29-Mar-23: The Sbarro bomber's thwarted extradition from Jordan: Where does the State Department actually stand?

Al Arabiya News, April 5, 2021 [Image Source]

One of the useful indicators of how Washington views terror and terrorists comes in an annual publication, "Country Reports on Terrorism". Though mandated by Congress and issued by the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism, it gets surprisingly little public attention.

The State Department itself gives this background:

U.S. law requires the Secretary of State to provide Congress, by April 30 of each year, a full and complete report on terrorism with regard to those countries and groups meeting criteria set forth in the legislation. This annual report is entitled Country Reports on Terrorism. Beginning with the report for 2004, it replaced the previously published Patterns of Global Terrorism.

The report covers developments in countries in which acts of terrorism occurred, countries that are state sponsors of terrorism, and countries determined by the Secretary to be of particular interest in the global war on terror. As provided in the legislation, the report reviews major developments in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism cooperation as well. The report also provides information on terrorist groups responsible for the death, kidnapping, or injury of Americans...

If you're reading this on the This Ongoing War blog site, you probably know our interest isn't academic or theoretical. We want our child's killer, an admitted bomber, a zealous terrorist and for more than a decade a media celebrity in Jordan, brought to Washington to face trial for her central role in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre atrocity. 

Her name is Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. 

She has so far evaded American justice thanks to a dubious and highly problematic claim made by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in March 2017 that the Jordan/US extradition treaty is invalid.

The problematic part of this stems from how the US has demonstrated incredible and almost totally-unreported deference towards its Jordanian ally by deflecting attention and commentary away from the embarrassment of America's most lavishly funded foreign-aid beneficiary sticking a finger in Washington's eye.

At the same time, in one of the exceedingly rare communications we have gotten from any State Department officials, a senior figure in Washington sent us a letter dated October 25, 2022 which makes some bold and serious-sounding claims about what the sender calls "a foremost priority for the United States" when referring to bringing Tamimi to US justice.

In the five months since that letter was sent to us, we have responded to that official in writing on seven occasions. Number of responses received by us: nil.

The last photo taken of our daughter Malki
the evening before her murder

Country reports

You get a sense of that by looking at the Jordan section of State's Country Reports on Terrorism over the past several years. 

But first this.

The Justice Department filed a criminal complaint against Tamimi almost a decade ago on July 15, 2013: see "US -v- Ahlam Al-Tamimi - Criminal Complaint (Sbarro Pizzeria Bombing)". She's been free the entire time. And not only free but influential in the worst way. She's a poster child for terrorism with access for most of the past decade to high-powered media channels. 

Now read on.

At the request of DOJ prosecutors, the criminal complaint (essentially the same as an indictment) was then immediately sealed. In other words, it remained undisclosed and unknown to us and to the general public for the next four years. 

We wrote about the eventual announcement here: "14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested".

What we were quietly told by people familiar with the details is that between the summer of 2013 and the spring of 2017, the US made repeated but unsuccessful efforts to persuade the Jordanians to extradite Tamimi to Washington. They were doing their best to get a strategic US ally to respect and comply with their bilateral treaty. And they failed.

It's likely those efforts continued after the charges were made public. But no details have ever been made public. 

However there's little doubt about the bottom line: the Jordanians were not willing and remain unwilling today to do what their solemn bilateral treaty demands they do. What the US position is in all of this is worth trying to decipher.

What the reports reveal

If you look at the annual State Department Country Reports on Terrorism for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016, there's a consistent and unmissable emphasis on how true Jordan is to the mission of defeating the terrorists. The praise flows without interruption down through the years.

The 2014 report, issued a couple of months after the deadline in June 2015 [PDF] says in its Overview to the Jordan section starting at page 182, that in the year under review - 

Jordan remained a key ally and a model partner in combating terrorism and extremist ideology. Jordan’s geographic location leaves it vulnerable to a variety of regional threats, while also facilitating its regional leadership in confronting them... Jordan demonstrated regional leadership in the fight against ISIL, joined the Global Coalition from the outset, and participated fully on the diplomatic, political, financial, and military fronts...

There's no mention here of Tamimi. She had been received as a hero in Jordan in October 2011 and hosted a weekly made-in-Jordan global TV show starting in early 2012 and continuing for the next five years. This Hamas-aligned program, beamed throughout the world and garnering an international audience of Arabic speakers, had a singular focus of encouraging support for terror. That show, "Breezes of the Free", was still thrilling its worldwide audience weekly at the time the report was published. 

The 2015 report, issued in June 2016 a little more delayed than the previous year's edition and adopting similar but not identical language, says at page 191 that -

Jordan remained a key U.S. ally in countering terrorism and violent extremist ideology in 2015. Jordan’s location in a tumultuous region made it vulnerable to a variety of threats, yet also facilitated its regional leadership in confronting them. Jordan continued to take part in all key aspects of the Global Coalition to Counter Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)...

Once again, no mention of Tamimi. Nor of the 1995 treaty or its breach or her weekly terror-promoting TV show.

The 2016 report came out on July 19, 2017, later than in the past. By then, the US criminal charges against Tamimi had been unsealed in Washington (that was done on March 14, 2017). And Jordan's Court of Cassation had ruled on March 20, 2017 that Jordan was free to ignore the 1995 Extradition Treaty with the United States because it was flawed and for that reason invalid. [See "Jordan court blocks extradition of bombing suspect to US", Associated Press]
 

The court's ruling makes clear the flaw, if there is any flaw at all, is a Jordanian flaw - a failure by Jordan to comply with its own rules. 

Using similar phrasing, this 2016 report says 

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2016. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Jordan faced a marked increase in terrorist threats, both domestically and along its borders...  

Tamimi once again isn't mentioned at all.

The 2017 report emerged on September 19, 2018, nearly five months after Congress' statutory deadline. By that time Tamimi, who continued to be harbored by Jordan in breach of the 1995 treaty but was never in hiding and lived an unusually high profile public life, had already been an FBI Most Wanted for a year and a half. Her TV show had meanwhile come to an end. 

The report again says 

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Coalition successes in degrading the terrorist group’s territorial control and operational reach. Although Jordan experienced a decrease in terrorist activity in 2017 compared to the previous year, the country faced a continued threat posed by terrorist groups, both domestically and along its borders...

