal as "the most beautiful days of my life". 

Then referring to the events of the past week, she declares that "we were surprised by the request that my husband leave [Jordan] quickly" causing them "the pain of separation".

The Al Araby report goes on to say by way of background that the Palestinian Prisoners and Executives Affairs Authority issued a statement on Thursday October 1, 2020, saying Jordan had refused to renew the residency of Nizar Al-Tamimi, husband of Ahlam Al-Tamimi, demanding that he leave Jordan. It says the Jordanian government and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs had failed to issue any comment on the matter. 

It mentions how "Jordan rejected the request of the American authorities to hand over the freed captive Ahlam Al-Tamimi, and the Court of Cassation at that time, the highest judicial body in Jordan, approved a decision issued by the Amman Court of Appeal, ruling not to hand Ahlam Tamimi over to US authorities."

Note: None of this includes anything from any official Jordanian source. 

Al Araby connects the expulsion of Nizar Tamimi to the statements made by newly-installed US ambassador to Jordan, Henry Wooster, who stated in May 2020, before he had been confirmed by Congress to the long vacant position of ambassador to Amman, that the United States, in the paper's words, "might suspend foreign aid to Jordan if Ahlam al-Tamimi were not handed over". 

Then it shifts into full-blown conspiracy mode:

The Tamimi case has become one of the pressure points used by Tel Aviv [sic] and Zionist lobbies [sic] pressing in the United States towards forcing Jordan not to object to Israel's plan to annex about a third of the West Bank to it and to implement the American dictation plan to liquidate the Palestinian issue known as the "Deal of the Century"...

Nizar Tamimi (r) with his mother's brother Bassem Tamimi
in October 2011 shortly after his release from an Israeli
prison cell as part of the Shalit Deal 

Quds Press International News Agency (October 3, 2020) [archived] publishes a "special statement" given to it by Ahlam Tamimi that day. The expulsion of her husband from the Hashemite Kingdom came "suddenly and without prior coordination" and "at a very sensitive time... in light of increasing American demands to extradite me to there... The deportation of my husband Nizar was met with much joy and pleasure in the Zionist newspapers." 

The husband's deportation is, she fears, "a prelude to handing her over to the American authorities." This is very wrong since, as she puts it, "it is my right for my husband to live with me on Jordanian lands with dignity just like all other Jordanian women married to non-Jordanians." 

Good luck with that.

Why now? 

Quds quotes her saying "it seems the Jordanian side is betting I will join my husband in Qatar but this is not at all possible since there is an Interpol request distributed at airports around the world for my extradition to Washington." 

The world's most sought female fugitive ["31-Jan-20: Fox News break ranks with the mainstream media on Tamimi and Jordan"] now thinks staying in Jordan is the safest option for her since "the highest Jordanian court (the Court of Appeal) made the decision not to extradite me to Washington - a strong and destined position and therefore my exit would be like someone who places himself in the lion’s mouth, exposing myself to the American danger, and therefore I will not leave Jordan ever... " 

Getting her husband back, according to Tamimi "is a right guaranteed by the constitution". 

Quds quotes the husband saying that last week "the [Jordanian] security authorities asked me to leave Jordan immediately and that their decision is final and irrevocable and would not be withdrawn under any circumstances."

Nizar and Ahlam Tamimi in their Amman apartment

Shehab News Agency (October 3, 2020) [archived] writes under the headline "MP Al-Shanti: Ahlam Al-Tamimi is an icon of the Palestinian woman revolting against the occupation", that a Gazan Palestinian Arab "parliamentarian" has denounced "the arbitrary measures" directed against the female "fighter against the Zionist occupation", calling them illegal "by all laws".

Jamila Al-Shanti, a key figure in Hamas and (according to this Wikipedia source - but there may have been another woman who had that role) the widow of arch-terrorist Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, the political head of Hamas until eliminated in 2004 by Israeli fire, says "Zionist American terrorism targets the released prisoners through assassination, re-arrest or deportation. Ahlam spent ten years in detention before her release in 2011 under the Wafaa Al-Ahrar prisoner exchange deal", a reference to the Shalit Deal.

She calls Ahlam Tamimi "a candle for the world’s women who aspire to freedom, an icon in the heart of every Palestinian and Arab woman fighter defending her right - Ahlam knows the path of resistance and will continue."

