12-Jul-22: No political dimension: Our letter to President Biden and his answer

Another AP story from a year ago [Image Source]

Associated Press began reporting last night (Monday) that the White House has already responded to the letter we emailed to President Joseph Biden on Sunday [we described that here: "11-Jul-22: President Biden is heading to Jerusalem and we're asking for a few minutes of his time"]. 

They say:

The U.S. said Monday it is still seeking the extradition of a Palestinian woman in Jordan convicted of aiding a suicide bomber in Jerusalem in 2001. But it declined to comment on a request from the family of one of the victims for a meeting with President Joe Biden... The Roths have been waging a campaign for the extradition of Tamimi since she was released by Israel in a 2011 prisoner swap with the Hamas militant group and sent to her native Jordan, where she lives freely and has been a familiar face in the media... ["US seeks extradition of Palestinian attacker in Jordan", AP, July 11, 2022]

The AP report goes on to quote a high-level source that

“The U.S. government continues to seek her extradition and the Government of Jordan’s assistance in bringing her to justice for her role in the heinous attack,” the National Security Council said Monday.

Continuing to seek her extradition. It's a term that needs some context. And we're happy to provide it. 

The US has never made a single public call on Jordan to extradite Tamimi, beyond the formal request (under a 1995 extradition  treaty which is valid and in force) in 2017. 

It has also never publicly criticized Jordan for breaching the treaty. This despite the reality that Tamimi has lived free in Jordan since October 2011, traveling freely from Jordan throughout the Arab world to address rallies and make blood-curdling pro-terror speeches, while being the presenter of her own made-in-Jordan weekly TV program devoted to terror, terrorists and the need to support both. 

We're genuinely glad to be told that the US is continuing to pursue extradition. But after so many years of zero progress, is it not time to ask what those efforts are? And why they don't succeed? Jordan, after all, is a small but strategic ally, massively dependent on US largesse, the beneficiary of a whole raft of made-in-USA special facilities, programs and strategically helpful attention.

It's fair to say we are disappointed by the non-response. 

And allow us to be clear about this aspect: no one has been in touch with us from the President's staff, the State Department, the National Security Council or the US Embassy in Israel.

Jordan's royals and the Bidens - July 2021

But here's the point. Throughout the years of our immensely frustrating campaign to see the government of the United States respect and defend its own laws, criminal code and treaties in relation to the Tamimi case, poor - even absent - communication from US government officials has been an almost invariable constant.

The Tamimi case has special significance to us. 

That's in large part because the Jordanian fugitive planted the human bomb at the Jerusalem pizzeria in August 2001 whose explosive malevolence erased sixteen lives, one of whom was the life of our beloved fifteen year old daughter Malki. Another American woman, a tourist visiting from New Jersey, was murdered along with the unborn child in her womb. And another American woman was rendered so profoundly brain-damaged that she has remained in a comatose state from that summer 2001 afternoon until today.

Now that the Biden team have explicitly blocked our efforts to press the case, we feel justified in sharing the letter we sent him to which no answer will ever come. 

Here it is.

July 10, 2022

The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500-0005 

Dear President Biden,

Extraditing our child’s killer from Jordan

As you arrive in Jerusalem, we write to remind you of the open letter we addressed to you in the pages of the Wall Street Journal last summer. It appeared on the day you hosted Jordan’s monarch in the Oval Office of the White House: [“Jordan Harbors Our Daughter’s Killer | Biden should demand the extradition of Ahlam Tamimi”, Frimet and Arnold Roth, Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2021]. 

It was distressing to us that you did not respond in any way, not via the White House press spokesperson; not via any members of your staff; not in the months that followed; not even when you hosted the same king in the same Oval Office this past May.

Our letter then, and the thoughts we share with you below, have no political dimension to them. And in sharp contrast to the letter from the family of an Aljazeera reporter shot and killed as she stood in the midst of a firefight between Palestinian Arab gunmen and Israeli forces in Jenin, it’s not necessary for us to assert again and again – as they do about their case – what we believe to be the cause of the death for which we seek accountability. It’s tragically clear.

Our daughter Malki, a sweet American girl who never reached her sixteenth birthday, was murdered by a Jordanian reporter called Ahlam Tamimi. In contrast to the Shireen Abu Akleh case, no committees of enquiry, not the United Nations or the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN or the Associated Press or B’Tselem or even the White House spokesperson are needed to lay the blame.

A massacre happened at a pizzeria in the heart of Jerusalem on a hot summer vacation day when it was filled with children. Tamimi, again and again, on television, via YouTube and in live appearances, has said she did it. She calls it “my operation”. She brags about what she did. In a viral interview, she said “I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll.” 

Last October in a video conference to Turkish schoolgirls and young women [source] she called the bombing “a crown on my head. By the grace of Allah, I joined the annals of history by committing the best act, the best operation, the best path - the path of Jihad.”

Tamimi has never expressed a syllable of regret beyond saying of the children she targeted that she wishes more had been killed that day.

She has been an FBI Most Wanted terrorist since March 14, 2017, the day that long-sealed US federal terror charges were finally made public. And in all the time that has passed, she has lived free as a bird in Jordan. She is still there, shielded by Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

In the 5+ years since the charges were made public, the two of us have reached out to a depressingly long list of officials and lawmakers seeking to bring an end to the cruel game being played at our expense. It involves serious people with extraordinary power and influence telling us (those who bother to respond at all since most prefer to look away or pretend not to hear) that the US “continues to seek her extradition and will continue to work to ensure she faces justice” [source].

Years of this.

Jordan, to say it clearly, is not a free or liberal place. Its media are among the mostly tightly restricted of any country and its governments are assiduous in executing the will of King Abdullah. Yet for five years, Tamimi had her own terror-advocating TV show, made in Jordan and distributed from there to Arabic-speaking audiences throughout the world. The ruler whom you so admire, whom you praised lavishly last summer [“Biden calls Jordan king a loyal ally in ‘tough neighborhood’”, The Associated Press, July 20, 2021] must have approved it. On any view, he certainly did nothing to shut it down.