This time, however, the Tamimi case is a key part of the discussion:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in March charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in an August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. Jordan’s courts have ruled that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.

We were gratified to note that the State Department narrative explicitly mentions Tamimi's victims in addition to the fugitive zealot herself. At the same tine, it raised some troubling concerns:

• The validity of the 1995 US/Jordan treaty isn’t discussed here at all. 
• What does get mentioned is the Jordanian view that their constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals. Whatever the compleixities of Jordan's stand, this claim is plainly untrue. There's abundant evidence that Jordan has - and is very public about - the multiple extradition treaties it has negotiated with numerous countries. 
• What's more - and this too goes unmentioned - Jordan has extradited to the US multiple times in the past.
• Does the United States regard the extradition of Tamimi as being within the power of Jordan to do? There's no examination here of that question.

The 2018 report was published on November 1, 2019 - later than those that came before. Its Jordan chapter this time is explicit about the Tamimi case:

A U.S. criminal complaint was unsealed in 2017 charging Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001 suicide bomb attack at a restaurant in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Also unsealed was a warrant for Al-Tamimi’s arrest and an affidavit in support of the criminal complaint and arrest warrant. In 2018, Jordan continued to cite a court ruling that its constitution forbids the extradition of Jordanian nationals.  The United States regards the extradition treaty as valid.

We were glad to see these aspects covered: 

• The extradition treaty is mentioned.
• For the first time, the US calls it valid. That should never gave been a contentious issue but it's good to see it there in black and white.

The 2019 report was published on June 24, 2020. It covers terrain similar to that of the previous edition but significantly more than in earlier years.

In 2019, Jordan did not extradite Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, a Jordanian national in her mid-30s, who has been charged in the United States with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against U.S. nationals outside the United States resulting in death. The charge is related to her participation in the August 9, 2001, suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15 people, including two U.S. nationals. Four other U.S. nationals were among the approximately 122 others injured in the attack. Following publication of the 2018 Country Reports on Terrorism, Foreign Minister Ayman al-Safadi confirmed that U.S. authorities asked Jordan to extradite Tamimi, and he expressed the view that Jordan’s constitution does not allow the extradition of a Jordanian citizen to a third country. The United States regards the extradition treaty with Jordan as valid and in force.

Notably it adds the view of Jordan's foreign minister (who has also been the kingdom's deputy prime minister since 2021) that Jordan had indeed been asked by its American ally and benefactor to comply with the extradition request made under the treaty. And that in US government eyes the treaty is not only valid (as the 2018 report says it is) but also "in force". 

In this battle of contending claims, every word counts and the implied assertions about Jordan being in breach encouraged us.

Then the 2020 report appeared (on December 16, 2021, later than ever) and the mood changed. Throughout that year, the US was under a Trump administration. But the report itself was published after almost a year of a Biden presidency.

In dealing with Jordan, it says that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism.  As a regional leader in the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Jordan played an important role in Defeat-ISIS successes by preventing the terrorist group from regaining any territorial control and restricting its operational reach…

But then this:

The United States continued to press Jordan to extradite Jordanian citizen Ahlam al-Tamimi for her role in a 2001 suicide bomb attack at a pizzeria in Jerusalem that killed 15, including 2 U.S. citizens.

And that's all they say. We were alarmed by how

• While the word “extradition” does appear...
• the 1995 treaty is not mentioned at all.
• The legal duty to comply with a treaty obligation is translated to an absurdly, misleadingly bland formulation in which the US continues to press. Pressing for a decade? Is that even called a press?
• No statement that Jordan breaches the treaty 
• No mention of the fact that the US views the treaty as being valid and in full force. 
• And this: The State Department's authoritative Treaties in Force, an on-line compendium whose name describes its contents and function well, lists the Clinton-era Jordan/US extradition treaty at page 245 of the downloadable PDF in these words: "LAW ENFORCEMENT - Extradition treaty. - Signed at Washington March 28, 1995 - Entered into force July 29, 1995."

And finally the 2021 report. It's the last one to have appeared so far and was published just a month ago on February 27, 2023. The mandated deadline was April 30, 2022. But the 10 month delay for an annual report doesn't seem to have troubled anyone. 

Its full text is downloadable here; the Jordan chapter is here. It opens with the now-customary formulation that

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2021. As a regional leader etc.

and then goes on to say this about Tamimi and her scandalous freedom:

The United States has emphasized to the Jordanian government the importance of holding Ahlam al-Tamimi accountable in a U.S. court for her admitted role in a 2001 bombing in Jerusalem that included two Americans among the 15 victims. She had been serving a prison sentence in Israel for a terrorism conviction related to the bombing before she was released by Israel as part of a prisoner exchange.

It's fair to say the cold disdain to which we, the parents of one of Tamimi's victims, have been treated at the hands of State Department officials in all the years since Tamimi's indictment, ought to have prepared us for this. But it didn't and we were stunned. 

Note what's said and what is not:

• As with the report covering 2020, the cornerstone 1995 Jordan/US extradition treaty gets no mention here at all.
• In fact, the word ‘extradition’ doesn't even appear.
• The Jordanian court decision invalidating it in 2017 gets no mention either.
• Nor do the grounds on which the invalidation was based by the Jordanian judges.
• Nothing is said about the nature of the flaw alleged by the Jordanian court six years ago. Even if it is real and even if it has legal consequences (both very unlikely), this is a self-inflicted Jordanian flaw. 
• And by definition - since it involves a failure by the Jordanian parliament to take a certain step - it's a flaw that could have been cured by the Jordanian parliament on any day that its members sat in session from 1995 right up until this morning. That a defective Jordanian procedure hasn't been repaired is a result of Jordan deciding to leave it that way.
• No mention of the US government's position as articulated in previous State Department Country Reports on Terrorism. The US says the treaty is valid and in force. Why after years of asserting what is plainly true is this central issue now dropped from the State Department analysis?
• No statement that Jordan is breaching it. 
• But what is mentioned, and for the first time, is that Tamimi was imprisoned and then released by Israel. There's surely a good reason for the Bureau of Counterterrorism in Washington doing that. But right now we can only think of reasons that are not good.
• Something else that could have - and perhaps should have - been included in this important survey: some mild expression of US determination that in fighting terrorism the US has its principles and red lines. Whether or not the DOJ people articulating them in the 2017 unsealing ceremony for the Tamimi charges believed what they said, they said important things about justice and US determination. Check it out: "Individual Charged in Connection With 2001 Terrorist Attack in Jerusalem That Resulted in Death of Americans" [Department of Justice Media Release, March 14, 2017].
• Has that important moment been flushed away along with the principles and the determination? 