Next moves

But rhetoric doesn't have much impact on fast-moving developments and the reality is that Ahlam Tamimi's options have suddenly gotten a good deal narrower. 

It's obviously an ongoing and complicated story which, given our interest in seeing her sent to Washington to face trial there for spearheading the Sbarro pizzeria massacre, we will be following closely. And to those trying to learn something from all the moving parts and surprise twists: we follow the Arabic media fairly closely and have not yet seen a single article there which mentions the people Ahlam Tamimi killed. This is actually stunning, not in a good way. 

It's the real story here.

[UPDATE Sunday October 11, 2020: There have been many developments worth reporting in the past 72 hours. We've been flat out dealing with them behind the scenes. However we do hope to update readers of this blog in the coming 24 hours.]

24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey

Ahed Tamimi in court last week
[Image Source]

A depressingly large number of people posting in various social media channels are hammering away right now at a campaign that tries to characterize the Palestinian Arab teen Ahed Tamimi as a victim of Israeli oppression, as a human rights activist, as a freedom fighter.

She's the young woman many know as Shirley Temper, a photogenic and compliant performer who for at least eight years now has been the central child figure in a long-running propaganda performance orchestrated by her father, the full-time propagandist Bassem Tamimi and his publicity business he operates, Tamimi Press.

What others say about this is very much on our minds. What Bassem Tamimi himself says is a matter of record. Child abuse? Manipulation? Ha! The ugly manipulation in which he and his fellow villagers engage chronically is dismissed in masterful fashion: "Our children are doing their duty and must be strong." It's an appalling message of which the directors of the Hitlerjugend would have been proud. 

We keep running into people who think they know the story of the Tamimi clan. But it's clear to us that in reality few understand the rich and ugly detail of their hatefulness. It's expressed not as mere protest and words but the kind of physical violence that has ended dozens of lives on the Tamimi side and among their many victims.

FBI Most Wanted Terrorist: The Arabic version is here

Regular readers of this blog know our oldest daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a massacre engineered by Bassem Tamimi's niece, Ahlam Tamimi. 

Since March 2017, that Tamimi woman has been a fugitive from US justice, wanted by the FBI to face federal charges in Washington arising from the bombing/massacre of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem 16 years ago.

She has confessed often and in great detail about her role as the mastermind of the slaughter.

Meanwhile Bassem Tamimi has been crowned a hero of and by Amnesty International. In a shockingly cynical move that in large measure backfired on them, Amnesty's agitprop specialists sent him on a coast-to-coast roadshow in 2015.

We tried to get some straight answers from him and from his generous sponsors at the time to some straightforward, related questions... but all we got was ignored: see "04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may".

But Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed murderer, along with her uncle and aunt and cousin Nariman, Bassem and Ahed, are simply part of a long list of Tamimis associated with Arab-on-Israeli terror. Some of the details have been deliberately obscured or hidden. We have been doing what we can to publicize them.

We revisited some of the barely-known details just a few days ago - see "19-Dec-17: Uncovering some of Nabi Saleh's hideous buried secrets".

On any objective view, enthusiasm for the "bravery" of Ahed (sometimes written Ah'd and Aahd) Tamimi is a strange thing because of how it ignores the trajectory of her emergence as a media figure and the center of a multimedia "Free Ahed Now" project.

How old is she? 

Depends whom you ask. She was 12 in September 2011 [quoted by Israellycool from an Arab source]; 8 in August 2012 [Source: +972, a far-left Israeli site]; 13 in December 2012 [Source: TimeTurk News and other Turkish sources]; 10 in December 2012 [Source: World Bulletin]; 13 in June 2013 [Source: Your Middle East]; 12 in February 2014 [Source; The Guardian]; 14 in September 2015 [Source: NBC News]; 16 in February 2017 [a South African source]. Thus she was born (in the same order as those links) in 1999, 2004, 1999, 2002, 2000, 2002, 2001, 2001. It's hard to be precise. And to be clear, it's fair to assume all this vagueness is intentional.

[UPDATE January 1, 2018: The answer is - she will turn 17 on January 31, 2018, having been in 2001. Much if not most of what has been written and published in past years about her age has been wrong, and almost certainly deliberately fudged. See what we wrote here.]

