03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice

We posted this meme in August 2019.
Instagram closed down Tamimi's account a few days later.

We report here on an unexpected, modestly encouraging development in our efforts to bring to justice the fugitive Hamas savage who bombed a Jerusalem pizzeria filled with children.

First, a little background.

Our fifteen year old daughter Malki was one of many children killed in the bombing of a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem whose deaths were sadistically celebrated as a triumph in parts of the Arab world.

Over the years since the massacre, one of the hardest things for us to accept as bereaved parents has been the deplorable ongoing role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in all this. And the minor, essentially invisible, outrage it has aroused among people we think ought to be seriously enraged. This is not about politics after all but justice.

Ahlam Tamimi, a Jordanian woman who says she was Hamas' first female terrorist and who masterminded the bombing, has publicly confessed - on camera, for the record, multiple times - to the role she played. She has proudly called it "my operation" and has said she has no regrets about what she did.

Describing the shared-taxi ride that got her out of Jerusalem minutes after the explosion, she cheerfully shared the mood:

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... 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: MEMRI]

Her satanic handiwork in fact left behind 16 destroyed lives. Dozens more victims were horribly maimed but survived.

Tamimi, born in Jordan in 1980 to a Jordanian family, lived in Jordan until she started college studies at Birzeit University, near Ramallah in the area today controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Few of our readers will know that Beirzeit's Arabic-language Wikipedia page (archived here in case it, you know, gets lost) names her as one of its notable alumnae along with numerous other terrorists. The more widely-read English-language version cautiously leaves her and the others out.

Tamimi returned to Jordan after Israel conditionally commuted her sentence (to time served) in the extortionate 2011 transaction known as the Shalit Deal in which a sole Israeli hostage was freed by the terrorists of Hamas in exchange for 1,027 imprisoned terrorists ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"]. Tamimi, serving 16 consecutive life sentences, was one of them.

Now married ["22-Jun-12: A wedding and what came before it"], a mother, a celebrity, an honored speaker at public eventts where she shares lecterns with senior figures from Jordan's highest ecehelon, she continues to live there today, free as a bird. It's a dream life.

It should never have turned out that way. A US Federal criminal complaint (roughly the same as an indictment) issued in 2013 but kept secret and under seal until March 2017 ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"] makes her a fugitive from US law.

Not right away but nearly a year later, a substantial State Department reward was announced ["31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice"]. And most significantly there's an unsatisfied US request to its ally, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, to extradite her under their 1995 treaty ["21-Mar-17: Tamimi extradition: When it's claimed that something is illegal in Jordan..."]

Absolutely determined that she should face justice, we have written often and bitterly about Jordan's brazen flaunting of its treaty with the US. It is clear to us and to better-informed commentators (this 2017 journal article from National Security Law Brief is a good example) that Jordan's claims that the 1995 extradition treaty with the US is unconstitutional are baseless.

Jordan in fact asserts the treaty has never had any legal effect since the day it was signed. But in reality, the kingdom has extradited to the US every time it was asked to do so. Right up until the Tamimi case.

Note that neither the Jordanian government nor any of its diplomats, senior politicians or royal family members has claimed Jordan's constitution keeps Tamimi safe from extradition. That role has been taken exclusively by the judges of its Court of Cassation, in effect the kingdom's supreme court. Everyone else in Jordan's power system has stayed silent about Tamimi and extradition. And no reporter, as far as we know, has ever pressed Jordan's authorities to explain.

Parallel to that, there has been a striking absence of public statements on the matter by US government sources. Even as that has continued, we have watched, infuriated and offended, the steady parade of US officials paying visits to Amman and King Abdullah's palace and the frequent return visits by the king and his entourage to the US Congress, to the White House, to the welcoming US media.

All of this with no mention by any of them about how Jordan demeans its treaty with the US.

No US government official has said what we believe ought to have been said over and again: that Jordan disclaiming responsibility for extraditing the confessed bomber and mass murderer of children - and harboring her - is wrong and offensive. That it breaches Jordan's bilateral obligations. That the US, which lavishes financial, military and other support on the Hashemite Kingdom, won't stand for the rank injustice the Jordanians are getting away with.

Nothing. Till now.

What's just happpened? Since 1985, the US Secretary of State had to deliver to Congress (in accordance with Title 22, Section 2656(f) of the United States Code) an annual report on global terrorism and what countries around the world are doing to defeat it. Since 2005 when a name change was made, these have been published as "Country Report on Terrorism". Jordan is always listed.

Last year's report [here] introduces Jordan (at page 138) in the customary way:

Jordan remained a committed partner on counterterrorism and countering violent extremism in 2017. 

Tamimi

Then for the first time it mentions Jordan thwarting the US efforts to extradite Tamimi:

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.

And that's it. Evidently, whoever compiled it had nothing more to say.

To us, this was a disturbingly odd summing up. While it airs Jordan's anti-extradition viewpoint, it says nothing about what the US believes. It cannot be, we said to ourselves, that the US lacks a view about this scandal. That it has nothing at all to say to the Congress. Something's wrong. What are they hiding and why?

The 2018 edition came out yesterday [here].

It adopts essentially identical language to the paragraph above. But then at page 135 it adds this new conclusion:

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.

And there it is.

For the first time, a simple, clear public statement by the US clarifying what we keep asserting: that when Jordan denies it has any obligation to extradite our child's killer, that's wrong. It's also unacceptable to the United States.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi with her Jordanian hosts in Amman
two weeks ago [Image Source]

But here's what happens in the real world.

Two weeks ago ["19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child's killer"], nine members of the US Congress, eight of them Democrats - all of them chairs or senior members of House of Representatives committees - made a flying visit to Amman, Jordan's capital, and the royal palace. There they sat down with the king and his son the crown prince.