As we said, stunning. 

But also revealing about what the US government wants Americans to know about Tamimi's ongoing freedom.

The take-aways

1. We're not giving up.
2. But if we could tap into wider and stronger support from Americans (and not only Americans) who get the same sickening sense we do that Jordan unjustly benefits from unprincipled backing in Washington, we and our pursuit of accountability and justice would be in a better place. 
3. If only the State Department's annual reports got more attention.

23-Feb-22: Weaponizing Turkish teenage girls: What the Sbarro bomber did next

Tamimi's Istanbul audience in October 2021:

Eager young Islamist women and girls, anxious
to know about killing Jews

She has been called the most wanted woman in the world. Here, for instance. 

But in America's news industry, there is little sign of interest in the life and doings of Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi. This is surprising. And also a real shame.

What she does and how it's perceived in the Arab world would surprise, perhaps even shock, many if they knew.

Tamimi, our daughter's killer, is a Jordanian who lives in a modern apartment in her country's capital, Amman. She has a masters degree in journalism and was the presenter of her own successful TV show for some five years. 

Adoring tributes to her appear on Aljazeera and much of Jordan's mainstream media as well as in major social media including Facebook and Instagram. Her op-eds are published on Arabic-language news sites and the BBC featured her in an absurdly sycophantic news report in 2020. 

The innocents she murdered are never mentioned in any of those articles. 

Shrewd maneuvering by the Hashemite Kingdom's leadership has enabled her to stay safely out of the reach of US government law enforcement efforts. That's at the heart of what we write here.

HER OPERATION

Tamimi became a fugitive from US law enforcement when the Department of Justice unsealed a criminal complaint and arrest warrant against her on March 14, 2017. She faces trial in Washington under a US federal law [18 U.S.C. 2332a - Use of weapons of mass destruction] that criminalizes acts of terror involving a weapon of mass destruction outside the United States and - the key provision - whose victims are Americans. 

In a massacre she later called "my operation", Tamimi brought a human bomb - a young Islamist zealot called Al-Masri with an explosives-filled guitar case on his back - from Ramallah to Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, located at one of the city's busiest pedestrian crossings. 

She later recounted how she left him there after imparting instructions on how to proceed. She herself fled on foot to the Old City's Damascus Gate where she boarded a ride-share taxi van back to Ramallah and her night job as a TV newsreader. 

She heard the thunderous explosion from a safe distance. Initial news reports via the van's radio suggested the death toll was lower than she wanted: 

I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said 'three dead,' I said: 'Allah be praised.'  ...The driver was translating [from Hebrew to Arabic] for the passengers... Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding. They didn't even know that I was among them. On the way back [to Ramallah], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: 'Congratulations to us all.' Everybody was happy... [Source]

The toll kept rising and many dozens more were injured. The majority of the dead and maimed were, as Tamimi intended, Jewish children. 

By the time her ride reached Ramallah, it was clear she had produced the largest news story of that day. The key piece, the crowning achievement in her terms, was the murders of 14 "zionists". 

Malki, our teenage daughter, was in the center of town that afternoon with a friend, heading for a summer-camp counselors' meeting when they stopped on the way for lunch at a place they both loved. They were standing at the pizzeria's counter when Al-Masri entered the unguarded shop and walked up behind them. 

And then exploded.

We spent twelve nightmarish hours desperately searching for her. Eventually, with the help of a social worker, our two oldest sons located their sister's lifeless body in the small hours of the morning in a cold storage drawer at the Abu Kabir pathology center in Jaffa. Malki was the fifteenth victim. 

Of the many killed, two were American nationals: Malki, 15; and Judith Lillian Greenbaum (known to her family and friends as Shoshana), 31, a tourist and pregnant with her first child. A sixteenth victim, also a US citizen like Malki and Shoshana, remains unconscious in a Tel Aviv long-term care center today.

MEDIA CELEBRITY

Tamimi was born in 1980, the daughter of a career soldier in Jordan's military. She was raised and educated in Jordan and then, at 21 and a student at the Palestinian Arab Birzeit University near Ramallah, she became the first female admitted to the ranks of the Hamas terrorist forces. 

Once in, she was assigned to blow up a central Jerusalem supermarket with an exploding beer can. She failed and demanded a second mission. That's how some ten days later she spearheaded the Sbarro savagery that propelled her to fame. 

In 2001, and in the wake of the Sbarro devastation, Tamimi was arrested, tried and convicted by an Israeli military court on the basis of her full confession. A panel of three judges sentenced her in 2003 to sixteen terms of life imprisonment with an unusual recommendation that she never be released - no parole, no political deals, no swaps. 

No one paid attention and she was stunningly freed eight years later in October 2011 as part of an extortionate deal, ill-judged and catastrophic in our view, made by Israel with globally-outlawed terrorists of Hamas, the organization whom Tamimi was serving.

She was 31 when she walked out of her Israeli prison cell and returned triumphantly to Jordan and months of wide jubilation and public appearances. She was young enough to marry a few months later and to dramatically expand her career. 

THE HASHEMITE FACTOR

Early in 2012, from Jordan, she began presenting her own television program called "Breezes of the Free" (in Arabic “نسيم الأحرار”). The hour long celebration of terror and terrorists went to air weekly via the Hamas satellite network to a vast and ardent Arabic-speaking audience spread all over the world. 

Tamimi on the set of her TV show

Anyone aware of how tightly the King Abdullah governments ruling Jordan since 1999 manage the country's media will realize a show like Tamimi's could never happen unless that was what the king and his advisers wanted.

The context is important. Jordan is rated Not Free in Freedom in the World 2021, an annual study of worldwide political rights and civil liberties compiled by Freedom House. And the trend has grown stronger: a year earlier, Jordan was rated Partly Free as it was in 2019, 2018 and 2017. 