We have pulled together some images (below) from public sources that chart the process by which her family and her village - but most of all her parents - cultivated a media-ready provocateur. It's a dismaying chronicle not only because it shows how there are loathsome people who, even though they are parents, would do this to a child. But also because of the individuals, a distressing number of them progressive Jews, who have embraced this distressing and very obvious child-abuse while giving no sign they see the malice, the hate, the bigotry and the overt and calculated manipulation that has accompanied it from the outset until today.

▲ July 2, 2010: Screaming on demand for her father's cameras and just 9 years old, Ahed Tamimi is confident enough to walk up to a fully armed soldier and shriek into his face. It's very likely someone told her not to worry, everything will be OK, just show fierce little-girl anger while the cameras roll. And so a career is launched. See more in this video from which the photo above was screen-captured. And here: "06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur". Watch carefully and you can see the child's mother in the same video clip. Mostly - since she has much less to offer than her child does - she stays out of camera range.

▲ June 16, 2012: With live-action TV news cameras everywhere, this is Ahed Tamimi on stage, age 11, in Amman, Jordan, gazing longingly at her role-model cousin and Nabi Saleh's pride and joy, the boastful and confessed murderer-who-got-away-with-it Ahlam Tamimi, our daughter Malki's killer. The occasion is the wedding of the Tamimi woman with another Nabi Saleh murderer (who happens also to be a Tamimi, the bride's cousin and little Ahed's cousin), Nizar Tamimi, the male in the photo. Everyone in the picture, along wih many of the wedding guests, is a blood-relative of everyone else. (The Tamimi's are deeply committed to marrying within their tribe.) As the published videos and photos attest, many members of the Nabi Saleh Tamimis traveled to Jordan to be present. Background: "22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"

▲ September 2012: Here she's eleven years old. The CAMERA caption reads: "Mahmoud Abbas congratulates A'hd (right) and her cousin Marah for their "bravery" (From the Nabi Sabeh Solidarity blog)" 

▲ November 2, 2012: Still not quite 12, and captured on video by the cameras of Tamimi Press while stage managed by Bassem Tamimi, her deeply-cynical father, Ahed screams "I spit in your face". [Image Source]

▲ December 24, 2012: Recognizing the power of a little blonde tyke, aged almost 12 and who teaches the Israelis a lesson, Mevlüt Uysal, then mayor of the Istanbul district of Başakşehir (and currently mayor of Istanbul) awards the always-willinng Tamimi girl the Başakşehir Hanzala Courage Award trophy [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: The Tamimi handlers manage to set up an encounter for the sub-teen child with Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan [Image Source]

▲ December 31, 2012: Next thing you know, he gives her breakfast [Image Source]

▲ A widely-published portrait of Ahed with the proud parents (father on the left) in February 2013 [Image Source]. She's aged 12.

▲ March 17, 2013: That's twelve-year-old Ahed in the bottom row among the other eager "peace-makers" of Nabi Saleh. Her father and chief manipulator Bassem Tamimi is at top left; her mother Nariman Tamimi in the bottom left corner. Everyone's a relative of everyone else here - a major promotion for bigotry-rich terrorism from the editors of one of the world's major sources of news. Some people read this and may think the Tamimis are talking about some future activity of a peaceful nature. A reminder that in the so-called second Intifada, the death toll among Israelis was huge; among Arabs, substantially larger. We urge you to absorb some of the background: "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns". And this follow-up: "29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters". And another: "01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists".

▲ November 21, 2014: AlwatanVoice publishes one of the many Tamimi Press snapshots of the Tamimi village children boldly marching to another entirely-artificial and contrived weekly "clash" with Israeli soldiers. As always, Ahed Tamimi, not quite 14, is placed by her father (she's always being placed by one of her parents) in the most photographed position. Right behind her is Naji Tamimi, a full-time paid Fatah "activist" and cousin or brother (according to different sources) of Bassem Tamimi

▲ March 13, 2015 Ahed Tamimi is 14 here. The weekly Nabi Saleh media-focused confrontation with remarkably restrained and patient Israeli soldiers [Image Source]

▲ March 13, 2015: Ahed, 14, playing the customary featured role she's been bred to fill, in the weekly performance-for-the-media outside Nabi Saleh. Once again, she's screaming on cue [Image Source]