The distinguished Congressional travelers' names:

Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, House Armed Services Committee; Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Chairman Bennie Thompson, Homeland Security Committee; Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congressman Ron Kind, House Ways and Means Committee; Congresswoman Susan Davis, House Armed Services Committee; Congressman Stephen Lynch, Chairman, House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security; Congresswoman Elaine Luria, House Armed Services Committee; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

(Strikingly, no one from the House Judiciary Committee took place. That's relevant because of what's in this recent news report: "Parents of US Girl Killed in 2001 Jerusalem Bombing Call for Congressional Investigation Into Fugitive Hamas Terrorist Living Freely in Jordan" [Ben Cohen in Algemeiner, July 17, 2019])

Had we been tipped off in advance about the delegation meeting with King Abdullah, we would have asked them to challenge their host's disregard of a quarter-century-old cornerstone agreement solemnly entered into with the Clinton Administrationn by his revered father, King Hussein. As senior lawmakers, they could have reminded him how annual US aid to Jordan has nearly quadrupled in historical terms over the last 15 years. An authoritative source [Congressional Research Service, April 2019] says roughly $20.4 billion had been given as at the end of Fiscal Year 2017. And a lot more since.

But their visit was unpublicized ahead of time. We had no idea.

On learning about it, we promptly did two things:

• We messaged each of the Congress people and asked them to engage with us. How many people, seeking justice for a murdered loved one, a child, a US citizen who never reached her sixteenth birthday, do these representatives ever hear from? Every one of these elected officials has a well-staffed office, people who are paid to deal with nudniks and the general public. Not one of them has so far responded to us or acknowledged our questions in any way.
• We asked the State Department if delegation members were briefed ahead of their Jordan visit, thinking that since there's so little media coverage of the Tamimi case, they could do with some help. We received a polite response. It says the Congressional delegation did indeed get a briefing before their Jordan visit but declined to say what matters the briefing covered - only that it "included a number of topics related to the bilateral relationship." 

So did the legislators ask King Abdullah II to extradite Tamimi so she can be put on trial for the terrorism charges she faces in Washington? We still don't know. And it's not for lack of trying. But at least we know now this isn't because Jordan is free of the obligation to hand her over. We know the State Department has an actual view on this. That view is the Jordanians surely are obliged and that justice demands it.

Jordan's government tracks what was published in yesterday's Country Report about Jordan and Ahlam Tamimi. We know because it's a front page item in today's Jordan Times, the English-language newspaper said to be controlled by the government (and which blocks us on Twitter):

The US Department of State has hailed Jordan as a “committed partner” in counterterrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE). In its Country Reports on Terrorism 2018, the Department of State commended Jordan’s “leading role” in the global coalition to defeat the Daesh terror group... 

Hailed and commended, yes. As for the State Department report saying the US regards the extradition treaty as valid, that part the authoritative Jordanian daily's editors simply ignore. They just choose not to report it. And for those laboring under the illusion of a free, liberal and fair-minded Hashemite Kingdom, you might want to glance at "20-Jan-18: Shutting down media critics in Jordan isn't quite the challenge it might seem to be". According to Freedom House, Jordan has one of the world's most unfree news industries, media and human rights environments.

Nonetheless, what's just happened amounts in our view to a welcome step in the direction of overdue justice. There haven't been many of those till now. So we're feeling fine with it.

02-Nov-19: Again: Friday night rocket barrages from Gaza

As the Sabbath ends here in Jerusalem, we - like many of the families living around us - go as soon as we can to our Internet devices to see what we didn't hear about during the past 25 hours. And it turns out to have been an especially violent weekend.

Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip fired 10 rockets into Israel in two separate barrages on Friday night, the army said... Warning sirens had gone off in the town of Sderot and in other Israeli communities along the Gaza border as many families were eating Friday night Shabbat dinner... One projectile slammed into a house in the town of Sderot, while the Iron Dome system intercepted eight and the tenth fell in open ground. The army responded several hours later with strikes on several terror targets in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
Palestinian media reported that several airstrikes targeted training sites and outposts affiliated with Hamas and other groups. The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry said three men sustained moderate or serious shrapnel wounds from one of the airstrikes.
In the early hours of Saturday, sirens again sounded in Sderot and the village of Ibim. The IDF later attributed the sirens to “non-rocket fire” from Gaza into Israel.
During the earlier barrage, a 65-year-old woman was lightly hurt when she fell while running toward a shelter, medics said. Five people were treated for anxiety.
The attack was one of the largest in recent months...
The rocket barrages came a day after a rocket fired from Gaza landed in an open field. There were no reports of injuries or damage in Thursday’s attack. ["Rocket fired from Gaza hits home in Sderot as Iron Dome intercepts 8 others", Times of Israel, November 1, 2019]

Deploying the Iron Dome anti-missile system is expensive, as the news media here frequently remind us. As a general matter, the system rapidly informs its operators if a specific Israel-bound attack is on a trajectory likely to cause damage or injury. Then and (usually) only then, the IDF shoots to intercept.

There were eight intercepts on Friday night.

Here's how a crash-landing Gazan rocket, fired off in the general direction of anything Israeli, looks when it strikes your home. The security cam video clip in the Tweet below is from around 9:00 pm Friday night, via an Israeli news program:

תיעוד נוסף ממצלמת אבטחה של פגיעת הרקטה בבית בשדרות @bokeralmog

(צילום: אלברט אבוחצירא) pic.twitter.com/X3GVQDtpvI

— חדשות 13 (@newsisrael13) November 1, 2019

The family living in the house, according to a paramedic quoted by Ynet,

"a couple in their 40s and their children, were in an adjacent building," he said. "They told us that as soon as the sirens sounded, they entered the protected area and left a few minutes later. They were not injured and did not need medical attention."

Spokesthugs for Hamas are quoted tonight [here] saying the Israeli airstrikes that followed shortly after the Gazan rocket barrages are a “dangerous escalation” and that the “Zionist enemy bears responsibility for its consequences and ramifications.”

05-Oct-19: Paying the price of Gazan terror again, two more Gazan Fell Shorts crash into Gaza

Remember our post about Fell Shorts from just a couple of weeks ago? 

In "19-Sep-19 Gazan victims of a cognitive war: Who cares?", we wrote about the almost entirely unreported phenomenon of rockets fired from the rocket-infested, Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip in the general direction of Israel but which fall short, crashing onto the heads of homes of hapless Gazans.

It happened again in the early hours of this morning, Saturday.