Plainly, Jordan is not one of those places where subversive voices can sneak under the regime's radar. If a message is getting transmitted, that reflects the Royal Hashemite Court's will.

THE FUGITIVE

In 2013, a year after Tamimi's horror show began going to air, the US filed terror charges against her in Washington. 

And promptly sealed them without any pubic announcement, keeping them absolutely secret. 

We learned off the record and long after the fact that this was supposed to allow high-level discussions to take place with Jordan about extraditing her into the hands of the FBI as required under the 1995 Jordan/US Extradition Treaty. Jordan had extradited fugitive Jordanians to the US multiple times since the treaty took effect. It similar and active treaties with numerous other states. 

But if indeed there were talks, they were unproductive. And on March 14, 2017, nearly four years after a federal judge had signed the charges, senior officials of the Department of Justice in Washington finally unsealed and publicized them [here]. 

Because of our involvement, the DOJ people did us the courtesy of an in-person briefing some hours ahead of the public announcement. Even so, we were unprepared for the distressing frustration that followed. 

The day those US federal charges were made public in 2017, the FBI added Tamimi to its Most Wanted Terrorists List. It's a small and exclusive list, currently made up of just 25 individuals, only two of them females. Some time later, the State Department's Rewards for Justice program posted a $5M reward for relevant information about Tamimi - whose home address and daily whereabouts were and are known to the media, the Jordanian authorities and the US government.

But just six days after the unsealing of the federal charges, Jordan's Court of Cassation, the kingdom's highest judicial body, ruled, as part of proceedings in which Tamimi was the centerpiece, that the 1995 treaty had a fatal flaw. Incredibly, they decided that in Tamimi's case, the US demand for extradition was unenforceable against Jordan. 

The details of the flaw are technical and irritating. It's beyond dispute that the Jordanian legislature could have easily fixed the problem then, and still can now. 

In a soft, almost inaudible voice, the US rejects the Jordanian position that the flaw and the invalidity let Jordan off the hook and leave Tamimi free to go about her life. The Jordan/US pact continues to be listed in Treaties in Force, an authoritative online State Department publication that underpins the American view. 

Throughout the five years since Jordan repudiated the treaty, no American official has addressed the matter publicly. Our repeated requests to a stream of US politicians and officials to tell the Jordanians publicly and out loud that harboring Tamimi disgraces them, fall on deaf ears. No such statement has been made by any of them. 

Instead, as Fox News reported during another of the many official visits by Abdullah to Washington, this one in July 2021, the State Department issues what can reasonably be called mantras. Vague assertions of fact blended with fond wishes and zero action. Fox showed this slide when it interviewed us live last summer:

In essence it's the same message the Trump administration issued. And it means as little today as it did then. 

For all practical purposes, the Sbarro victims have been swept under the carpet. 

OVER TO TURKEY

Now we jump to October 2021. 

In the intervening years, Tamimi has appeared multiple times on Aljazeera's multiple media, on BBC Arabic, on lesser known Arabic news channels, on Jordan's commercial RoyaTV channel and on numerous additional platforms where she has been interviewed, showcased and glorified as an icon. 

Her op-eds have appeared in the pages of multiple Arabic newspapers and news websites as well as on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and less-known Arabic-only social media sites. Arabic-language criticism of anything she has said, written or done is published nowhere.

Our occasional interactions with US government officials have been frustrating, sporadic, largely unproductive from our point of view and hard to arrange. Our experience with the US Embassy in Israel throughout the Trump years exemplifies the approach: as bereaved parents of a murdered US national expecting to be guided and assisted, we are mostly ignored. Not in a polite way and certainly not because we are rude. Persistent and raising an irksome issue, certainly. But never rude and not hostile.

By video, Tamimi speaks to the young Islamist

women in Istanbul - October 2021

Among the crumbs of information that we have gotten in these sometimes deplorable interactions is that the US government believes Jordan - because Jordan says so - has Tamimi under control. She's not inciting any more, we're assured. Her toxic influence has been neutralized. The problems are behind us.

From what we see, such claims are untrue.

In October 2021, Tamimi spoke in Arabic via video conference to an Islamist event in Istanbul, Turkey, held under the banner of الملتقى العلمي الدولي للشباب [“Gathering4youth”]. We spotted a video clip of the seminar that was uploaded to YouTube and promptly passed it along, with selected Arabic-to-English text translation, to senior US officials. If they are doing something with it, they're not telling us.

We asked a professional translator to review Tamimi's presentation. Here's the part we think captures the essence of her message:

...Allah let me have a membership in the ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions and [allowed me to] participate in two jihad operations that produced, by the Lord’s virtue, the deaths of fifteen zionists with 122 zionists wounded in two Jihad operations. We ask Allah to accept this. 

These two jihad operations are a crown on my head. By Allah’s virtue, I entered history by doing the finest of deeds, the finest operations, in the finest of ways, which are the ways of jihad. 

Praise Allah, He has prescribed me this fate. And when I met the "suicide bomber" [the Arabic expression translates literally into "the martyrdom-seeker"] ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri, this was not a matter of such ease to stand next to a bomber. There are many lessons I learned. Many lessons which ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me without talking, [just by] being a road companion from Ramallah to Jerusalem, to the center of the [Jerusalem commercial] center where the Zionist entity is found, at the Jaffa and King George Avenue [corner]. This drive which lasted about an hour, from Ramallah to Jerusalem, or 90 minutes, [during] much of it I was learning from suicide bombers.

What does it mean to be a suicide bomber? It means that your spirit, your senses, your feelings, all of you, are pending against the Lord. Which is a difficult matter for us in this life to work out. But Hamas’s suicide bomber unit was able to spiritually train these suicide bombers.

What does it mean to sit for years [with] your sole mission to prepare your soul with effort, to train your soul? How do I become a spiritual character, how do I make my soul pending against Allah? And uproot all other attachments to this world. Only then shall I be worthy of the suicide bombers unit, and put my spirit forward in Allah’s path.

This is what ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri taught me.

However until now I have not reached even half a degree of the character of ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri and all suicide bombers who decided to put their souls forward in Allah’s path.”