▲ August 28, 2015: With her father Bassem moving into the camera's view for a brief moment (green shirt), but doing nothing to protect his daughter, Ahed Tamimi, 14, photogenically writhes and struggles with an embarrassed, lone Israeli serviceman who could have theoretically used his gun to get out of a difficult situation but naturally did not. It's as viral an image as Bassem Tamimi can ever have planned. [Image Source: CNN]

▲ September 2, 2015: Bassem, Nariman, Ahed (14) and other members of the family are again honored by a personal audience with the president-for-life of the Palestinian Authority [Image Source]

▲ September 3, 2015: Not to be outdone by his boss, Sabri Saidam, the Palestinian Authority's minister of education visits the little town of Nabi Saleh to get a grip on developments there. Background: "10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis". No such visit would be complete without an Ahed pose. She's 14.

▲ November 2015: Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's father, is paraded around the US by Amnesty International, In Ithaca, NY, where this photo is taken, he addresses an audience of school-children from Grade 3. There's outrage in the city ["School District: Ithaca 3rd graders exposed to anti-Israel rhetoric in the classroom" and "Judge sends Ithaca schools a message over pro-Palestinian speaker"]. Shortly afterwards, his visa to enter the United States was permanently revoked by the Obama administration.

▲ November 2015: An invaluable examination by Petra Marquardt-Bigman of the Ahed Tamimi phenomenon, the horror of the messages emanating from her parents and cousins, and the context in which all this has been happening [The Tower] 

▲ Some months ago, Ahed Tamimi, not yet 17 and following the instructions of the event planners, addressed in Arabic a committee in the European Parliament.

▲ From the Jewish Voices for Peace Twitter feed

The idea of referring to Nariman Tamimi, Ahed's mother, as a person with a "voice full of love and tenderness" is delusional. Don't believe us? Check out "02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots".

But if the subject of "butchered childhoods" is mentioned, we happen to know something about how that actually works. Our daughter Malki, who never once thrust a fist into the face of anyone let alone a soldier, was just fifteen years old when she became an unwilling participant in the explosive moment which the murderous Tamimi clan celebrate yearly with such huge enthusiasm. 

The photo of Malki (above) stands for the absolute opposite of what the Tamimi propaganda machine is marketing: goodness, kindness, concern for others, embracing the different and the weak and the damaged, always optimistic.

It's tragic how many people fail to understand that simple truth.

02-Oct-15: Truth, honesty, love, murder... and useful idiots

The funerals of Naama Henkin and her husband Eitam, an Israeli couple in their thirties who were shot to death in an Arab-on-Israeli ambush last night while driving home with their four children (four months to nine years old) are underway as we write these words.

They are happening while a highly successful apologist for precisely yesterday's kind of violent, hateful terror acts that took the Henkins' lives is touring the United States on a roadshow inspired, sponsored and principally executed by Amnesty International. 

His name is Bassem Tamimi. We have written about him several times in the course of the past month and earlier.

Here is our translation of a Hebrew-language interview published a month ago. In it, Nariman Tamimi, Bassem's wife and frequent "activism" and "resistance" partner as well as being the mother of the precocious fist-in-the-soldier's-face, teeth-clamped-into-the-soldier's-arm Surly Temper, reveals her not-so-nuanced attitude to murder. She throws light as well on the role murder plays in her town's (more precisely, the Tamimi clan's) media-rich 'struggle'. 

As far as we know, no one else has published an English version. We would be glad to know it is getting some exposure.

The weapons of the Palestinians against the security forces: women and children | Assaf Gibor | NRG | September 1, 2015 | Our unofficial translation from Hebrew 

Nariman Tamimi with her husband the roadshow hero and

their daughter Ahed in a 2013 photo [Image Source]

Nariman Tamimi, mother of Muhammad, the youth who hurled rocks at an IDF fighter in the village of Nabi Saleh, has issued a call to Palestinian women to join in the struggle against the “occupation” and for its liberation. “We knew the media were present and that the army would not arrest women and children, and so I avoided arrest.” 

The latest weapon of the Palestinians? Against the background of Palestinian reports about the investigation and rapid release a short time later of the parents of the Tamimi family from Nabi Saleh - the women who clashed with an IDF fighter have issued a call to Palestinian women to join the fight against the “occupation”. Nariman Tamimi, mother of Muhammad, the boy who hurled rocks at the soldier, and the boy’s aunt Nawal Tamimi, claim the Israeli army will not arrest women and children and that they should therefore join the struggle. 