Five years, sir.

Something is obviously terribly wrong with how the pursuit of America’s most wanted female fugitive is going. If it’s accountability for her crimes that we speak – and accountability is what your press spokesperson has invoked over and again these past few weeks in the Aljazeera reporter’s case – then it’s worth asking whether five years is enough time to have achieved that.

Nothing in our handful of encounters with senior figures in your State Department and that of President Trump has given us even the smallest hope that the US wants this woman in chains, on a flight from Amman and extradited to a DC courthouse.

The opposite is true. When politicians and their bureaucrats want to justify their action or inaction, they rarely lack the words. But in our case, most by far of our approaches to Washington insiders have been answered with silence. We want to think it stems from shame and embarrassment but that’s speculative on our part. What is abundantly clear is that getting justice for the small handful of American lives, all of them Jewish, extinguished among a much larger number of Tamimi’s victims, is – in the cold calculus of today’s Washington – evidently not worth the political irritation it will cause.

We want to explain this to you better in a face-to-face meeting. We want you to look us in the eyes, Mr. President, and tell us how Jordan’s king can be a praiseworthy ally even as he cynically tramples –on narrow technical grounds that it turns out don’t hold water – a treaty made by President Clinton and King Hussein, his greatly admired father.

That treaty has for a quarter century been the essential tool that enabled US law enforcement to apprehend a string of Jordanian terrorists and bring them to trial and eventually prison in the US. It’s a valuable part of America’s constant, essential vigilance against the dark forces of jihad. There’s a much larger issue than simply justice for the life of an American child at stake when an ally – one who benefits from billions of dollars in US taxpayer funded aid each year – trashes a bilateral agreement at will.

In your Washington Post opinion piece on Saturday [“Joe Biden: Why I’m going to Saudi Arabia”, Washington Post., July 9, 2022] you mentioned King Abdullah of Jordan recently referring to the “new vibe” in the region with countries asking “How can we connect with each other and work with each other.” The answer in Jordan’s case is clear. It can honor the unquestionably valid treaty and extradite Tamimi.

We’re approaching the fiftieth yahrzeit of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a luminary in the world of Jewish thought and a prominent figure in America’s struggle for human rights who passed away in 1972. Rabbi Heschel observed that "...morally speaking, there is no limit to the concern one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

We are bereaved parents as you are, sir. We have a burning sense that injustice in the wake of our child’s murder is winning. Years of experience tell us this is so. We ask that you address this as only the leader of the United States can and take the steps that will bring the Sbarro bomber to long-thwarted justice in Washington.

Respectfully,
Frimet and Arnold Roth
Jerusalem

You will have our sincere appreciation if you share this widely.  

20-May-17: A child, a knife and another thwarted stabbing today on Jerusalem's northern edge

The Palestinian Arab girl, minus her weapon, is lead away
unharmed by a police officer [Image Source: Social media]

At Jerusalem's main northern security checkpoint, Qalandiya, police today (Saturday) intercepted a would-be stabbing attacker and restrained her without the need to shoot.

As Times of Israel reports:

The suspect — a 14-year-old Palestinian girl — was arrested by officers while carrying a knife in her hand after failing to obey their calls to halt, according to police. According to Hebrew media reports, officers used pepper spray in order to stop the girl. Officials added that the suspect was taken in for questioning after her arrest. No shots were reported fired in the incident.

Israel National News adds:

She was walking in a passage designated for vehicles only. When they noticed she was holding a knife, they carried out the procedure for stopping a suspect and overpowered her. There were no casualties reported, and a knife was indeed found in her possession.

The calmness of the response of the security personnel stationed at Qalandiya offers a stark contrast with the violent events at the same spot on Thursday evening involving scores of Arab rioters.

Parts of the Arab media, deeply invested in turning their communities' adolescents into killers to advance their version of terrorist warfare, are busy spinning Saturday afternoon's events tonight. Here's the Ma'an News Agency headline in their English-language edition:

Israeli forces detain 14-year-old Palestinian girl at Qalandiya checkpoint

Just like that: "detained" out of the blue. And a child yet. Will she be arrested? Or just stay detained?

Ma'an's report goes on to quote the spokesperson for Israel Police (who happens to be an Israeli Arab woman) about the knife and the attempted attack both of which are central to the report and the event, of course. But click on the Arabic version of the same story from the same despicable news source [here] and that version of the report of the child's arrest, for a very different readership, makes no mention at all of the knife, or the attempted stabbing or the restraint shown by the Israeli security personnel who were the target of the would-be killer's assault..

Then there's this notorious non-Arab propagandist for the Palestinian Arab campaign who tweeted this sadly characteristic message a few hours ago:

Cruel and heartless IOFers, pointing guns at 14 year olds for no reason at all other than the sheer thrill of it and from close range yet. And (gasp) kidnapping them. Where were the police?!

It's almost as if this Twitter person has no idea the Palestinian Arabs are cultivating a society and an education system which seeks to turn innocent and young Palestinian Arab children into martyrdom-seeking murderous bigots. Some achievement!

PA president-for-life Mahmoud Abbas, speaking in the White House on May 3, 2017, addressed this in classic black-is-white manner without even once smirking:

Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace. And we are endeavoring to bring about security, freedom and peace for our children to live like the other children in the world, along with the Israeli children in peace, freedom and security. [From the White House Press Office transcript]

Abbas, naturally enough, said not one word about the dozens of children - yes, children, right down to Palestinian Arab would-be stabbers as young as eight! - who have taken knives and gone out seeking Jewish victims. As if it had never happened. As if schoolchildren educated in the PA's own institutions, and UNRWA's as well, don't appear daily on PA television proclaiming their deep devotion to killing "Zionists". As if Abbas himself has not praised the blood-lust, as he did on television [see it here with English-language subtitles] on September 18, 2016, explicitly praising and welcoming "every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem... blood on its way to Allah... they |Israel| have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won't allow them to."