It's hard to predict how much lethal damage is done when an eager and evidently impressionable audience of Islamist girls and young women, some of them about the age Tamimi was when she had her great moment at Sbarro, or younger, are exposed to a charismatic celebrity-jihad preacher with copious amounts of blood on her hands. 

The potential is horrific. Why has this not made headlines?  

ANTISEMITISM

From watching Ahlam Tamimi preach, we know political issues play almost no part in her messaging: no occupied territories, no green lines, no give-us-a-state. Theology seems to interest her more.

As she has said elsewhere, her brief and only conversation with ‘Izz ad-Deen Al-Masri took place as they walked along central Jerusalem's Jaffa Road on their way to the Sbarro corner. She says he asked her a question:

Are there religious Jews in the place where we are going to conduct the attack?

Tamimi: 

That was his question and I said yes. There are religious Jews there and also other people. I had been to the area before. I knew there was a Jewish religious school near there. He asked how many religious Jews would be there. 

Interviewer:

Why did he ask about religious Jews?

Tamimi:

Because the base of the conflict between the Israelis [she does not use the Arabic word for Jews] and the Palestinians is a religious struggle. When we came to the place, he looked at my eyes and I told him: There is no god other than the mighty Allah. He went on his way and I went on my way... My emotions and thoughts focused only on [Al-Masri]  and his strong personality and his vision and his action. I could only think about him and about his great personality and I didn't think about anything else.

Interviewer: 

Do you feel sorry?

Tamimi:

No, absolutely not. Why? For what?

In fighting for justice, there has been no alternative for us but to watch the cold barbarism of our gentle daughter's hard-faced murderer. As difficult as this is, we do it so we can urge decision-makers to understand that what chills people like us actually inspires and incites people in that other world across the river. 

[For some additional context about Tamimi's views on the Jews, see "08-Oct-17: Why kill religious Jewish children? Because, says Hamas celebrity-jihadist, this is a religious struggle" on our blog.]

AND JUSTICE?

No one in power says it but the American prosecution of Tamimi is stuck. The party doing the obstructing is a needy and highly dependent ally of the United States. It's the world's second-largest recipient of annual US foreign aid amounting to billions of US taxpayer dollars each year. 

Jordan is also bound by treaty to hand fugitives over to the FBI on request. It has in fact done that repeatedly in the other fugitive Jordanian cases that came before Tamimi. 

The US is bizarrely quiet about Jordan's egregious breach of the solemn 27 year-old legal obligation. This plays into the hands of dark forces in Jordan and elsewhere in the Arab world. They propagate the offensive notion that when done in the name of Palestinian Arab "resistance", terrorism isn't terror at all. It's bravery, heroism, religious devotion and a reflection, as Tamimi puts it, of a great personality.

Let's also factor in the reality that Jordan, as documented by the Anti Defamation League, has sky-high levels of antisemitism. We have argued ["27-Aug-21: Peace, terror and Jordan's under-reported attachment to anti-Jewish bigotry"] that the kingdom's comprehensive failure to address this has consequences. Either Jordan wants peace and understands that this comes with a significant commitment to change. Or it wants to allow hatred and violent extremism to go on. Via its rhetoric, its actions and its inaction, and especially by harboring the monster who bombed Sbarro and allowing the unconscionable benefits she has gained from Jordan' tolerance of her lethal bigotry, Jordan signals that it wants both. 

And that cannot be.

Malki HY"D

We don't understand the US lawmakers, diplomats and officials who sweep justice in the Tamimi case under the rug. 

We don't understand the State Department with its self-incriminating mantras about how they're trying so hard for years to get her out of the clutches of the Jordanian juggernaut. 

We don't understand Congressional lawmakers on both sides of the divide. We don't know how, given their stated principles, they can fail to demand that this Jordanian woman be immediately brought to justice in Washington.

We don't understand America's organized Jewish leadership. Their failure, an especially painful one, to stand with us on an issue that ought to be a priority, an opportunity to speak truth to power (and let's be clear that the power in this challenge is not Jordan), raises concerns they ignore.

We're ready to explain this to them. But not here.

06-May-21: So will the injustice continue to be ignored?

From the Jerusalem Post paper edition, April 30, 2021

A story by Yonah Bob, a veteran journalist at the Jerusalem Post, published this past week pulls together some of the numerous strands of our efforts to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice.

She's the Jordanian woman who freely admits to planting the bomb that destroyed the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria. 

Our daughter Malki was one of the many children whose lives ended there that day.

In a piece entitled "Will Ahlam Tamimi be extradited from Jordan for the murder of Malki Roth?" and published in the paper's online edition (as well as in this past Friday's paper edition), Bob recounts the basic facts of the August 9, 2001 massacre orchestrated by Ahlam Tamimi, as well as the terrorism trial that followed at whose conclusion she was

sentenced to 16 full life terms in jail, but was released in 2011, as part of the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange.

The narrative jumps forward to March 14, 2017 when the US government let it be known, while unsealing long-secret terrorism charges against Tamimi under US law ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and her extradition is requested"], that it had

issued a request for Tamimi’s extradition. The reason? Roth was not only Israeli, but American as well. Given that Jordan’s King Abdullah is heavily reliant on US military and economic assistance, quick compliance could have expected. Instead, what has followed according to Malki’s father, Arnold Roth, has been “an egregious failure of justice.”

If you follow this blog of ours, you are in a position to know how calling the Tamimi case and the kid-gloves treatment of Jordan a failure of justice is no exaggeration.

The Jerusalem Post story briefly looks at two of the largest roadblocks impeding the progress of efforts to see Tamimi brought in chains from her safe harbor in Jordan to face criminal charges in Washington DC. 

One is expressed this way:

Yes, the US has huge leverage over Jordan – but how hard does it want to push?

That raises complex political and geostrategic issues that, just as in real life, are hinted at in the article but barely discussed.

The second has to do with this peculiar twist:

...Jordan signed a treaty with the US decades ago. But shortly after the 2017 extradition request, a Jordanian court ruled that the parliament had never ratified it. So the court said the treaty was not in effect and the government was barred from extraditing Tamimi.