In the discussion the two women had with nrg in the village of Nabi Saleh, they admitted to being satisfied with their release by the security forces since, in their eyes, it signifies victory. According to their approach, images of the IDF soldier struggling with women from Nabi Saleh last weekend and distributed throughout the world amount to a weapon against Israel. "Our hope is that other women in other villages will see our struggle and the victory, and that they too will join in the fight. When all is said and done, we won. We managed by stubbornness to prevent the soldier from taking my son away," says Nariman, the mother. 

The aunt and the mother made clear that in Friday’s incident, men were also present. They however feared being arrested if they would try to prevent the arrest of Mohammad. They therefore permitted the women to be at the center of the fight. "We knew the media were present, and that the army would not arrest women and children, and so I avoided arrest. We decided to try and prevent his arrest, and we did,” she admitted. 

"Women and children have always been a part of the struggle in Nabi Saleh, as opposed to what has happened in Qadoum, Bil'in and Ni'lin. Here, it’s a cultural thing, something traditional and educational, and also the fact that everyone in our village belongs to the one family numbering about 500 people and in reality there’s no alternative. But we hope that women seeing the photos in the media will understand their power and join in the struggle", she emphasized. The two women explained further that ''When the ‘enemy’ wants to shoot at us, he shoots at everyone without distinction: women, children, men. So we all need to be fighting against the occupation." 

An integral part of the struggle 

One of the major Palestinian murderers who emerged from the village is Ahlam Tamimi who transported the perpetrator of the terror at Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria."What she [Ahlam Tamimi] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising. I personally choose the way of popular uprising," explains mother Nariman.

Ahlam Tamimi, confessed and happy murderer of

children including ours, makes an appearance on

Mrs Bassem Tamimi's Facebook page

And lest anyone fear that Mrs Bassem Tamimi has any actual reservations about the particular form of "uprising" chosen by her cousin, the homicidal sociopath Ahlam Tamimi, a quick glance at the Nariman Facebook page, with images like the one on the right lionizing the multi-murdering, celebrity sociopath Ahlam Tamimi, will soon put that matter to rest. 

For the lethally hateful village of Nabi Saleh, Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed, exultant and entirely unrepentant murderer of our fifteen year-old daughter and more than a dozen other innocents, is a celebrity, a hero, and most of all - a figure to emulate.

But for Amnesty International, well - that's an altogether different story. 

For the extremists who have it and its massive budget in their control, Bassem Tamimi is a celebrity. When he served time in an Israeli jail, Amnesty put its substantial weight and influence behind a campaign that termed him "prisoner of conscience". He and they are leveraging that same bogus marketing claim now as they prepare for a series of roadshow events in the next two weeks. One in the Boston area next week, under the catchy brand "Our destiny is to resist" is typical of the genre. (Resist is a key word in the Tamimi lexicon. Read this to get a sense of its nuances in the world of the Palestinian Arabs.)

Does all this branding, selling, marketing, promoting have an effect? Of course. See for instance a fairy-floss op ed confection that appears today in the town newspaper where Bassem Tamimi's visit was seized upon by his handlers to win over some eight year old school kiddies (the story is here). As becomes clearer with each passing day, innocent little children are a key demographic for certain sorts of people. 

A large crowd accompanies the coffins in the Jerusalem funeral of the murdered Henkin couple today [Image Source]

This superficial article, under the subtle heading "Guest Viewpoint: Tamimi is champion of human rights" is signed off by "Maura Stephens... a Spencer resident". We guess her record in the town where she works, as an advocate for the Palestinian Arabs and other causes of a similar kind speaks for itself. It probably needed no additional elaboration in the Ithaca Journal. She's also Associate Director, Park Center for Independent Media, Department of Journalism, at Ithaca College.

Here's part of her fearless expose of the facts behind the scandalous Bassem Tamimi encounter with grade three children:

Tamimi is the kind of person we want our children to meet. His work revolves around inclusion, love, nonviolence and reconciliation. [Ithaca Schools Commissioner Luvell] Brown’s objection to Tamimi’s sharing of simple truths about life under ongoing oppression in an occupied land is an insult to many who actively champion human rights... Third-graders understand the healing powers of love. They can grieve and sympathize with those who’ve suffered loss. If we won’t speak truth to these children, on whose shoulders so much will soon rest, we’re doing their generation a grave disservice... The message to our children should be that U.S. residents can and should help persecuted people achieve not only self-governance, but also the most basic rights and dignities they lack under the current Israeli regime, which is propped up by our government. If we cannot model such work, we fail our children, our society and our future.