Every Palestinian Arab understands the president's barely-coded advice about what to do to the Israelis and their "filthy feet". Even fourteen year olds.

The reality is that the weaponizing of Palestinian Arab children - and the devastation this has brought to families in every part of their society - continues in full force alongside brazen Palestinian Arab efforts to claim precisely the opposite.

04-May-17: When Mahmoud met Donald: Thinking about the PA's Rewards for Terror scheme

In the White House yesterday [Image Source]

We had a welcome opportunity yesterday to publicly express some things about the Palestinian Authority's blood-soaked Rewards for Terror scheme. That's not its official name but it does describe what actually goes on.

The occasion was a formal visit by PA president Mahmoud Abbas to the White House, and a perceptive article by Ben Cohen: "As Trump Meets Abbas, Victim Families Press Issue of Financial Rewards for Palestinian Terrorists" [Ben Cohen | The Algemeiner | May 3, 2017]

Some excerpts (and Arnold Roth is quoted):

The PA currently spends $300 million annually on the payments – close to 8 percent of its budget. Critics say that the PA actively incentivizes terrorism, by promising financial rewards and national glory for those who participate...
“There are some small indications that ‘concern’ was expressed in the name of the United States during the Trump/Abbas encounter concerning the ongoing PA payments scheme that rewards Palestinian Arabs for engaging in terror,” noted Arnold Roth, whose 15 year old daughter, Malki, was murdered in the suicide bombing of Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizza restaurant in August 2001.
“The passions that the prisoner payments scheme arouses in Palestinian Arab society seem never to be adequately captured in mainstream news reports – I worry that they are not well-enough understood by the people now exercising power in Washington,” Roth told The Algemeiner.
Roth argued that western governments enjoy leverage over the PA which they are reluctant to exercise.  “Mahmoud Abbas’ perpetually insolvent administration stays in business only because of massive hand-outs of foreign aid,” he stated. “In a sane world, the providers of those donations – the US and the European Union in particular – would be attaching real conditions to them. But mystifyingly they don’t.”
Stephen Flatow, whose 20 year old daughter Alisa was murdered in the 1995 suicide bombing of an Israeli bus by Islamic Jihad, asserted that “raising the issue for discussion is just not enough.”
...Neither Trump nor Abbas mentioned the issue of the prisoner payments at their joint appearance on Wednesday. “If the issue is not raised, I wouldn’t understand the rationale for the US position and I’d be extremely disappointed,” Flatow said. “The PA’s payments to terrorists –on  a sliding scale no less, based on the number of Jews killed or injured – serves to encourage others to commit terror.” [Read the whole article here]

It's worth noting that Wednesday's Abbas state visit came as the US Congress is weighing legislation (described here: "Senators introduce Taylor Force Act to cut Palestinian funding over terror rewards", JNS, September 30, 2016)

to cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if they continue their policy of paying monetary rewards for terrorism. U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC.), Dan Coats (R-IN.) and Roy Blunt (R-MO.) introduced the Taylor Force Act, which would require the U.S. secretary of state to certify the Palestinian Authority has ended its policy of paying monetary rewards to terrorist and their surviving family members. The bill also calls on the PA to publicly condemn terror attacks and to take steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.

We wrote about Taylor Allen Force [here] about 14 months ago. An American visitor to Israel as part of a Vanderbilt University school trip and a graduate of West Point Military Academy, he was stabbed to death by a Palestinian Arab terrorist who also injured 10 others in an attack on the seashore at Jaffa.

Poster at a British protest against the incitement of the PA
[Image Source]

The legislation that bears his name is not yet US law. It was referred to the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in February [source] and is currently working its way through the system.

Whatever the outcome, the name of the murdered young US veteran will get considerably more respect there than it did when the "moderate" Arab-operated-but-European-financed Ma'an News Agency turned its attention, so to speak, to what was done to him:

Ma'an says the attacker is a 22-year-old from a village, al-Zawiya, near Qalqiliya. It gives his name as Bashar Masalha. What does Ma'an tell its readers about the man who was murdered by the villager? Not his name, not his age, not his background or anything about his life; just that he was "an American tourist". Nor do they mention how an Israeli musician, sitting near the beach and strumming on his guitar, gave the fleeing knife-man a massive whack on the head, destroying his musical instrument but slowing the murderer down so that the armed security people in pursuit could catch up with him and eventually stop him,
Not surprisingly, the Arabic version of the Ma'an report, the one which the editors assume will not be read by people outside the Arab world, honors the knife-man in a sub-heading as "shaheed", or "martyr". Mr Force is not mentioned at all. Hamas, whether because it's true or because they wish it were, issued a Tweet [here] saying the killer came from its ranks. The American man he murdered is dismissed as "a Zionist"... ["09-Mar-16: News reporting and how it ensures more terror"]

(By the way, people concerned with the pursuit of peace and a much better future for children on our side and on the Arab side as well certainly ought to know more about Ma'an and the hideous values it disseminates. We try to do our bit.) 

Ben Cohen's Algemeiner article ends with a quote worth emphasizing from Grant Rumley, a Palestinian affairs expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noting 

the centrality of the prisoner payments issue to Palestinian internal politics. “Any change on the payments policy will cost Abbas dearly at home,” Rumley said.

Yes, changing the Rewards for Terror scheme will be expensive for Abbas.

But we think the question for non-Palestinian Arabs is: so what? Should we be worrying about the political future of this 82 year-old kleptocrat, this inveterate inciter to hatred, this career politician now in the thirteenth year of his four-year term as president and continuing to hold tight for more?

No.

Abbas parading with freshly-freed terrorists, all of them killers,
in 2014. In the days after this rally took place, very one of the ex-prisoners
enjoyed a Rewards for Terror payday beyond anything of which they
dreamed - all of it funded by the foreign aid budgets of EU states and the US. 

We should care instead whether the payments - funded mainly by ordinary and unwitting taxpayers in the United States and Europe under the guise of international foreign aid - that serve to perpetuate a culture of lethal bigotry and the weaponizing of Palestinian Arab children can be stopped as a matter of urgency.

We should care about what it will take to cultivate a new and completely different kind of leadership among the Palestinian Arabs, one that will focus on reshuffling the core values of their own people so that building them a better future takes precedence over stealing ours.

It could be that Abbas agrees. In yesterday's meeting, he said (according this source):

We are coming into a new opportunity a new horizon that would enable us to bring about peace... [Associated Press, May 3, 2017]

Can someone urgently show him and his entourage the way to the exit? That new horizon is needed desperately.

05-Apr-17: Abdullah in the White House today: Questions need to be asked

Malki: A photo taken the week
before Tamimi murdered her

When the Jordanian legal system tells the United States Department of Justice to take a hike, as it did in the past couple of weeks over the extradition of our daughter's murderer, Americans are entitled to ask themselves why.

And to get answers from the Jordanians that either make sense or don't.

That way they get to choose whether and how to respond.

The monarch who rules Jordan is paying a call on President Trump today. King Abdullah II will be with the president of the United States in the Rose Garden around lunch time.

Journalists ought to be asking the king how he justifies saying no to a legitimate request under a binding, 22 year-old treaty between strategic partners. (See "28-Mar-17: Terror, justice and the Hashemite king of Jordan")

Source: Twitter

If, as we believe, it's because the smiling mass murderer, Ahlam Tamimi, is a hero in his nation because of the Jewish children (including our daughter Malki) she murdered in 2001, and kings don't hand over heroes to other people's justice systems, then he ought to say so.

Members of the Washington news media, please pay heed.

And for the record, we are ready to be interviewed on how the families of the murderer Jordan is sheltering feel about it. Reach us at thisongoingwar@gmail.com

01-Dec-15: For this Washington insider, "successes" with Arafat, Hamas and Iran are but prelude to the ISIS chapter

Malley is third from left in this March 2015 group photo of the 
negotiations in Lausanne, Switzerland towards the glorious signing of a 
peace agreement with Iran [Image Source]

Over at the Liberty Unyielding group blog, Commander J.E. Dyer provides some startling analysis today about a new appointment to the influential post in the US administration of "ISIS Czar". This concerns a man who 

favors talking to terrorists, and has urged the world to do just that with the homicidal baby-killers of Hamas.  As a bonus, he made contacts with Hamas himself, something that you would still be under hostile surveillance for by U.S. agencies, if you had done it. And now he’s going to be Obama’s top advisor on ISIS.  Yay! ["Not-the-Onion: Obama appoints Hamas homie as his top advisor on ISIS", November 30, 2015] 

Commander Dyer's personal blog made us aware just a couple of weeks ago of another startling aspect of the White House's approach to the battle to defeat ISIS, namely that

75% of the strike sorties flown against ISIS by our aircraft return to base without bombing anything.  U.S. Central Command reported that in operational statistics months ago, and it was picked up by stateside media as early as May 2015. But there was a focus in May on the lack of immediate tactical intelligence on potential targets: without boots on the ground to direct airborne strikes, the implication was that we couldn’t use air power effectively... [Now it appears] the issue is not so much the lack of tactical intelligence, as the paralyzing fear, in the White House, of collateral damage from dropping bombs under any circumstances. ["Theoptimisticconservative's Blog", November 21, 2015]

That appointment of a "czar" for America's ISIS strategy concerns Robert Malley. An Obama insider for years, he was abruptly dropped as foreign policy adviser in the first Obama campaign (2008) in the wake of revelations about the man's personal contacts with Hamas. Dyer terms that evidence of his "ridiculous unsuitability for a major post with a mainline party candidate". We think that's a spot-on assessment.

Years before, as "Special Assistant to President Clinton, he was a member of the U.S. peace team and helped organize the 2000 Camp David Summit." That total failure, we recall, led directly to the outbreak of the bloody Arafat War (the so-called Second Intifada) launched by the Palestinian Arab leadership just two months later.

His re-emplacement inside the circles of Washington power has been dramatic. In March 2015, he was elevated to Special Assistant to the President and White House Coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region. In that capacity, he

put his stamp on the negotiations with Iran in 2015.  (In fact, we are advised that he participated in the celebratory toast, with a bottle of fine Madeira donated from Portugal, enjoyed by lead negotiators John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.  Take that, ISIS!) [Dyer again]

(More about the wine here in the Washington Post.)

From a quick reading (we admit we don't know his work-product well), he has what seems like an idiosyncratic way of looking at the Islamist terrorists of Gaza. Some comments he made about them in the wake of their bloody crushing Fatah to grab control of the Strip betray an astounding degree of openness to happy endings, despite all the evidence to the contrary. He wrote this in 2006:

Hamas' electoral landslide might optimize conditions for its political transition, for victory is likely to inhibit it far more than would have defeat. The more Hamas exercises government responsibility, the less it is likely to revert to violence; the greater its electoral mandate, the lesser its freedom of action... If dealt with wisely, the Islamists' victory could present an opportunity for the United States to promote its core interests without betraying its core principles..." ["Making the Best of Hamas' Victory", Robert Malley via Common Ground website, March 2, 2006]

Knowing what we know about Hama's exercise of "government responsibility", and what this has brought the region and especially Palestinian Arab children, we're wondering if we somehow missed the retraction and apology that Malley published - somewhere.

And did we mention that, in Wikipedia's words, he's "involved in the J Street project"?

And now he gets to be involved in providing ISIS-directed advice to the Leader of the Free World. That's really worrying.

10-Nov-15: Intervention, selective mercy and the president

Convicted of dealing in crack cocaine, this freshly-freed prisoner received
a charming letter personally written by President Obama
[Image Source: New York Times, October 1, 2015]

It doesn't bear directly on terrorism which is our normal focus here but the discussion about Jonathan Pollard being paroled from US prison after serving a full and unabridged thirty year term is raising issues that, unfortunately, are familiar to us from past unpleasant encounters with Washington spokespersons. And from exposure to sanctimonious political double-talk.

A Washington Post article published yesterday ["Obama will not intervene to allow Jonathan Pollard to leave for Israel", Karen DeYoung, November 9, 2015] deals with how there are going to be restrictions on Pollard's freedom for a considerable time even after he walks out of his cell:

...Pollard must remain in the United States, under supervision, for five years. His supporters here and in Israel have suggested that Obama could use his executive power to waive that condition and allow Pollard to leave the country... [But] “President Obama has not intervened in the judicial process here in the United States, and that’s been his consistent approach,” Rhodes said. “With respect to the case of Jonathan Pollard, he’s made clear that he wants there to be fair treatment under the law, as there should be with any individual.” Obama, Rhodes said, “respects how important this issue is to many Israelis.” But the president’s non-intervention approach has not changed, he said. [Washington Post]

Should Obama change his long-standing and unvarying policy of "non-intervention" when it comes to Pollard? As it turns out, that's not so much the question.

A Jerusalem Post piece by Gil Hoffman said a few days ago ["White House closes door on Pollard aliya", Jerusalem Post, November 7, 2015] that Pollard, who is expected to be paroled on November 30, is then going to be subject to a ban not only on leaving the US for the next five years but also on giving interviews. Free he may be, but the freedom to speak in public will be forbidden to him. And since he's out on parole, the price of breaching the parole conditions is self-explanatory and high. 

Intervening in justice system by '
commuting many more sentences in July 2015 [Image Source]

President Obama who maintains a strict non-intervention stance on such matters, could - but we are assured is not going to - change it for Pollard. Yet as the Jerusalem Post's Hoffman points out

Obama has commuted sentences of 89 people during his presidency, more than any American president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He has granted full pardons to another 64 people. Most of the convicts who received clemency from Obama were drug dealers and thieves. When he has announced commutations, he has said that the sentence of the convicts did not fit their crime. Obama is expected to announce more commutations later this month in honor of the Thanksgiving holiday... [Jerusalem Post]

We did some quick checking of our own. Previous instances of President Obama's "non-intervention" interventions include these:

• "Obama Commutes Sentences for 8 in Crack Cocaine Cases" [New York Times, December 19, 2013]
• "Obama commutes eight drug offenders' sentences, why not others?" [CNN, December 31, 2014]
• "President Obama Grants Commutations - Today, President Barack Obama granted commutations of sentence to the following 22 individuals..." [The White House Official Website, March 31, 2015]

In connection with those March 2015 presidential interventions, note this:

"Neil Eggleston, the White House counsel... said Tuesday's commutations underscore Obama's "commitment to using all the tools at his disposal to bring greater fairness and equity to our justice system." ...Eggleston noted that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, had commuted 11 sentences during his two terms.... [The Associated Press, March 31, 2015]  

Then four months ago

President Obama on Monday commuted the sentences of 46 drug offenders, more than double the number of commutations he granted earlier this year, as part of his effort to reform the criminal justice system. In a Facebook video posted Monday, the president said the 46 prisoners had served sentences disproportionate to their crimes... [Washington Post, July 13, 2015]

The beneficiaries of that latest intervention are named and described in this Washington Post backgrounder. The list shows most of them were imprisoned for distributing or dealing in cocaine and/or crack cocaine. Deaths of Americans from cocaine and crack cocaine use are significant - in the multiple thousands each year and rising: a February 2015 paper published by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse says the death toll from cocaine abuse in the US rose by 29% between 2001 and 2013. Crack cocaine is a drug so pervasive that (as the New York Times noted) even Washington’s mayor, Marion S. Barry Jr., was caught smoking it. The problem is vast and especially impactful on people under the age of 18.

Did any Americans die as a result of what Pollard did in the 1980's? If yes, the evidence has been kept very quiet. A reasonable view suggests the answer is no. So what are friends of Israel to make of the ongoing signs that, while the president declares a commitment to reform, fairness and equity in the justice system, aspects of Jonathan Pollard's case are, and have long been, handled in a disproportionate, opaque and discriminatory way?

25-Aug-15: Hard to ignore how much Iran believes its old goals are the right goals

FARS News home page at this hour

While some parts of the US mainstream media drop heavy (and loaded) hints about Obama White House displeasure at

Netanyahu’s unprecedented interference in domestic U.S. politics... [McClatchy DC, August 18, 2015]

many of us over here in Iran's backyard and target zone are getting more than a little sick of how the unleashing of Iran's nuclear weaponization scheme has come to be sold to American voters as a matter of exclusive US domestic concern.

Israelis like us actually have some large pre-occupations arising from an unsigned agreement (deliberately unsigned, as we pointed out here) that claims to be all about verifying and neutralizing what the mullahs are up to but in reality seems much more about egregiously-misplaced trust and hope. 

We're aware of the

precipitous drop in support since the agreement was announced in July. Between a half to two-thirds of the American public currently reject the deal. Those numbers were flipped in reverse before the agreement was finalized... [Source]

But we're also aware of the voices that say this is all about finding the way to peace in a difficult time and place and so on. And how there was no better alternative anywhere to be found, none at all. And with rising despair we're reading advice from people who believe

• "...rejection of this deal would be a rejection of the historic progress our diplomats have made to make this world a safer place..." ["51 Christian faith leaders urge Congress to vote for Iran Deal", August 25, 2015]
• "...The pending nuclear agreement may offer an opportunity to reset relations with Iran after 35 years of hostility. We need to go forward and find out what is possible..." [Kansas City Star, August 23, 2015]
• "...an inclusive, interdependent awareness is essential in helping us initiate a dialogue between America and Iran which will establish the idea of transformative exchange as a paradigm for understanding and reshaping the world order..." [Huffington Post. August 21, 2015]

Here's a taste of the problem we have.

Britain's foreign secretary, with Iran's  president Rouhani
yesterday [Image Source]. Headline reads:
"I believe in Iran’s desire for better ties with the West,'
says Philip Hammond after Tehran trip"

Right now (Tuesday, 6:00 pm Jerusalem time), if you were to go the home page of the influential and somewhat authoritative Iranian government-mouthpiece website FARS News as we just did, you would get a sense of what is on our minds. There's a lead story there bearing this headline: "Parliament Advisor: No Change in Iran's Policy on Israel". (It's archived in full here.)

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Parliament Speaker's Adviser for International Affairs Hossein Sheikholeslam blasted British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond for his interfering remarks, and said Tehran's positions against Israel have not changed at all.
"Our positions against the usurper Zionist regime have not changed at all; Israel should be annihilated and this is our ultimate slogan," Sheikholeslam told reporters in Tehran on Tuesday. After reopening the British embassy in Tehran on Sunday following four years of strained relations between the two countries, Hammond claimed in an interview with the British media that the current Iranian government had displayed a more nuanced approach than its predecessor to a long-running conflict with Israel...
Relations between Iran and Britain hit an all-time low in November 2011, when the two countries shut down their diplomatic missions around Britain's key role in the imposition of a new set of western sanctions against Iran and its repeated meddling with Iran's domestic affairs. But after President Rouhani rose to power, he and his foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, pursued the policy of detente and started talks with London on the resumption of diplomatic ties and reopening embassies...

Does UK foreign secretary Hammond view "annihilation" as part of that more nuanced Iranian stance? If not, then what does he think it means?

Does he know that Iran says officially that it will simply not follow those parts of the nuclear deal that restrict its military capabilities? You can't just ignore this stuff - it's out there on public display via Reuters for anyone who wants to check.

Meanwhile back to Hossein Sheikholeslam, who brings some classically-Iranian qualifications for the job of adviser on international affairs. He was one of the so-called 'students' in the notorious Iran hostage crisis (depicted in the 2012 movie 'Argo') in which 52 American diplomats and civilians were held by force in Tehran between November 4, 1979 and January 20, 1981. They were let loose only on the day Jimmy Carter's presidency ended (the goal was to humiliate him), an illegal incarceration of 444 days.

Sheikholeslam then rose to become the Iranian Foreign Ministry's director for Arab affairs in the 1980's, a role that, according to this article on the website of Radio Free Europe (from 2004) put him in charge, as coordinator, of the

Islamic Revolution Guards Corps participation in Hizballah operations. He was Mohtashami-Pur's Foreign Ministry contact in connection with the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

You could say he's a well-accomplished terrorist with plenty of blood on his hands. And the designated bearer of a message his bosses have chosen to display on one of their most watched front pages.

Sheikholeslam also happens to be the Iranian regime insider we quoted anonymously a week ago [here] when his government

denied a request by Palestinian Authority (PA) chairman Mahmoud Abbas to visit Tehran... [and] dismissed the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) officials' claims that Abbas will make a trip to Tehran in October. "They requested the visit more than once but we haven’t accepted it yet; they have recently repeated their demand once again but we have not provided them with a positive response," he said, according to the news website. Sheikholeslam also stressed Tehran's full support for the “resistance front”, adding that no one can destroy the friendship and strategic relations between Iran and Hamas. [Israel National News, August 20, 2015]

So just to re-state this: the Iranian official who today, at this very hour, is saying in his official capacity and in the most prominent and public of places that Israel must be annihilated is also the Iranian official who managed his country's strategic involvements with the terrorists of both Hamas and Hezbollah. And it's also he who supervised the Iranian part of the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut in which 63 people were murdered - mostly embassy and CIA staff members along with several US soldiers and a US Marine.

It was the deadliest attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission up to that time, and is thought of as marking the beginning of anti-U.S. attacks by Islamist groups... [Wikipedia]

Now tell us again why trusting the Iranians is going to bring peace. And why Israel's existential concerns amount to interference in domestic U.S. politics.

It's hard for us to ignore how openly and loudly Iran states that its old goals - those that earned it recognition as a pariah state - are today's right goals. Does making these points mean we're part of the group the president of the United States has taken to calling "the crazies"? Should it matter that most Americans, most Representatives in the House and a majority of the US Senate agree with us?

06-Aug-15: Parchin: Keep the name in mind

On the devastating nuclear war and terror issues, they lead the US
negotiating team: Secretary of State John Kerry, Energy Secretary
Ernest Moniz [Image Source]

It's now summer vacation time in Washington DC where the Congress is part-way through a 60 day-review of a transaction that has deep and irreversible consequences for the struggle against Islamist terror and for the well-being of us here in Jerusalem and all of our neighbours - among many others.

But first: one of the core motives for us writing this blog and digging through publicly available open-source materials for insights is the gnawing sense that terror, and especially the activities of those who make it possible, is consistently misunderstood by most people. Iran and its nuclear plans constitutes a clear instance of the problem.

Much about the Iran Nuclear Enablement Deal™ - not its official name - seems bizarre to us, starting with how it is embodied in an unsigned agreement which most of the news media keep calling "signed" [we offered the evidence a week ago: "29-Jul-15: Built not on trust but on... verification", and suggested why this is important - and we remain totally perplexed by how little noticed this reality is].

And though it was immediately endorsed unanimously by the United Nations, it's an agreement which one of the sides (Iran) says to its people is non-binding; in fact, they're already saying they will walk away from it.

Despite the heat and the laid-back mood in evidence at the US Congress, the news from Iran continues to happen. They're not on vacation:

Iran Already Sanitizing Nuclear Site, Intel Warns | Bloomberg View | August 5, 2015 | Eli Lake and Josh Rogin |
The U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress of evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, days after agreeing to a nuclear deal with world powers... Intelligence officials and lawmakers who have seen the new evidence, which is still classified, told us that satellite imagery picked up by U.S. government assets in mid- and late July showed that Iran had moved bulldozers and other heavy machinery to the Parchin site and that the U.S. intelligence community concluded with high confidence that the Iranian government was working to clean up the site ahead of planned inspections by the IAEA... For senior lawmakers in both parties, the evidence calls into question Iran’s intention to fully account for the possible military dimensions of its current and past nuclear development... Secretary of State John Kerry has said that the U.S. government has “absolute knowledge” about what Iran has done in the past. Ahead of the vote on the agreement next month, many lawmakers don't share Kerry's confidence. Iran would seem to have its doubts as well, since it's still trying to cover its tracks...

There's substantiation for this in a just-published Institute for Science and International Security (the other ISIS) brief that terms the Iranian cover-up

"a last ditch effort to try to ensure that no incriminating evidence will be found..." [ISIS Imagery Brief: Renewed Activity at the Parchin Site in Iran | David Albright and Serena Kelleher-Vergantini, August 5, 2015]

That same Bloomberg View report points back to one of the most humiliating and disturbing aspects of United States confidence that they have Iran's penchant for making serious trouble under control. It involves Parchin, a vast Iranian military complex with dozens of structures above ground and an unknown number below.

Back in 2004

Images of Parchin base show buildings that could be used to test nuclear bomb components, the Institute for Science and International Security said. A US official said concern about the site should be included in a UN report on Iran's nuclear activities. Iran says allegations it is hiding nuclear facilities at Parchin are lies. [see "Suspicion over Iran arms facility", BBC, September 16, 2004]

Three years after that, a U.S. National Intelligence Assessment determined "with high confidence" that 

in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program... the halt, and Tehran’s announcement of its decision to suspend its declared uranium enrichment program... was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work. [New York Times, December 4, 2007]

But, as later emerged, this high U.S. confidence was (ahem) misplaced, and

it turns out the NIE was misleading even on its own terms: Iran did have a covert facility, perhaps for enrichment, and the intelligence community knew or at least strongly suspected it. We are also learning that the NIE's judgment puts the U.S. intelligence community at odds with its counterparts in Britain, Germany and Israel, which have evidence to show that Iran resumed its weaponization work after 2003... [Intelligence Fiasco Footnote | The authors of the 2007 Iran NIE have some explaining to do", Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2009] 

The Obama White House naturally knows all of this, including the intelligence failure (if that's what it was) and has been telling analysts and lawmakers for the past two years that the deal on which they were working to stop Iran's nuclear weapons plan would absolutely have to include "robust access" by IAEA inspectors to Parchin. To illustrate:

• Wendy Sherman, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Department of State, told Congress on December 12, 2013 that Iran would be required to "address past and present practices... including Parchin" [source]
• State Department spokesperson Marie Harf (about whose self-described difficulties we have commented frequently) confidently stated to reporters on April 3, 2015 that we, meaning the government of the United States, "would find it... very difficult to imagine a JCPA that did not require such [inspector] access at Parchin" [State Department transcript] 

Unjustified hubris notwithstanding, that too turns out to be misleading and wrong.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing about Parchin, Senator James Risch of Idaho revealed two weeks ago that it will not be the inspectors of the IAEA but Iran's own military who will be taking and providing soil samples from Iran:

"How in the world can you have a nation like Iran doing their own testing? ...[Are we going to trust Iran to do this? This is a good deal? This is what we were told we were going to get when we were told that don't worry, we're going to be watching over their shoulder and put in place verification that are absolutely bullet proof. We're going to trust Iran to do their own testing? This is absolutely ludicrous." [Senator James Risch speaking in Congress (video here), July 23, 2015]

That's how the world's public learned that negotiators for the United States had covertly abandoned the requirement that we were told had been central to the US negotiating position - a surrender, in simple terms. And evidently one of many. (YouTube has a video on this from Fox News.)

A little more food for thought: when the IAEA's inspectors went to Parchin in 2012, they were blocked at the gates and did not get in.

In some ways, what's worse than critically key information being withheld from the public (concealed is not too strong a word in our view) is that the US Secretary of State, along with his key negotiating colleague, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, answered (it's in the same video link) the Congressional committee and for the record that the relevant information, essentially a side-agreement, was classified (secret?). In fact, the source documents are not even in the possession of the US, though it's obvious to anyone who thinks about it that the US could get the documents if they wanted, and without having to threaten anyone with violence.

In any event, reporters from Associated Press ["Officials: Iran may take own samples at alleged nuclear site", AP, July 28, 2015] tracked the source down without too much trouble, and confirmed that Sen. Risch's astounding disclosure is entirely factual.

Now we see evidence that the Iranians, without little effort at disguising the dirty-doings, have been busily sanitizing Parchin for at least several weeks.

Congressman Jim McGovern who, way back in 2009 when this
picture was published, rightly insisted on truth [Image Source]

If US voters and their Congressional representatives were to keep this tiny slice of the appalling marketing of the Iran Nuclear Enablement Deal (again, not the official name, but an honest title, given its effect) in mind, it might cause them difficulty in digesting self-parodyingly confident assertions like those made yesterday by a Congressional supporter of the Obama Iran deal. 

As only uber-confident politicians can, Rep. James McGovern of Worcester, Massachusetts declared [source: his media release issued yesterday]

Since this agreement was submitted to Congress, I have carefully reviewed the details, attended classified briefings with White House and State Department officials, met with nuclear experts, and heard from constituents – both those who are in favor of and opposed to the agreement. Above all else, this deal must be judged on its merits and whether it is the strongest available option to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. I firmly believe that it is. With a strong set of comprehensive restrictions, this agreement will take the clear and concrete steps needed to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. The diplomatic solution before us is not perfect, but it provides the robust framework we need to monitor Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it remains peaceful. This agreement would establish the most intrusive inspections regime ever negotiated. And if Iran cheats...

and so on. 

Nothing personal against Representative McGovern but does he know about the surrender on Parchin? Does he have a view? Is it something that fits well with his view of a "robust framework"? Is his view on the agreement based on his insistence that the US public work from truth and full disclosure, or is it more, how to say this?, nuanced than that. (Again, nothing personal.)

We think that if Congressman McGovern fully appreciated how exposed he and his constituents are to the existential threat facing us in far-off Israel, he might have given expression to a touch more humility and recognition of how some issues go well beyond party politics. (And for the record, though we are sure we are in serious danger here, we're not at all sure Americans are in much better shape.)

And we're wondering whether he agrees that he and his parliamentary colleagues are being exposed to an incomplete segment of the available evidence. Also: that being opposed to the dangerous, defective and misleadingly marketed Iran deal - as we certainly are - doesn't mean people want war - as we certainly do not.

15-Jun-15: Trust us! Some stunning insights into an evolving alliance

An important new book, a memoir by Prof. Michael Oren who served as Israel's ambassador to the US between May 2009 and September 2013, is getting media coverage this week. His vantage point as both an insider and a noted historian at a time of huge importance is an invaluable one.

It's worth noting that, unlike some other key ambassadorial appointments, Oren did not get the job through his being close to prime minister Netanyahu. In fact, as far as we can tell, he's never been regarded as a Netanyahu crony. Nor has he been associated with especially robust viewpoints about the US/Israel relationship. Until now.

He calls "Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide", to be published next Tuesday, a book written "with love — and fear." He's not kidding.

We have not read it (it's not yet available in the stores) but were struck some things said by the author and his reviewer in an article by Gary Rosenblatt in the current issue of The Jewish Week NY. Under the title "No Way To Treat An Ally", it's (in the newspaper's words) a "devastating insider’s account of White House distancing from Israel." Some selected verbatim quotes:

• As he notes in his foreword, “‘ally’ is a simple, beautiful word” that evokes “warmth,” fitting for the “special relationship,” said to exist between Israel and the U.S. But that relationship also includes “bitter differences,” he reminds us at the outset. And much of the next 375 pages is a carefully recalled, detailed and riveting first-hand account of how the Washington-Jerusalem ties have unraveled — undone by mistrust, mistakes and missed opportunities — with Obama in the role of bully-in-chief.
• There are major confrontations, like over settlements and peace talks, and seemingly minor slights, like the president’s omission of Israel in noting countries that came to Haiti’s aid after a devastating earthquake. (The Israeli emergency delegation was one of the largest and the first to arrive on the scene fully prepared.) There is the ring of authenticity in ominous warnings about the consequences of bucking the administration from Obama’s foul-mouthed chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, whom Oren liked, and in his dealing with National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, who “often seemed ill-disposed toward Israel.”
• The cumulative effect is profound — a steady drumbeat of behind-the-scenes examples of diplomatic dissonance. Oren, charged with maintaining a positive public façade regarding the “unbreakable and unshakeable” U.S.-Israel alliance, is privately seething over the administration’s treatment of his country — politically and diplomatically — as less ally than obstacle.
• Repeatedly, he describes how Israel is blamed for the lack of progress on the peace front while the Palestinians are given a pass.
• He has a clear message for American Jews, particularly in light of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran: “Remember that American Jewry once had a chance to save six million Jews,” Oren said somberly. “And there are six million today [in Israel]. So think very hard” and understand that “this is about our survival as a people. It’s about our children and grandchildren.”
• Oren doesn’t say that the president is anti-Israel. Rather, “Obama is pro-Israel — but his is a certain mythical, pre-1967 Israel that never really existed,” he said, a time when the state was “less democratic, less open, less respectful of minorities.”
• [Israel] in the eyes of the administration... is a country out of step with American interests. Oren writes that the president’s foreign policy priorities included “creating a Palestinian state, reconciling with Islam, and preventing nuclear proliferation. "All three," he noted, "intersected with Israel’s interests, and in potentially abrasive ways."

The article is disturbing in ways that transcend (in our view) the genuinely-horrific daily reports from today's Syria, Iraq, Yemen, because as tragic and awful as the reality of those Arab-on-Arab slaughter-yards are, no one sane is trying to dress them up or justify them.

Editorial page in this past Saturday's New
York Post [here]

But on the intertwined issues of Iran and Israel, we are as dumbfounded as ever by the deep well-springs of public opinion that Obama's promoters keep succeeding to plumb. Most painful of all to us, and puzzling, is the understanding they seem to have tapped into among America's Jews:

• [Oren] cited Obama’s “credibility problem” in the Mideast, noting America’s lack of success throughout the region, including Iraq, Syria and Yemen. “But on this one vital issue,” the nuclear agreement with Iran, “they’re saying ‘trust us,’” he said. “First they [the administration] told us all options are on the table,” he continued, “and now they’re saying there never was a military option. This deal is not just a bad one, it is singularly dangerous, and it is our duty and right to speak out. And as an IDF war veteran whose son [in the IDF] was wounded, I am deeply offended when we are cast as warmongers.”

Not just bad but singularly dangerous. As well-informed as an insider's comment gets to be, it's simply stunning that this one refers to the actions of the Obama White House.

[Postscript: If you are going to order the Oren book, or anything else, from Amazon, please know that if you do that via AmazonSmile, Amazon donates 0.5% of the purchase price to The Malki Foundation. Bookmark this link and support this worthwhile, efficient and constructive cause every time you shop.]