The Court of Cassation, Amman [Image Source]

The Jordanian position was expressed by its highest judicial forum, the Court of Cassation. In a 2017 decision handed down just six days after the criminal complaint against Tamimi was unsealed and announced in Washington, that court in Amman gave a single reason why, in Bob's words, the treaty was not in effect. It should have been ratified, the judges ruled. 

We wrote about this at the time: "20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"

And since the parliament did not ratify, the treaty - it was said - did not give Jordan a basis for complying with the US request for her to be handed over, allowing Tamimi herself, with the help of Aljazeera, to preposterously adopt the role of perplexed and misunderstood victim ["24-Mar-17: Our daughter's grinning killer is shocked the US is pursuing her and for no obvious reason"]

The ratification alibi is a claim that has never been made in a public way by any senior Jordanian official with the sole exception of its current deputy prime minister [we wrote about that too: "13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister"]. No one else - no Jordanian ambassador or other senior diplomat, no one speaking in the name of the Hashemite Royal Court - has ever addressed the issue for the record. 

It's almost as if they're too embarrassed. For just one reason, whatever the merits of the argument that Jordan's parliament never ratified the treaty after it was signed all those years ago, what's stopped them from doing it since then? No Jordanian source denies that they could simply ratify it this afternoon. Clearly there's something seriously disingenuous going on.

For its part, the United States has at all relevant times, right up until today, listed its 1995 Extradition Treaty with Jordan in the authoritative US catalogue of treaties it has with other countries. Check it out in the current and most recent online edition of "Treaties in Force" (sub-titled "A List of Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States in Force on January 1, 2020"), a 570-page long PDF compiled and kept updated by the Treaty Affairs Staff, Office of the Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State. 

The treaty with Jordan is listed there on page 245. The notation shows it was signed in Washington on March 28, 1995 and entered into force on July 29, 1995.

We don't know why reporters almost never refer to the Treaties in Force listing and ask the obvious questions. But the reality is they don't. Perhaps acknowledging that the treaty exists would lead to further questions which bring on discomfort and even more questions. 

Inside Jordan's parliament [Image Source]

The treaty exists. What's more, it has served as the basis for a series of extraditions by which Jordan willingly handed over fugitive Jordanian terrorists to the US. They were then put them on trial on US soil and US law and sent to US prisons. Yonah Bob's article names them.

With this in mind, you might expect a full-throated statement by senior US officials laying out a principled position. Something (we're making it up) along the lines of this:

"The United States, a supportive and generous strategic ally, believes Jordan has a clear and unambiguous obligation under our quarter-century old strategic agreement signed with His Majesty King Husssein, the revered late father of His Majesty King Abdullah II, today's king, to hand over to US justice the Jordanian fugitive who says she placed the bomb that killed so many innocents including two US nationals. Respectfully and in the name of our vital bilateral relations as well as justice, we expect Jordan to do this without further delay, thereby expressing honorable compliance with the principles that underpin our mutually beneficial alliance" and so on

but you would be disappointed. 

No US government voice has said anything like it. Not during the Obama presidency when the prosecution efforts got under way. And not during the four years of the Trump presidency when the criminal charge, sealed under conditions of strict secrecy in 2013, was finally unsealed in a blaze of welcome calls for justice to be done ["15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice"].

What can we expect now? The Jerusalem Post offers this guarded view:

If there is hope, it might be if either the Biden administration shows a greater readiness to confront Jordan than either the Obama or Trump administrations, or if a new potential [Israeli] prime minister, like Bennett takes an interest in the issue. The coming months will show whether Biden, Bennett or any other new face has an interest in the issue, or whether the injustice will continue.

Since this is about hope, there's room be optimistic. Stay tuned.

06-Feb-20: A day of rising apprehension

The scene of the vehicle-ramming at First Station, Jerusalem,
Credit: United Hatzalah [Image Source]

Wednesday February 5, 2019

• The terrorists of Hamas issued a call to Palestinian Arabs "for escalating confrontations with the occupation and its settlers and fighting their assaults against the land and holy sites, especially the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque" [Times of Israel].
• Palestinian Media Watch publicized a brief video on TikTok – a social network popular among children - that encourages murdering Israelis by means of graphic animated recreations of actual terror attacks: four specific Arab-on-Israeli terror attacks that involved drive-by shootings, rammings and knifings. The appalling animation clip is here.

Thursday February 6, 2019

• In a pre-dawn, Thursday morning vehicle ramming attack on Jerusalem's David Remez Street, adjacent to the popular First Station restaurant and entertainment compound, a terrorist slammed his car into a group of IDF Golani soldiers brought to Jerusalem for their swearing-in ceremony. (They were walking around just prior to their early-morning ceremony at the Kotel, the Western Wall in the nearby Old City.) Twelve are injured, one of them now in serious condition. Times of Israel says he is in serious but stable condition, unconscious and connected to a respirator in the intensive care unit. A search is underway for the attacker. The vehicle used in the 2 o'clock attack had Israeli license plates and was later found abandoned in the Palestinian Arab village of Beit Jala, adjacent to Bethlehem, a few minutes drive from the site of the ramming. "Clashes broke out in the village and the surrounding area as Israeli troops searched for the driver, who had fled the scene after hitting the soldiers. Palestinian media reported that Israeli troops seized security cameras around Bethlehem, apparently as part of the search effort" [Times of Israel].
• Thursday noon: An Arab-on-Israeli shooting attack at the Lions' Gate in Jerusalem's Old City resulted in an Israeli being wounded. According to Ynet, he is a 38-year-old Border Guard policeman. The shooter was shot dead by other police in the vicinity. 
• Thursday mid-afternoon, an Israeli man was wounded by gunfire in an evident drive-by shooting on a road near Dolev, an Israeli community in the Binyamin region. The shooter is still on the loose. Hamodia says the victim, an IDF soldier in his 20s, is lightly wounded and getting treatment at Sheba Tel Hashomer hospital near Tel Aviv. Hamodia says the shooting happened at the Post Intersection, named for the post office located nearby during the time of the British Mandate. It's today a busy intersection, near the Palestinian Arab villages of Ras Karkar and Kharbatha Bani Harith, and the Israeli communities of Neria and Na’aleh. Ras Karkar is now under IDF closure as forces search for the terrorists.
• Thursday 5:00 pm: The IDF is positioning an extra battalion in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) to respond to the upsurge in Arab-on-Israel violence. Times of Israel says IDF battalions normally include several hundred soldiers.