So in the interests of not failing your children, your society and your future - and ours too - will Ms Maura Stephens take these simple questions of ours (below) and put them to her idol of love, nonviolence and reconciliation? We began posing them some weeks ago ["04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may"] but Tamimi and his handlers have avoided answering them. Probably they lack Maura Stephens' urge for speaking truth. Or just super busy.

Bassem Tamimi, tell us in simple words: are you as delighted by your cousin Ahlam Tamimi's massacre of Jewish children as she is? Have you criticized it ever, anywhere? Will you condemn it here and now?

The rest of us, very much less convinced than Ms Stephens is of Bassem Tamimi's dedication to love and reconciliation, can probably guess the answers. 

But it's important for the questions to be asked, even if those who proclaim a commitment to truth actually intend for these particular truths to be left under the rug. 

It's also important that the way they are ignored is factored into how we feel about the terror-laundering Tamimi and the useful idiots providing him a platform across the United States.

10-Sep-15: It takes a village: The passion for violence of the peace-loving Tamimis

Celebrations in the little village of Nabi Saleh as the release date for several of its murdering sons and daughters

approaches, in October 2011. The woman wearing a white scarf in the framed photo is our daughter's murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, a beloved and widely-admired figure, a town hero, because of the deaths she brought about [Image Source: CNN]

We received a letter this week from a member of the International Division of the Board of Deputies of British Jews:

One of the constitutional obligations of the Board of Deputies is to take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing. As you may know, last year Yachad UK narrowly achieved a two thirds majority at the Board of Deputies to be admitted as a member. At the time, I along with the 60 other Deputies that voted against their admission were concerned that this would lend credibility to an organisation that is outside the mainstream of Jewish life in the UK and has a well-known reputation for demonising and delegitimising the Jewish State of Israel.  Indeed I was aware that Yachad funds numerous “educational” trips to Judea and Samaria, known to them as “the West Bank”. 

Their guides include a member of the infamous fringe group “Breaking the Silence”. On such radical groups, the reputation of Yachad hangs.  Even the left-wing Haaretz newspaper described Breaking the Silence as having “a clear political agenda, and can no longer be classed as a ‘human rights organization.’’’  In fact as I am sure you will agree, checkpoints are an essential security requirement for the citizens of Israel. As far as I am aware, there are no such Yachad-funded “educational” visits to Israeli terror victims. Had there been, Yachad might get a different Israeli perspective of the need for security and check posts. 

Their activities in Israel are entirely pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel. However if this was not bad enough it has now been drawn to my attention that Yachad’s tours have, in the past, stopped at the Tamimi house for drinks and a briefing from the family themselves. Having already read the article about the Tamimi family [source], I was absolutely shocked to learn that Yachad had gone beyond giving legitimacy to an Israeli political group with an agenda that undermines Israel’s security but is also giving legitimacy to the family of a well-known Pallywood “star”.  

This led me to do further research on the subject and I came across the blog “This Ongoing War" which was cofounded by you and inspired by the tragic murder of your daughter, Malki, at the age of 15 in a massacre in the centre of Jerusalem carried out by Hamas, the infamous Sbarro massacre. 

In particular I saw this recent article: 07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people. There, you state that Ahlam Tamimi - who rode with the suicide bomber, helped him and his explosive-filled guitar pass without interference through the Qalandia security crossing - can be seen on video exulting over the murder of the victims and is in fact a cousin of Bassem Tamami, the father of Shirley Temper.  Clearly this raises the most serious questions about Yachad that I intend to raise at the first possible moment. I would therefore be grateful if you could provide the evidence of the relationship between the Tamimi family of Pallywood fame and Ahlam Tamimi.  

I look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely | David Berens | JNF UK

Child abused: The widely-photographed Tamimi child,
better known as Shirley Temper, with the PA Minister of Education 
last week in the Nabi Saleh village schoolyard [Image Source]

Ready, willing and able to oblige, Mr Berens.

Bassem Tamimi operates a publicity business which has staged and videographed Friday clashes in a village in the Binyamin region a few kilometers north of Jerusalem by the name of Nabi Saleh for years. 