Two projectiles fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip on Friday fell short of the border fence, landing inside the Hamas-held territory, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. The launches triggered incoming rocket sirens in the Gaza border community of Kissufim in southern Israel shortly before midnight.
The incident came hours after a Palestinian man was killed during riots along the Gaza-Israel border fence on Friday, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, as thousands took part in weekly protests.
Alaa Hamdan, 28, was shot in the chest by IDF soldiers in a clash near Jabalia in northern Gaza, the ministry’s spokesman said. The IDF had no immediate comment on the death.
Israel’s Channel 12 said the death may have been caused by a Palestinian grenade.
[Times of Israel, October 5, 2019]

Haaretz adds that

A statement from the Eshkol Regional Council on the Gaza border said that although phone apps sent out an alert of a rocket siren in the area, no such siren was activated, and no explosions were heard. The Israel Defense Forces clarified that it identified two launches [from Gaza], which did not cross into Israeli territory. 

Who was injured in Gaza by the Gazan rocket? What damage was caused? We'll likely never know. Media coverage of Gaza from within Gaza is strictly controlled by Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that has ruled it since violently wresting control from Fatah in 2006. Unless the news can inflict harm on Israel, it will never be reported.

19-Sep-19 Gazan victims of a cognitive war: Who cares?

Nurses in a Gaza hospital [Image Source: Aljazeera]

Associated Press reported last night on something that happens often - much more often than even attentive followers of events in the Arab vs Israel conflict know - but that rarely gets reported even though it involves Palestinian Arab victims.

Because they're the victims of extreme Palestinian Arab malevolence, such events and their often lethal consequences go unnoticed.

We have reported on many dozens of them in this blog.We call them Fell Shorts.

Rockets fired from Gaza fall short, wound 7 Palestinians
By Associated Press
September 18 at 2:57 PM
JERUSALEM — Seven Palestinians have been wounded after a rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip exploded near a house inside the coastal enclave. Palestinian eyewitnesses said Wednesday that two of the three rockets struck outside a home in the southern city of Rafah, and a third fell near the fence separating Israel and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said it had identified “a failed launch attempt” from the Gaza Strip, but that no projectiles entered Israel. Gaza’s health ministry said seven people were wounded, but didn’t elaborate on their condition. It wasn’t clear which Palestinian militant group in Gaza was behind the rocket fire.

The AP dateline is Jerusalem. It's worth recalling that almost everything that is reported from the Hamas-occupied Gaza Strip is based on what the Hamas regime chooses to announce. Reporters, to say it mildly, do not operate freely there.

Times of Israel bases its report of the same Fell Shorts on AP. But there are differences and they're also worth noting:

• The rocket barrage from the Gaza Strip was aimed at Israel.
• It points out that Gaza’s health ministry is Hamas-run. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Everything it does and says is meaningfully colored by that reality. The same goes for what it doesn't say.
• It provided some context not found in the AP report: "Rockets have been fired at Israeli cities and communities multiple times this month — with most intercepted by the Iron Dome defense system or landing in open areas — drawing retaliatory Israeli airstrikes."
• But while the AP version doesn't seem to know about the context and those ongoing rocket attacks directed from Gaza against any Israeli communities within firing range, the AP editors choose to inject this sanguine note which their Israeli counterparts wisely did not: "Israel and Hamas reached an informal cease-fire in May, following the worst bout of fighting since a 2014 war between them, which has largely held." Right, except when it hasn't.

What happened in the end to those "wounded" Palestinian Gazan Arabs next to whose home the  Palestinian Arabs rockets crashed? 

Hamas certainly knows. Its ministry of "health" knows too but isn't saying; that's not its job. The unfortunate family itself knows. But since they can only blame the heroes of the anti-Zionist revolution for what was done to them, their voices count literally for nothing in that blighted society. There are many such silenced voices in Gaza.

In blunt terms, without intending to sound offensive or insensitive - when it comes to Palestinian Arab victims of Palestinian Arab terrorist violence, who cares?

25-Aug-19: A rising sense of something awful started settling in

Malki HY"D

Most people know that the truly life-changing things that happen to us come when we least expect them.

This was a hot August Thursday at a busy time for me. I was chief executive of a drug technology company based in one of Jerusalem’s science and technology campuses and we had a lot on our plates, most of it very good.

I went to lunch with the same friends as usual and got back just in time to receive a frantic call from Frimet, my wife. “There’s been a pigua and I can’t reach the children.” I went directly into calm-husband-and-father mode, trying to say what I really believed: “Don’t reach for the worst. Give the kids time to call in and reassure us.”

But the call ended while I was in mid-sentence.

Jerusalem had been free of major terrorist attacks for years at that point and the grim reality of armed guards emplaced outside supermarkets and restaurants had not yet been instituted. But the massacre at Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium had happened in June and the raging terrorism that the more ideological parts of the media repulsively called the Second Intifada had gotten started almost a year before. In the capital, we were living on borrowed time but we didn’t realize it.

Frimet and I phoned back and forth several times over the next two hours. Malki was the fourth of our children, the oldest of our daughters, and at 15 busy, energetic and independent. Her older brothers all checked in by phone during the early afternoon.

As a rising sense of something awful started settling in, I phoned Malki’s cell a couple of times, begging her to call back as soon as she could. I imagine Frimet did the same.

Around 4:00 pm, and although I had a string of meetings and conference calls to deal with, I left my desk to go home. Frimet called me just before that to say she couldn’t bear waiting at home, was going mad from the worry and stress and needed to do something, go somewhere. We have a very disabled youngest child who needs constant care so Frimet leaving the house meant I needed to be there in her place.

I think of myself as religiously observant and believe hashgacha pratit - divine providence at the personal, individual level - is a real thing. I was trying to negotiate private deals with the Almighty as I walked to the bus: Let her phone be broken. Please let her be in an area where there is no reception. Let her be mildly concussed. 

I no longer remember the scenarios. But I was hoping desperately that I could offer something that, if it were only accepted above, would let us off the hook that started to feel more and more real.

There was no relief at home. At first, I was alone with our daughter whose disabilities are extreme and profound. We didn’t know how to communicate with her at that stage in her life. So she was not part of the anxieties; rather she was part of the normalcy.

One by one, the children arrived home and then so did Frimet, accompanied by one of our sons who had started his compulsory military service the previous day and was sent home to help with the emerging crisis. He and Frimet, it turned out, had been at one of Jerusalem’s hospitals looking for whatever there was to look for. But before Frimet left our street to get there, she encountered Avivah, our neighbor. Avivah’s daughter Michal, it turned out, was with our Malki from early that morning. 

The mothers went to the hospital together and then split up to search. Frimet and our son found no sign or word of Malki and came home.

We all, in our separate private nightmares, did our praying and hoping and deal-making in the ensuing hours. As night fell, a neighbor struggled up the stairs, ashen-faced, to tell me at the open door that Michal’s name had just been reported on the news as one of those killed at Sbarro five hours earlier.

The world, already deeply grim, now looked a lot blacker.

Sbarro, Central Jerusalem - August 9, 2001, shortly after 2:00 pm

Another neighbor, at the time a department head at Hadassah Ein Karem hospital who had been working the phones to tap into his network of doctor contacts, walked in and told me to get ready to go with him. “I was told there’s a teenage girl on the operating table. I’ll drive you there.”

It turned out not to be Malki.

But as we stood there in the miyun (emergency room) area, surrounded by people who looked like I felt, a medical colleague of his took in the situation and as he rushed to deal with yet another emergency case, he may have said to my friend: “I don’t know what to tell you” or something else guarded and careful. 

But in the memory of the man I now am, nearly eighteen years later, what I know he actually said is: “Check over there in that cubicle. There’s a girl we’re about to operate on. And another one who’s dead. One might be yours.”

That’s how one of life’s hardest moments is engraved in my memory.

We didn’t find Malki anywhere.

A hospital social worker having what was surely one of her own most challenging days, walked over to me and, under huge stress herself, said without much ceremony: “If you’re looking for a child here and can’t find her, and it’s now nine hours after the bombing, you need to go to Abu Kabir. Now.”

I understood what she meant but demurred. “I will ask one of my sons to go. At this point, it will be better if I go back and stay with my wife at home.” As I left, the social worker calmly did exactly what was needed: arranged for a taxi and a social worker to collect two of my sons and bring them to Israel’s only center for performing autopsies and identifying terror victims. It’s known as Abu Kabir after the Jaffa neighborhood where it is located.

My two older sons phoned from there at two on Friday morning, exactly twelve hours after the Battle of Sbarro Pizzeria started and ended. They had found their sister. I recited the brief and awful prayer that’s said on learning of a death and was aware of my wife starting to scream as she ran out the front door and into the night...

* * *

The above is excerpted from a fine full-length interview of Arnold Roth conducted by Judean Rose (she tweets as @epavard) and published three months ago on the indispensable ElderofZiyon blog as "A Father Speaks Out: The Murder of Malki Roth and the Refusal of Jordan to Extradite the Beast Ahlam Tamimi". We urge you to click over to the link and read the whole piece. Malki's life was taken from us 18 years ago. We continue to seek the extradition to the United States of the attack's Jordanian mastermind, the proud-and-still-free-as-a-bird bomber Ahlam Tamimi.

02-Apr-19: Setting facts, ethics, context aside, Al Jazeera salutes a couple of murderers

Mr and Mrs Tamimi at home in Jordan's capital Amman,
in a video segment embedded in the Al Jazeera homage

In Arabic only (so far), Aljazeera published a paean this past week to a pair of convicted and unrepentant terrorists sentenced by Israel to life-term prison sentences for killing many Israelis.

The two are not merely out of prison but, from what we can tell, live a highly public and comfortable life replete with exposure, celebrity, adulation and valuable political connections that seem to help smooth their way.

Al Jazeera Media Network whose chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani served as a minister in Qatar's government in the eighties and nineties and who is a member of the ruling family of Qatar, the House of Thani, is a formidable communications conglomerate owned by the government of Qatar. It has some 80 bureaux and more than 100,000 employees distributed around the world.

This particular piece was published on the AlJazeera.net site last Thursday and so far has appeared only in Arabic. While the group publishes in multiple languages including English, Turkish, Indonesian, Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, the AlJazeera.net platform is specifically dedicated to Arabic speakers.

Because we think it shines some much-needed light on how Arab-on-Israeli terror is viewed in much of the Arabic-speaking world, we arranged a professional translation. The text appears below. 

A word for those uncomfortable with violence and bloodshed: Rest assured. Though this is all about a couple of unrepentant convicted felons, people who murdered other people and have never expressed regret for their deeds, and while one might expect some unpleasant discussion about killings and deaths - actually there isn't that much. Hardly any.

In fact, what violence there is happens to be about Israelis threatening (they say) and killing other people (they allege). We'll come back to that counter-intuitive aspect at the end.

Political News
Nizar and Ahlam: A couple pursued by “chains” despite their release from occupation imprisonment

March 28, 2019 | Aljazeera.net | From Mahmoud Al-Shar’aan in Amman 

They became engaged in the prisons of Israeli occupation. They were released in the prisoner exchange deal of 2011 known as the “Wafaa’ Al-Ahrar deal” between the Palestinian Resistance Movement (HAMAS) and the occupation. [TOW: In the West, it's better known as the Gilad Shalit Deal]  

Their relationship led to marriage and the establishment of a Palestinian house of “resistance” in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

They are the freed prisoners Nizar Al-Tamimi (45) and his wife Ahlam Al-Tamimi (38) who was born in Jordan. 

The bond of marriage was not the only thing they shared. They were also brought together by the defence of Palestine and the sacrifice they gave towards the struggle through the years they spent in prison.

Nizar, who belongs to the Palestinian Liberation Movement (Fatah) was sentenced to life in prison after he participated in the killing of an Israeli citizen in the nineties of which he served 20 years before he was released. 

Ahlam on the other hand was the first woman to have joined the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. She was sentenced to 16 life sentences after she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem in 2001, of which she served 10 years before she was released.

A new life

Their many years spent in prison have not killed the normal life of these freed prisoners as they both are pursuing their education, each in his own field. 

The husband is preparing for his Masters thesis [sic] in political science with the title “The law of Jewish nationalism and its effect on the reality and future of the Palestinian cause”, while the wife is preparing to study towards her Masters thesis [sic] in Journalism and Media under the title “A theoretical etymology of the concept of prisoner media”.

Nizar tells Aljazeera.net that freedom was like a new birth for them both after having spent many tough years in jail. “We were able to come out of prison strong, and more importantly we are still bearers of the message of truth when it comes to our just cause, and we have begun a new life”.

But the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States.

The last case of these threats came in the words of the American peace process delegate to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, who wrote on his official Twitter account that “Americans must know that Ahlam Al-Tamimi who is a Hamas terrorist convicted of killing 15 people, seven of whom were children killed in cold blood, is living free today”.

Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi and the Hamas leader, Saleh Al Aruri.

Continuous threats

Greenblatt’s threats were not new. They are a part of a long chain of threats received by Ahlam and her husband. It was revealed to Aljazeera.net that Jewish organizations paid to lay cases against them in American courts of law.

Ahlam identifies herself as a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin who is a freedom fighter for a just cause. “I refuse to allow my cause and the cause of my nation to be labelled as terrorism or that the door be opened to some representatives trying to make political gains to pass whatever they want under the cover of their mission”.

The freed prisoner regards her being in Jordan to be a point of strength as there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over. In addition, the Jordanian judicial authorities refused a previous American demand for her to be handed over.

She is asking the Kingdom to protect her from American hegemony and the continuing threats against her, and to solve her crisis with the United States “politically”.

Ahlam does not deny her fears of the financial reward offered by Greenblatt, because the involvement of money in this case might facilitate passing information on her or that the matter might even reach assassination, as she says.

At the same time, her husband is of the view that once a prisoner is released from prison, he remains a target of Israel, and he can therefore never really feel total calm as other prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison, as he says.

A house of resistance

Between four walls, the couple spend time telling stories and reliving the memories of prison life, of Palestine and of comrades in struggle. The best years of their lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars. This however did not prevent them from trying to live normally and defend their rights in a clear message that is not open for discussion, the summary of which says that there is no conceding the entirety of Palestine.

Nizar, the son of Fatah, and Ahlam, the daughter of Hamas, are the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people, in the wake of division which they described as an exception to the rule. They have spent their lives together with many ideas, some of which were conflicting, but they both always agree in the end that there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance and that it is the only way to achieve it.

Source: Aljazeera (Arabic) online here. In case it somehow disappears, we arranged for it to be  archived here.

A few observations.

• The only violence mentioned in this brazen homage is violence they claim is directed at - not by - the Tamimis, a pair of unrepentant murderers. As journalism goes, this is exceedingly shabby. Are there ethical standards in the Al Jazeera media empire? What are they?
• Seriously, is it true as they claim here that "there is no agreement between Amman and Washington that states that wanted people need to be handed over"? No, not really. We explained that here: "14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?" Bottom line: Jordan and the US signed an extradition treaty 24 years ago; the US absolutely considers it still valid and in full effect and Jordan has never complained to its American treaty partners that there is a problem with it. In fact, Jordan has cheerfully handed over Jordanian felons to the US at the request of the US. But it refuses to hand over Ahlam Tamimi. It justifies this on the contentious footing that there is now a Jordanian constitutional law issue to consider. They don't say, but we think they should, that Tamimi is different from the others already extradited because she killed Israelis. Note that none of this seems to be known to the Al Jazeera editors and their reporter. Or perhaps they simply have no interest in conveying what they know to their news consumers. So it's either shameful pretense or it's professional incompetence.
• The reporter claims that "the lives of the couple were thrown into disarray after they received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States." This is pure invention. Ahlam Tamimi is wanted on US Federal charges that were unsealed in Washington on March 14, 2017 (see the previous para). There are no charges pending against her husband, but it adds an element of extra drama to the story. A great pity, seriously, that it's bunk.
• Did Ahlam Tamimi hurt anyone? Hard to know from this piece of shameless advocacy and terror promotion. All that the Al Jazeera journalist and his editors want their Arabic-language readers to know is that this Jordanian woman was locked away for a tremendously long prison term because "she participated in a martyrdom operation against the occupation of Jerusalem". Is it even worth mentioning that 16 people were murdered in that "operation"? That Tamimi picked the spot because it attracted so many children and brought the bomb to it at the busiest time of the day? That this savage boasts openly and happily about it in front of cameras and live audiences? That the panel of judges who sentenced her recommended that Israel never consider letting her out under any circumstances or deals? And that they were ignored when the Shalit Deal was done? We guess not.
• Did she reveal that she's now pursuing a masters degree in journalism and media? We think (and we're checking so that we can be sure) that only a couple of Jordanian institutions offer such programs. One happens to be a school about which we have written in the past, and which has an extremely shabby connection to Tamimi herself: See "By their role models shall ye know them" [Times of Israel, December 2014]. 
• The Tamimis claim to have "received messages threatening to pursue them and to lay cases against them in the United States". Other than as another invented dramatic device, this notion of threats doesn't make much sense. The reporter could have mentioned that the US Department of Justice unveiled those serious criminal charges against Ahlam Tamimi more than two years ago ["14-Mar-17: Sbarro massacre mastermind is now formally charged and extradition is sought"]. He could have pointed out she was arrested in Jordan by Jordanian police on the basis of an Interpol Red Notice in September 2016 (with absolutely no publicity), but he doesn't. She was released the following morning but that says more about Jordan and its legal and power system than about the criminality of Ahlam Tamimi. Maybe he doesn't know. Maybe he already forgot. Maybe this isn't really about facts and news but about fantasies and delusions of Tamimi victimhood. But how is this journalism?
• The reporter and his editors are under the mistaken impression that Trump envoy Jason "Greenblatt announced a reward of the equivalent of 5 million dollars to anyone who can provide information on Ahlam Al-Tamimi". No, he didn't. The reward, which certainly does exist, was issued more than a year before Greenblatt mentioned it in his Tweet. And it doesn't come from Greenblatt but from a unit of the US State Department called Rewards for Justice. The year-and-a-half-old details for the Al Jazeera news-hounds are here (you're welcome): "31-Jan-18: There's now a $5 million reward for bringing the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi to justice". Can we now expect a correction? Or do Al Jazeera's people claim ownership of their own version of reality?
• It's quite moving to read that "The best years of [the Tamimi couple's] lives were taken from them by Israeli courts and prison bars". Taken from them? Why? But it's chilling that the editors of this Al Jazeera group outlet manage to tell the story of two unusually cruel murderers without even a passing reference to the many lives they extinguished by their acts of depraved savagery. They give the impression that they identify with the killers and the killings. Is this fair of us? But if we're right (of course we are), do their pay-masters in the government of Qatar know this? Perhaps they will now. Perhaps they will even want to know about the life and lost "best years" of our desperately missed daughter Malki who was 15 when Ahlam Tamimi delivered her exploding guitar case on the back of her human bomb to Sbarro. (Full disclosure: Malki was not the only person murdered there that day. It was a massacre. In a pizzeria. Children were the target; they ended up being more than half the casualties. Tamimi's sickening, satanic plan worked. She hasn't stopped smiling and boasting about it.)  
• When Al Jazeera quotes Nizar Tamimi asserting that "other [Palestinian Arab] prisoners have been killed after they were released from prison", did they check? Can they bring cases? As a news agency, did they think of listing the names of the many mass murderers [some named here along with their crimes] who walked free in that catastrophic transaction? Did they think of referring to the Israelis murdered after the Shalit Deal [some of them named here] by unrepentant terrorists who were let loose?
• The Al Jazeera editors, aware of the endless enmity among the Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad factions, must have seen the almost humorous irony in their reporter claiming the Tamimis as "the embodiment of the reality of a unified Palestinian people". Unified? They must have already decided this scurrilous piece of reporting-as-incitement needed to serve a higher purpose than the objective reporting of news. So what the heck - go for broke. 
• Will the major news organizations and global content aggregators who partner with Al Jazeera (like Google, Bloomberg, TechLive, Snapchat) be interested to know how the party they're consorting with acts as an active and effective promoter of terrorism that publishes sentiments like Ahlam Tamimi's "there is no way to liberate Palestine except through resistance"? Probably not. The rest of us surely should.

This reward poster in Arabic was issued by the US State
Department in January 2018 but has never been physically
posted anywhere in Jordan or the Arab world.

In the interests of seeming balanced, and having regard for the monumental media footprint the Al Jazeera empire has managed to create, here's what the public relations professionals working at Al Jazeera said about their employer a year ago:

We, at Al Jazeera, renew our commitment to global audiences with news coverage and programs which provide in depth analysis of news and current affairs. We will continue celebrating the achievements brought by our diversity of staff who hail from almost 100 different countries. It is this diversity of values and cultures that enriches our work and provides our audiences with the award-winning content on all our platform. We urge democratic forces all over the world, especially in United States, to stand with free media institutions to promote and protect the values of democracy, liberty, human rights, freedom of media and the right to free speech. Don’t shoot the messenger, journalism is not a crime.

Maybe they don't mean their Arabic output. And when the subject is this thing they call "resistance", perhaps different rules apply.

UPDATE Monday April 2, 2019 at 7:00 pm: The Al Jazeera piece includes a substantial video interview which is of course not in English. We have just been told by friends (thank you, friends!) that MEMRI has posted a translation. Please go and read, watch and share - it's here.

04-Mar-19: Pre-dawn vehicle ramming attack on Israelis north of Ramallah

There has been yet another vehicle-ramming attack on Israelis this morning (Monday). According to a breaking Times of Israel report [here], a vehicle in which three persons were traveling was the weapon by which an attack was launched on Israeli security personnel before dawn today near an Arab village it names as N'ima.

Two injured Israelis were evacuated from the scene by helicopter and ambulance for emergency medical care at, we believe, Tel Hashomer Medical Center. One is said to be an IDF soldier whom it describes as being seriously inured. A member of the Border Guard (Mishmar Hagvul in Hebrew) is said to be lightly hurt.

Two of the attack-vehicle's three occupants are said to have been killing and a third wounded. The report quotes an IDF statement “from an initial investigation it appears to be a (terror) attack.”

A Hebrew-language social media report says the overnight attack at about 3:30 this morning in the Binyamin region was at Talmon/Dolev Junction which is about half way between the Israeli community of Dolev and an Arab village (of some 3,500 people) called Kafr Ni'ma (ניעמה) located about 13 km north-west of Ramallah. The less-injured service member is reported by first responders to be about 19. The more seriously-injured soldier is said, in an IDF statement [here], to be an officer. Haaretz says he's in his early twenties and in critical condition after being run-over. No names yet.

A Ynet report adds:

"The troops had stopped their vehicle at the roadside at night—Israeli media reported it had broken down—and were deliberately struck, the military said."

From the Palestinian Arab side, an Arabic language tweet at about 9:00 am Monday from the SAFA Palestinian Press Agency [here] quotes the PA's Ministry of Health about what it calls

"the martyrdom of two citizens and the wounding of a third after the occupation shot them near the village of Kafr Nehmeh west of the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, and no information until the moment about the identity of the martyrs and the injured."

("Occupied" Ramallah is where the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority has its capital. Fatah and Hamas are deadly rivals. SAFA, based in the Gaza Strip, used to operate a Facebook page but this was shut down by Facebook about a year ago.)

14-Feb-19: A prince, a princess, four Tamimis - and murderous violence

Image Source | February 6, 2019: Jordan Media Institute in Amman
Ahed Tamimi is the speaker. Princess Rym Ali,
the JMI's founder, is seated in the front row

Ahed Tamimi, a young Palestinian Arab woman from Nabi Saleh, a hamlet a few kilometers from our Jerusalem home ["17-Mar-13: A little village in the hills, and the monsters it spawns"] has been busy traveling and speaking to attentive crowds these past few months.

Ahed Tamimi

Just before she started an eight month sentence in an Israeli prison a year ago, the result of a plea bargain her handlers made with the authorities, we noted here ["24-Dec-17: Nabi Saleh, the media and a Tamimi child's journey"] that she is

the young woman many call Shirley Temper, a photogenic performer who for at least eight years now has been the central figure in a long-running propaganda performance orchestrated by her father Bassem Tamimi and his publicity business, Tamimi Press.

Bassem Tamimi, Ahed's manager/father and long-time producer/director, asserted some months back ["Palestinian Ahed Tamimi 'banned from travelling abroad'"] that Israel was in some unspecified manner standing in the way of the post-prison globetrotting/meet-and-greets he had in mind for her.

Somehow overcoming the Israeli opposition (if indeed it existed), the young woman, frequently referred to via overblown noms-de-guerre ("Palestine's Joan of Arc", "Ahed Tamimi, Palestinian protest icon", "I know I am a symbol of Palestinian resistance"), managed to pull-off a run of well-publicized visits to Spain, France, Tunisia, Greece and Jordan in September and October 2018. She also became the subject of a photo spread in the October 2018 Arabic version of Vogue magazine along the way.

She's been busy. And the drum-beating and orchestrating have paid dividends.

After years of wildly zig-zagging media estimates of her age [outlined here: "28-Dec-17: So how old is the Tamimi girl?"], there's little doubt she's now come of age and is an adult for all legal purposes (her 18th birthday was two weeks ago). This may become relevant if she repeats or enlarges on calls for more Arab-on-Israeli thuggery like those she made in front of her mother's Tamimi Press video camera ["04-Feb-18: The embarrassing violence of Ahed Tamimi and its fig-leafers"] a year ago. Mother took care to have the video very widely distributed. But surprisingly (alright, not so surprisingly as this excellent Forward piece by Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll points out), the fact that not-quite-adult Ahed Tamimi quite plainly called for real, physical violence has somehow become a point of controversy and doubt.

It shouldn't have. She did it and it's on the record.

Notwithstanding, she's turned up again in Jordan where she gave a speech a few days ago, asserting in some little publicized comments

that the Palestinian people’s struggle is to obtain their freedom, and not to gain the world’s sympathy or compassion. During a meeting with the Jordan Media Institute’s (JMI) students, in the presence of JMI founder HRH Princess Rym, Tamimi added that she works to convey a message for the need to support Palestinian prisoners in their struggle for freedom and national unity. She also explained that she was subjected to various psychological and physical pressures both during the 16 days of investigations, and after being transferred to prison. She said she underwent deprivation of sleep and food, as well as threats to arrest or kill her relatives... ["Ahed Tamimi addresses students at Jordan Media Institute", Jordan Times, February 6, 2019]

There's similar coverage in Jordan's Arabic media here and here as well as on the website of her hosts, the Jordan Media Institute. About that last entity, we have some experience (keep reading).

The Nabi Saleh Tamimis

The JMI's English language report mentions only in passing Nariman Tamimi, Bassem's wife and Ahed's mother, who was in attendance. The Arabic language version (but not the English) adds this somewhat repulsive piece of Tamimi self-promotion:

As for the anti-public campaign against Ahed, her mother Nariman al-Tamimi pointed out that the great support for Ahed came because of the spread of the video [Nariman's video] slapping the Israeli soldier and Ahed Tamimi's ability to resist in spite of all circumstances... adding that her constant contact with media professionals over the past ten years to contribute to the promotion of justice in the Palestinian cause has helped increase support for Ahed... [Jordan Media Institute - Arabic language report of the Tamimi event on their premises, February 6, 2019]

Think about that. The mother seems to be boasting about the fact (and it is a fact) that she and husband Bassem Tamimi began grooming their daughter to be a fist-thrusting, slogan-spouting, angry-on-demand shrieking street activist and provocateur from when the child, already blonde and still somewhat Western looking, was a very vulnerable 8 years old.

In most places, this would be justifiably viewed as child abuse and the parents as derelict and likely culpable criminally. Noot, of course, in those netherworlds ruled by the appalling Palestinian Authority and the no-less-horrific Hamas.

But Nariman Tamimi's ethics descend to greater depths. She has no qualms, for instance, supporting the murderous violence of her cousin, the bomber Ahlam Tamimi. Quote the opposite. In her own words

...What she [Ahlam Tamimi, the smiling mass-murderer of Jewish children] did was an integral part of the struggle. Everyone fights in the manner in which he believes. There is armed uprising, and there is popular uprising. I support every form of uprising... ["11-Sep-15: How devoted to non-violence are the villagers of Nabi Saleh really?"]

The Sbarro massacre mastermind

Ahlam Tamimi returned the favour a year ago ["05-Jan-18: In Jordan, the FBI fugitive Ahlam Tamimi pays tribute to her slapping/taunting/kicking Tamimi cousin"].

Standing before a Jordanian audience, flanked by Jordanian dignitaries including a former Jordanian prime minister, she praised Nariman's daughter Ahed Tamimi who had been detained by Israeli authorities (as was Nariman) some days before. Both were facing charges and an Israeli prison sentence. Somewhat vaguely (based on the reports we saw), Ahlam Tamimi congratulated Ahed Tamimi for "breathing new life" into the cause of female prisoners and children prisoners.

We remarked on how disturbing it was to see

...very prominent Jordanians, members of the country's political elite, [who] have no problem sharing a public platform with a confessed killer of Israeli children who is also an FBI fugitive and the subject of American efforts to have her extradited to the US to face serious federal charges. Can you imagine this happening anywhere else? She's a wanted criminal but not in Jordan where she's a hero. [Source]

Most readers of this blog know Ahlam Tamimi ["17-Nov-11: A monster walks the streets and she has many accomplices"] confesses repeatedly, publicly and with evident pride to being the mastermind of the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre where 16 innocent Jews, among them our daughter Malki, were killed. Ahlam Tamimi was serving a prison sentence of 16 consecutive life terms right up until the catastrophic Shalit Deal that Israel transacted with Hamas in 2011.

That's when she was freed and returned to the land of her birth, the place where most of her family lives and where she was raised.

We have written hundreds of blog posts and op eds about Ahlam Tamimi, born in Jordan and living there today, not in hiding but out in the open.

She has become a genuine celebrity ["24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers"] who speaks often in public forums and on Jordan's media. But (or perhaps and) she is a fugitive from the FBI, charged by the US Department of Justice with Federal crimes and with a State Department $5 million reward for her capture and conviction.

She is the subject of an extradition request which the Jordanian government, for narrow and technical reasons, has rejected ["20-Mar-17: The Hashemite Kingdom's courts have spoken: The murdering FBI fugitive will not be handed over"]. The US and Jordan have a valid extradition treaty that has been in effect between the two countries since 1995. Several Jordanian felons were extradited to the US before the Tamimi case.

It's interesting to us that of all the possible Jordanian venue options, Ahed Tamimi was a guest last week at the Jordan Media Institute.

It's also striking that Princess Rym Ali, the JMI's founder and a former CNN on-camera reporter before she married into the Hashemite royal family, was present to hear her speak, seated in the front row (see the photo above).

This brought to mind how the princess' husband, Prince Ali bin Hussein who is the half brother of Jordan's current ruler, posted a Tweet emotionally urging support for... Ahed Tamimi in December 2017 just before she went to prison. (Posted here; archived here.)

To us, this seems odd. Ahed is no Jordanian. And most other Jordanian royals seem to have wisely taken care not to get entangled with the outstandingly problematic Tamimi clan. Perhaps some enterprising journalist will take the trouble to look into what about the Nabi Saleh Tamimis' violent bigotry that so attracts this royal attention.

Jordan Media Institute

At this point, allow us to mention that we have had seriously disturbing experiences with the JMI and the unique interplay of professional aspiration and tolerance for extreme violence that we believe the school represents.

We're referring to how we discovered four years ago, and then did our best to publicize, that the very privileged students of this prestigious and hugely-needed institution had publicly declared Ahlam Tamimi - the boastful Hamas agent who set out to kill as many Jewish children as possible and succeeded - as their "success model". 

We ended up persuading several of the school's international funders, including a number of governments, to terminate their support. But we never succeeded in (a) getting the school's management to respond to us other than rude and pointless response from a manager there, or (b) to be open about what we had reported. Their preference was to engage in a rather shabby and pathetic cover-up.

We wrote about this in the posts below:

• 10-Dec-14: In the Arab world's most promising new journalism school, a passion for murder and hatred
• 11-Dec-14: Is it newsworthy when journalists make a terror-addicted murdering colleague their role-model?
• 16-Jan-15: Incubating terror-minded journalists in Jordan but they have an answer to the criticisms
• 19-Jan-15: The dilemmas of funding and enabling terror

What happened at the Jordan Media Institute and the scandalous way it was hushed up by management ought to be factored into people's thinking when they wonder about the state of democracy, human rights and terrorism in the Arab world.

The terrors of Arab journalism

Given the strange role played by an ambitious school like JMI, this seems a good time to be thinking about how very badly journalism serves the Palestinian Arabs (the vast majority of Jordanians self-identify as Palestinian Arabs). And the difficulties their reporters and their editors encounter under the thumb of the powers that be.

Screen capture from the Gatehouse site

A typically incisive article today by Khaled Abu Toameh for the Gatestone Institute gives some exposure to the plight of a young woman working as a reporter in the Hamas-afflicted Gaza Strip:

Hajer Harb... is currently standing trial before a court in the Gaza Strip for exposing corruption in Hamas-run ministries and institutions. Harb, a cancer survivor, has been repeatedly summoned for interrogation by Hamas security forces for her role in reporting on corruption in medical and housing institutions... She is accused of "failing to display objectivity, fairness and accuracy" in her reporting... Instead of interrogating and prosecuting the corrupt officials whose identities were mentioned in her reporting, Harb is the one who is now standing trial for telling the truth. Her lawyer, Baker al-Turkumani, described the charges against her as "flimsy." The charges, he said, are an "assault on the freedom of the media and expression, which are protected by the law. The law and justice are the journalist's weapon against corruption. The law cannot be used to limit the work of a journalist or freedom of expression." ["Palestinians: "Journalism" Hamas Style", Gatestone Institute website, February 14, 2019]

Abu Toameh unpacks the Hamas charges against the reporter and calls them disingenuous and laughable:

It is disingenuous because it is coming from Hamas -- a group for whom the terms objectivity and accuracy are wholly inimical. It is laughable because it allows Hamas to set the standards for objectivity and accuracy... For Hamas, objectivity in the media means that journalists shut their mouths about their leaders and government officials. For Hamas, "accuracy" means that a journalist working in the Gaza Strip will show Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the worst possible light -- regardless of the facts.

He's no less blunt about Hamas' rivals, the Abbas-controlled Fatah/PA:

Since the beginning of this year, the Palestinian Authority security forces have arrested 10 Palestinian journalists in the West Bank for their "negative" reporting and alleged criticism of Abbas and other senior Palestinian figures... The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate regularly chooses totally to ignore the plight of the journalists arrested by the Palestinian Authority security forces. The only evils the Syndicate sees are those that can be linked to Hamas or Israel. That is because its heads and senior staff are affiliated with Abbas's Fatah faction... Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, with the help of its associates in the syndicate, is apparently seeking to control the news and narrative to make sure that journalists direct their criticism only against Israel. Like Hamas, the Palestinian Authority has been relatively successful in its effort to limit the flow of information from areas under its control. A Palestinian journalist living in Ramallah will think at least a dozen times before he or she writes or says a word that could rile Abbas or one of his senior officials.

Ahlam Tamimi boasting about her life as a Hamas terrorist
[Image Source: Video capture from Kuwaiti TV]

A great shame that all those 'activists' agitating for 'Free Palestine', for BDS and for "Palestinian rights" don't direct their energies, criticisms and fury at the two ham-fisted Palestinian Arab regimes that bear almost all the responsibility for what's wrong with the lives of the people living under their boots.

And also for the extreme violence that many people think about when the word "Palestinian" enters the discussion. (Ahlam Tamimi, our child's murderer, boasts that she was a journalist at the time of the massacre, and is still called one today.)

Also a great shame that the Ahed Tamimi phenomenon continues to get so much unjustified backing in parts of the Arab world where a little more inward-focused retrospection would do so much more for the problems that beset their lives.

And ours too.

UPDATE February 15, 2019

We just came across the Jordan Media Institute's two tweets of last week's Ahed Tamimi event currently here and here and here with a half-hour video of Joan-of-Arc's customary flat/monotone speech (and archived here and here and here in case... you know).

(There don't seem to be any English-language tweets of the momentous occasion, indicating - who knows - that they don't want their foreign supporters seeing this, but perhaps we just missed them.)

The JMI photos make apparent that Nariman Tamimi, mother of Ahed, cousin and outspoken fan of Ahlam Tamimi and her hideous deeds, is seated at the head table.

Also apparent: (a) that Jordanian journalism's best and brightest don't at all mind being associated with the terror-loving Tamimi clan's messaging - which if you pause to think about it is staggering; (b) the scandal of 2015 which cost the school some substantial foreign funding is dead and forgotten; (c) the illustrious Jordan Media Institute is mighty proud that the Tamimis allowed them to give a platform to Ahed.