The post-attack scene this afternoon in the Old City [Image Source]

Few doubt the Trump conflict-resolution proposals announced on January 28 are what has brought the Fatah and Hamas leadership of the Palestinian Arabs to encourage fresh and escalating violence. Times of Israel says

"In the week and a half since the plan’s release, the military has noted a significant increase in violence in the West Bank, with regular riots, rock-throwing and violent opposition to Israeli arrest raids...

We've been down this route enough times already to know that the Arab side act as if the threat to them of peace is more dangerous than war and fighting. The Palestinian Authority (PA) regime rejected the US proposals before they were even announced. Speaking a day before the plan was released, and before he had any way to know what it contained, PA prime minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said: "We reject it and we demand the international community not be a partner to it".

Writing in Fathom Journal this month, Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry writes that

be sure, it is the Palestinians who have the most to gain from securing a deal. The Jewish people have their national home – a stable, successful, innovative, liberal-democratic state that despite facing incomparable threats and challenges, and despite having virtually no natural resources compared to its neighbours, has matured into an economic and military power in just 71 years. But the Palestinians remain stateless and stricken by all the consequences of such a condition... calling the plan a ‘hoax’ and a ‘fraud’ and summoning their people to a new ‘day of rage’...PA Prime Minister Shtayyeh delivered a strikingly candid explanation, perhaps unwittingly, for why the Palestinians, who claim to seek independence above all else, are rejecting a proposal to give them just that. ‘It is nothing but a plan to finish off the Palestinian cause,’ he said. Herein lies the answer to the vexing question of why a people that claims they want nothing more than a home of their own and an end to the conflict, have rejected five comprehensive offers of statehood and have now taken to rejecting new offers before they are even presented. The conflict is not a territorial dispute to be settled by delineating borders and agreeing land swaps. It is a clash between the Jewish national movement which desperately craved a scrap of land to call their own so that they and their contributions to humanity should not vanish from this Earth, and the ‘Palestinian cause,’ which seeks no precise outcome beyond thwarting its rival, and holding out, digging in, struggling on, resisting. 

Few of the Israelis we know think these irreconcilable outlooks are going to be somehow resolved in the foreseeable future.

UPDATE 6:30 pm Thursday February 6, 2019: The alleged vehicle rammer was arrested this afternoon at Gush Etzion Junction, south of Jerusalem. He's said [Times of Israel] to be a male, 28, a resident of East Jerusalem's A-Tur neighbourhood and with no previous terror convictions.

UPDATE 9:00 pm Thursday February 6, 2019: The First Station ramming suspect is now identified as Sanad al-Tourman, who according to Israel's Channel 13 TV news operates a flower shop in a Jerusalem shopping mall. No further details for now.

12-Mar-19: Yes, Americans surely ought to know that Ahlam Tamimi lives free today

Overnight, a tweet [here] was posted by Jason D. Greenblatt, Assistant to the 45th President of the USA and Special Representative for International Negotiations.

The timing is notable, coming on the same day that King Abdullah II of Jordan, a frequent guest of honour in the US's corridors of power, makes the rounds of Washington power centers including a string of high-level administration officials as well as the White House.

Twitter source

Here's the text:

Americans ought to know that Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamini [sic], a convicted Hamas terrorist who, together with others, murdered in cold blood 15 people including 7 children, lives free today. See details here: https://rewardsforjustice.net/english/ahlam_al_tamimi.html

We of course agree - though it would surely have been better if Mr Greenblatt had spelled Tamimi's name right.

It might also have been better if he had linked to some information that actually explains how and why arch-terrorist Tamimi "lives free today". Instead, the link he provides goes to the State Department's Rewards for Justice website where details of the $5M prize for the capture and conviction of Tamimi appear. (And if any enterprising reporter cares to look into why, after two years, no one has succeeded in getting that reward money, we will be more than happy to discuss what we know. We're certain that some people might be quite surprised. Mr Greenblatt might be one of them, though there's no indication he's actually interested in even the smallest way.)

Still we're pleased that a senior official in the Trump Administration has gone as far as Mr Greenblatt has. It's a first, and an important one.

From the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists website

Americans surely ought to know. And so should anyone to whom justice is a supreme value.

There's much more to be said, and much more that we have already said about Tamimi, justice, and what the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan has done and continues to do to thwart the extradition of this deadly dangerous FBI Most Wanted fugitive.

But for now, we're pleased to see a Trump Administration official speaking out on the issue that has occupied our days and minds for many years.

Tamimi, for those who might not know, admits to being a central figure - we say she was the mastermind - of the bombing of Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria on August 9, 2001. Our daughter Malki, 15, was one of the many innocent victims killed there that day.

Here's a partial selection of the many things we have written in this blog about the Sbarro massacre during the past two years since Jordan's legal system formally announced that it would not be extraditing Tamimi to the US to face the Federal terrorism charges that await her  there:

• 24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers [Video]
• 23-Oct-18: She admits she planned the Sbarro massacre. But for parts of the media, Ahlam Tamimi remains 'an accomplice'
• 24-Aug-18: What aid funds handed to the Abbas regime ($1 million and growing) have done for savages who kill Jews
• 23-Aug-18: New data: How the terrorists who bombed the Sbarro pizzeria fared financially
• 24-Jun-18: Chilling: In boasting of those she killed, the fugitive terrorist can barely control her excitement
• 01-Jun-18: On watching our child's killer
• 05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin
• 03-Dec-17: Understanding Jordan's king and his "holistic" approach to terror
• 21-Nov-17: Mass-murdering Charles Manson and mass-murdering Ahlam Tamimi: Who's more monstrous?
• 08-Oct-17: Terrorists and justice for their victims
• 24-Aug-17: Malki's killer: We're looking for some friends
• 30-Mar-17: Years of pursuing a child's killer: Setbacks, challenges and a roller-coaster ride
• 15-Mar-17: Sbarro and justice
• 14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought

04-Oct-18: Entitlement, transparency and foreign aid: Responding to Parents Circle

From this week's Australian Jewish News

We were bothered by views that appear in a recent report ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", Nathan Jeffay, September 20, 2018] that looks at changes in the Trump administration's approach to US support for non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The parts that jumped out at us had to do with a group on which we have expressed ourselves at intervals over the years without getting much response: Parents Circle Families Forum.

They appear in the article's opening lines

Donald Trump is being accused of taking his squeeze on Palestinian funding too far, by stopping new grants to organisations that promote coexistence with Israelis. “It’s totally heartbreaking,” said Robi Damelin, an Israeli bereaved mother who runs a coexistence group with bereaved Palestinian parents. She was talking to The AJN shortly after hearing that the Trump administration is cutting its last major aid channel to Palestinians, namely $US10 million annual funding to projects like hers which bring together Israeli and Palestinian civilians... 

Then a few paragraphs later:

Damelin said that America is acting dangerously by undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results. “It can only achieve more violence,” she said. Her son David was killed when a terrorist opened fire at an IDF roadblock in the West Bank in 2002, and she became involved in The Parents Circle Families Forum, a grassroots organisation of Palestinian and Israeli families who have suffered a bereavement due to the conflict. She believes that groups like hers are building connections between populations which will prove vital if there is to be a political agreement. “Can they imagine that there could be peace without contact between Israelis and Palestinians? ” she asked rhetorically. “This will cause fear of the unknown, which leads to hatred and its natural partner, violence.”

Each of us (Frimet and Arnold) has criticized PCFF's work and methods via articles and posts over a period of 15 years. Other than a degree of vituperation, we haven't gotten meaningful responses from them in all that time which we assume is a strategy. 

Arnold wrote a brief comment for the Australian Jewish News which they published yesterday in their print edition. If an online version gets published, we will add the details in an update to this post. So far, there's none.

Reflections on the dark side of foreign aid 

Arnold Roth, Jerusalem | Published in the print edition of the Australian Jewish News, October 3, 2018

Nathan Jeffay’s review of US foreign aid cuts ["Fears funding freeze is going too far", September 20, 2018] touches on some of the undoubtedly thorny questions that arise when long-standing funding commitments are suddenly slashed.

I have no role in any organization that benefits from US (or any non-Israeli) government funding. And I surely don’t have the responsibility of either defending or attacking what the Trump Administration chooses to do.

But like many observers of Palestinian Arab and Israeli societies and their universe of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), I strongly favour transparency, along with critical, frequent and active reassessments of who gets funded by foreign governments. In other words, management that has goals and results in mind.

If programs are found to need changing, let the change come.

UNRWA, the startlingly unique “refugee” organization, has sought since the late 1940s to perpetuate – but not to solve – the powerlessness and misery of Palestinian Arabs. Anyone familiar with its operations, especially its schooling, understands how much harm flows from institutionalized hypocrisy, embedded ideology - and inertia.

Right at the outset, Jeffay’s article quotes one of the central figures in Parents Circle Families Forum (PCFF). Robi Damelin and I have spoken on the same platforms in the past. My wife and I have written critical opinion pieces about PCFF’s work. In Israel’s large circle of families bereaved by acts of Arab terror, it’s a small, marginal and noisy participant.

Ms Damelin, reacting to an announced change to US funding that will affect PCFF, tells Jeffay it’s “totally heartbreaking… undermining coexistence work as a strategy to achieve political results… It can only achieve more violence.”  

That’s an overblown, self-aggrandizing response. But more than that: as Frimet and I have written in several opinion columns over the years, it reflects an approach we know is offensive to many of Israel’s thousands of terror-affected families. We have been one of those since our daughter Malki was murdered in the 2001 Hamas attack on a Jerusalem pizzeria.

PCFF’s fund-raising emphasizes that it brings together the families of terror victims from among Palestinian Arabs and Israelis who “have chosen a path to reconciliation”. 

But its calls for change address just one side. Israelis are the aggressors. Palestinian Arabs are the victims and powerless to change much in their lives and society. The occupation is at the heart of the conflict. And terrorism – is simply missing from the narrative. 

They concede their line is unrepresentative of Israel’s bereaved families. Nonetheless it has stayed dismayingly consistent throughout the 15 years we have observed them. How is this offensive?

PCFF likes to say its work constitutes “an alternative to hatred and revenge”. The realization sank in some years ago that the hatred and revenge for which they have “an alternative” are what they tell the world the rest of us Israelis feel. It’s repugnant and it’s also untrue. Their messages adopt the language of bereavement. But their substance is skewed to the political. In my view, it’s calibrated to meet the political expectations of funders.

(Pointing out the sharp divergence between what claim to do and the reality is beyond the scope of this short comment. The blog Frimet and I write [meaning ThisOngoingWar, which you are probably reading now] has more: click here)

Everyone ought to be free to promote their own political view of the conflict. Though I find it offensive, PCFF are entitled to exploit bereavement to raise funds and to promote specific ideological positions.  

They don’t owe me or anyone else an accounting – except their funders. Funders can embrace or reject that approach. 

Let PCFF do whatever they feel needs to be done. But it’s absurd for them to argue that they are entitled to US government funding. If their work produces an acceptable return on investment, however that’s defined, funders will seek them out. The broader issue though is about how large bodies, often controlled by governments, use sometimes-vast aid funds to influence and even change the political landscape in other countries.

Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor is mentioned in Jeffay’s article. I play a tiny committee-member’s role there that gives me some insight into the distortions and the double standards that are often part of the funding industry. A notorious illustration: the Abbas regime’s rewards-for-terror stipends scheme has produced a devastating harvest of deaths and blighted lives on both sides since Arafat’s time.

The PA has for all practical purposes been insolvent through all those years. Those stipends and that hideous scheme are made possible only by foreign funding. Let it be critically reviewed widely, often, transparently and with vigour.

If you care to review (and of course to respond to) the critiques we have offered of PCFF and its approach, here are some:

• 27-Nov-02: The sin of forgivenness fervor, Frimet Roth in Jerusalem Post [archived]
• 12-Jul-13: Behind the facade at Parents Circle, messages that are deeply disturbing to bereaved families
• 17-Oct-13: Naive in Seattle (but not only there, of course): notes from the battlefield
• 27-Jun-14: First, understand the war and the grief | A response to Parents Circle
• 23-Oct-16: Vengeance is ours, say these Israeli Jews