This is the Tamimi who, under the title "Palestinian human rights activist", is heading to the US now for a month-long roadshow during September and October about which we commented a few days ago ["07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people"]. Amnesty International which took him under its wing some years ago is among the groups paving his way in the US.

Bassem is married to Nariman Tamimi. Their children include A'hed Tamimi, aka Shirley Temper, a front-and-center role that her kept her in the camera's focus for the past five years ["06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur"]. She is now about 15 and adored by Aljazeera [see their recent video promo] and by the PA Minister of Education (he's the moustached one in the photo on the right, taken a week ago). 

A son, Mohammad, now about 11 is the boy who appears with an arm in a cast and head in a headlock courtesy of an IDF soldier in a viral video that emerged two weeks ago.

Tamimis celebrating in Nabi Saleh on the day their favourite
murdering cousin/clan member was freed 

A female in her mid-thirties, Ahlam Tamimi was convicted of engineering the 2001 Sbarro massacre in which 15 people were murdered - among them our teenage daughter Malki - and sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment. The three judges of the judicial panel, plainly shocked by the cold-bloodedness and complete absence of remorse on the part of the convicted killer in front of them, formally recommended that no consideration ever be given to early release via political deals or amnesties. 

But in 2011, along with 1,026 other convicted terrorists, she walked free in the Shalit Deal. She returned to Jordan where she was born and had lived most of her life. Today, she is living the life of a celebrity there, advocating for more terror and attracting a world-wide audience of Arabic speakers via a weekly television program produced in Amman and beamed via satellite to Arabic-speaking homes on every continent.

Ahlam Tamimi, according to reports we have seen, had spent a short time living in Nabi Saleh for a short time before joining Hamas as a field terrorist and carrying out two separate explosive attacks in central Jerusalem during July and August 2001. (One failed. The second, tragically, did not.)

A UPI photo [source] shows Eftikhar Tamimi in her
Nabi Saleh home, holding a poster of her sister Ahlam, the
murderer, on October 17, 2011. The sister was freed
from prison two days later amid unrestrained joy in the
Tamimi village.

Her unwarranted release from prison after serving a mere eight years behind bars was greeted with undisguised and joyous celebration in Nabi Saleh. Images – like those on the right – of Tamimis celebrating are easily found on the Web.

Dusty, undistinguished Nabi Saleh seems an unlikely candidate for the large degree of media attention and myth-spinning its residents have garnered. A New York Times Magazine cover story brought the village into millions of American homes in 2013. That piece, which a commentator recently called “a fawning tribute”, focused on the enthusiasm of the villagers for a “Third Intifada”.

We felt compelled to address the fabricated claims and concealed realities of the town. Mostly because of its connection to the death of our child, we have followed events in Nabi Saleh for years. We are continually astounded by the way Nabi Saleh’s children – clearly below the age at which they should or even can make decisions about their own well-being – take the lead roles in the “non-violent” confrontations with the IDF staged by the Tamimis each Friday. We are only slightly less astounded by the way the flagrant child-abuse on display there is almost never commented upon by the tellers of the Nabi Saleh tales.

Nariman Tamimi, wife of Bassem, recently posted
this tribute to her mass murdering cousin Ahlam 
on her Facebook page [Image Source]

The article we wrote - "17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns" – in response to that massive New York Times exposure is the most widely-read post this blog has had.

Most of Nabi Saleh’s 500 residents, as a New York Times piece wrote in February 2012, “belong to the same extended family”. A different NYT story published a year later put it more assertively: "All of Nabi Saleh’s 550 residents are related by blood or marriage, and nearly all share the surname Tamimi."

A year after she walked out of her prison cell and returned, free, to Jordan, Ahlam Tamimi married. As happens frequently in Palestinian Arab society, the man she married is her first cousin; their fathers are brothers. And as happens frequently in the life of the Tamimi clan, the husband is also a convicted and unrepentant murderer. He too was released from life imprisonment in the Shalit Deal.

Back to Bassem, whose wife Nariman told Electronic Intifada in July 2011 that Bassem’s sister was "accosted... and hit… on the head" by an Israeli soldier, a female, inside an Israel court in 1993. The sister, not named in that report, died. That sister had a son called Nizar, as a result of which she is referred to as Im Nizar, Arabic for “mother of Nizar” in the article. Now that’s obviously not an actual name but an honorific. Think of it this way: Nizar killed a Zionist and thereby became a celebrity. Thus his mother’s status rises and she gets to be called “Nizar’s Mother”.

Nabi Saleh: Photographers seem to be drawn to images
of young men with slingshots. Photos of bombers and
knife-wielding Tamimi attackers are less photogenic
[Image Source: WFB, "All the intifada that fits to print"]

To summarize: on the basis of the description given by Bassem’s wife, Nizar is Bassem's nephew and Bassem is Nizar's uncle. 

Nizar is also a murderer. He conspired with two other Tamimi clansmen, Ahmad Yusuf Mahmud al-Tamimi and Sa’id Rushdi Mohammad At-Tamimi, to lure, kidnap, and then kill Chaim Mizrachi [background], an Israeli who bought and sold eggs. 

We have come to learn that relationships and facts acquire a certain looseness in the world of Nabi Saleh. Thus, according to a different report, this one from Haaretz, the death of Nizar’s mother happened this way - and she is named: 

Bassam’s sister, Bassama, was killed 10 years ago when she went to the military court in Ramallah, where Bassam was being remanded in custody. An army interpreter allegedly pushed her down a staircase; as a result, she broke her neck and died, leaving five young children behind... [Haaretz, February 17, 2013]

In the Haaretz version, Bassem - and not the murderer Nizar - was on trial. Whether Nizar and Bassem are nephew and uncle, or cousins, their close relationship may explain why, when the convicted murderer Nizar returned to Nabi Saleh after the conclusion of the Shalit Deal, he was embraced not only by the Tamimi clan at large but specifically by Bassem, as this 2011 photo shows:

Close ties: Bassem Tamimi with arm around his nephew/cousin Nizar Tamimi, murderer/terrorist in the service of Fatah. [Image Credit: Anne Paq/Activestills.org]

Not long afterwards, Nizar married. The bride was his cousin Ahlam, the architect of the Sbarro pizzeria massacre and the convicted killer of our daughter Malki, and of fourteen other innocent Jews. We described the event in a post: “22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it”

The adoration of terrorists who kill Jews and Israelis is at the heart of the Tamimi experience. But about five years ago, for reasons most of us can probably deduce, the Tamimis adopted a pose of what they and their backers call non-violence. The rocks and petrol bombs continue but because they are classed (by the Tamimis) as tools of resistance, compliant audiences - and there are many - are expected to nod with understanding and allow the non-violence charade to continue.

Two weeks ago, we wrote here about Nabi Saleh's Wikipedia entry. Not the English language version which has always been sanitized and projects a carefully cultivated image of Ghandi-like forebearance but the gritty, candid Arabic version. Soon after we first publicized that Arabic version in 2013, someone emptied it of most of its incriminating contents, leaving almost nothing behind. Every reference to the village people's adoration of jihad, martyrdom and death to the Israelis was erased. 

But then two weeks ago, when we understood what had been done, we went looking and found the original Arabic text as it had appeared on Wikipedia in May 2013. We saved the original Arabic text to here, and a partial English translation to here. They are archived now thanks to the wonders of the Internet, and safe (we sincerely hope) from the destructive attentions of those who feel compelled to re-invent the past.. 

That deleted Wikipedia text is the village of Nabi Saleh paying tribute to its own viciously violent true self: to its warriors, to its killers, to its dead fighters - all named - and above all to its favourite daughter, the one who smiles on-camera when she recalls how many innocent Jewish children she blew to pieces in the Sbarro pizzeria, our daughter Malki among them. 

For additional background, may we recommend two fine analyses by the estimable Petra Marquardt-Bigman -

• Bassem Tamimi and the Use of Children as Political Props (September 3, 2015)
• The Tamimi masterclass on media manipulation (September 7, 2015)

and some past posts of ours -

• 07-Sep-15: Peace, human rights, the sheer joy of killing people
• 06-Sep-15: The making of a pigtailed provocateur
• 04-Sep-15: Mr. Human Rights Defender, a question if we may
• 02-Sep-15: Lights, action, camera, bite: Scenes from a cognitive war
• 01-Sep-15: A tale of two villages: one devoted to non-violence, another that actually exists
• 29-Aug-15: Revisiting a Palestinian Arab village and its monsters
• 17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns