17-Oct-19: At dawn today, a thwarted Arab-on-Israeli vehicle-ramming-and-knifing attack

The attack vehicle driven by a 20 year old
Palestinian Arab [Image Source]

In another Arab-on-Israel vehicle ramming attack around dawn this morning (Thursday) on the outskirts of Ramallah, a vehicle driven by a Palestinian Arab drove directly at police officers in an attempt to run them over. Haaretz says the officers were in plain clothes and their car was unmarked.

The resulting impact significantly damaged the police vehicle. The attack car was too (see right).

The officers realized almost immediately that their attacker was clutching what a news report ["Palestinian attempts ramming attack against Border Police", Jerusalem Post, October 17, 2019] calls "a suspicious object". This turned out to be knife.

Israelis have visceral reactions these days to rampaging Arabs with knives in their hands. They promptly directed live fire at their attacker who, we now know, is a resident of eastern Jerusalem said to be twenty years old.

His injuries are currently being tended to in Jerusalem's Shaarei Zedek Medical Center hospital. He is reportedly alive and in serious condition.

Al-Amari, called a refugee camp for the past seventy years [Image Source]

Rioting ensued soon after the attack, with rocks and Molotov cocktails (firebombs) being hurled at Israeli security officials, who "responded with riot control measures" in the words of the Jerusalem Post report.

The violence took place in the al-Amari "refugee camp" which is today under full Palestinian Authority control. It houses about 5,000 Palestinian Arabs and has existed since 1949.

The Arab version of what happened according to the alquds.com Arabic-language news site includes a car and a shooting. But no ramming and no knife:

An eyewitness said the driver of the vehicle was surprised by the presence of army patrols which led to a collision with one of the military jeeps. The soldiers fired three shots at the driver who was seriously injured and was taken by ambulance while the soldiers arrested a second young man beside him after forcing him to undress and undergo a search.

Ronen Lubarsky, 20, a soldier in the elite IDF Duvdevan Unit, was struck on the head during an operation to arrest suspected terrorists in the same al-Amari neighborhood on May 24, 2018 [Times of Israel, May 28, 2018]. A heavy slab of granite hurled from a third-story rooftop struck the young soldier who was hospitalized in critical condition at Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem’s intensive care unit. He died some days later. A Palestinian Arab, Islam Yusef Abu Hamid, was subsequently charged with his death and convicted in April 2019.

27-Sep-19: Weaponized Palestinian Arab children and more Arab-on-Israel stabbings

Image Source

From Israel National News, an on-duty Israel Police officer was stabbed in Jerusalem's Old City Thursday afternoon.

The attack on the woman is being treated as a terror attack. Her injuries were relatively mild (for a stabbing); she was brought to Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center for treatment.

The knifer was apprehended after being wrestled to the ground (not shot, not beaten to a pulp) and taken into custody by other officers at the scene. Israel's Channel 13 News shows a video clip [here] and says the attacker is a Palestinian Arab boy of thirteen.

Thirteen. Yet another weaponized child. A life incomprehensibly cheapened, and in danger of being wasted before it gets underway.

Referring to this child assailant, Times of Israel says he approached a cluster of officers at the Temple Mount’s Chain Gate (in Hebrew: Sha'ar Hashalshelet), above the Western Wall area, around 4:00 pm. He pulled out a knife and in the customary way attempted to stab anyone he could, indiscriminately. Any Jew would do.

We expect he will now become another poster child for the irresponsible human rights industry's pleas for Israel to stop arresting children. Listening, Amnesty?

A day earlier, Wednesday, an Israeli woman of about twenty was stabbed in another act of Arab-on-Israel terrorism near the busy Maccabim/Shilat Junction on Route 443. That's the major highway that runs between Jerusalem and the airport.

The website of i24News reports that the woman was standing at a bus stop which is adjacent to the main entrance to the city of Modi’in. For what it's worth, the bus stop is inside the Green Line which is frequently - and totally misleadingly - called the 1967 border. (It's simply the 1949 armistice line, nothing more.) The Arabb news reports we have seen tell their readers that this was an attack on settlers in some occupied place. It's a powerful form of incitement, too good to skip by troubling themselves with checking the actual facts.

The Israeli victim received emergency medical treatment at the scene and was brought to Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Tel Aviv. Her condition was described as light to moderate in a Magen David Adom bulletin.

We found this security camera footage on an Arab news site (the contents almost certainly originated with an Israeli source):



A 14-year-old Palestinian Arab male was taken into custody at the scene. Yes, 14. Yet another weaponized child. Who says the Palestinian Arab education system produces nothing notable?

Child weaponization by the Palestinian Arab despots of their people's children is a subject that enrages us. That's one reason why we address it so frequently. Click here for some our prior posts on this deplorable and ongoing phenomenon.

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Zamienione w broń palestyńskie dzieci") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

UPDATE Thursday October 10, 2019: The stabber in the video above, the attack near Modi'in, turns out to be all of fifteen. Times of Israel reports today

15-year-old Palestinian indicted for stabbing Israeli woman near Modiin
Teen charged with terror offenses for attack at Maccabim Junction on Route 443 last month
October 10, 2019 at 2:18 pm | Prosecutors on Thursday indicted a 15-year-old on terror charges for stabbing an Israeli woman near the central city of Modiin last month. According to the indictment, the teenage boy is accused of carrying out a terror attack, illegal possession of a knife and entering Israel illegally. The prosecution has requested that the suspect be detained until the end of legal proceedings. The 22-year-old woman was stabbed on September 25 at the Maccabim Junction along Route 443. She was treated in a hospital for a stab wound to her upper body. Police said a Border Police officer was also lightly hurt while restraining the suspect. According to police, Border Police officers driving on Route 443 spotted the suspect trying to flee and chased after him on foot. The officers fired a number of bullets in the air, and collared the suspect a few hundred meters from the scene of the stabbing.

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.

16-Aug-19: Children with knives and another Arab-on-Israeli stabbing frenzy

Photo montage from an online source [here] shows the stabbers

as depicted today in the social media and via security cam footage

In the latest such attack, two Palestinian Arab children armed with knives ["Cop injured in Jerusalem stabbing attack; 2 assailants shot", Times of Israel, August 15, 2019] were stopped from killing their Israeli targets on Thursday.

Both are minors. At least one is 14 years old. Some reports, but not all, say the other is too.

Two teenage assailants stabbed a police officer, moderately injuring him, in an apparent terror attack in Jerusalem’s Old City on Thursday, officials said. The assailants were shot by security forces at the scene. One of them was pronounced dead at the scene, the second was critically wounded and taken to the hospital, a police spokesperson said.
Graphic video footage from the scene showed the two teenagers walk up from behind a group of police officers stationed in the Old City. As they approached, they suddenly pulled out knives and began repeatedly stabbing one of the cops. Other officers at the scene opened fire at the pair as they were stabbing the victim.
The injured police officer was approximately 40 years old. He sustained multiple stab wounds to the upper body, medics said.
“We gave him medical care, including stopping the bleeding and bandaging him, and we took him to the hospital,” one of the medics on the scene said. The officer was taken to Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

Via social media [click to view], there's high quality graphic security cam video of the actual attack and of the quick and focused response by the Israeli security personnel.

The location is said to be the Old City's Chain Gate. It's one of the dozen open gates (though sometimes closed) that lead to the Temple Mount and is limited, in accordance with current Israeli security measures, to Muslim worshipers and visitors only. In Arabic, they call it Kubat A Silsila.

Shortly after the attack [Image Source]

Haaretz names the 14 year old knifer as Hamuda Khader a-Sheikh who is being treated for his wounds, and a 17 year old (in their version) they name as Nassim Abu Rumi who is said to have died at the scene. (In its report, Ynet says the dead attacker was also fourteen.)

Both evidently, though not confirmed, are from Al-Azaria, a village on the slopes of Jerusalem's Mount of Olives. It's better known to some as the Biblical town of Bethany, the home of Lazarus (hence its Arabic name).

Arab reports include wide-ranging claims that deny and distort:

• Eyewitnesses refuted the IDF's allegations and confirmed that there was no stabbing. They explained that a settler tried to storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and when the guards tried to stop him, he opened fire on the guard's foot... [Sabaharabi, Egypt]
• The police opened fire on two citizens at the Gate of Chains [in the Old City] from the outside, then announced the martyrdom of one of them. The injury of the other is described as medium. An Al Aqsa guard was shot in the foot. [Arabic edition of Ma'an News, Bethlehem]
• The Zionist media reported that a cop was injured by two Palestinian stabbers who attacked him in occupied Al-Quds (Jerusalem). The Israeli occupation troops shot directly at the two youths, injuring both of them, and closes the gates of Al-Aqsa Mosque, according to Palestinian sources. [Al-Manar, Lebanon]
• Video shows the pair approaching a group of Border Police officers and then lunging at them. The officers immediately open fire on the boys, and do not appear to attempt to subdue them with nonlethal means [from the especially loathsome propaganda mill of Electronic Intifada].
• From a Gaza-based Arab reporter: "2 palestinian kids got murdered by israeli occupation fire in occupied Jerusalem after allegedly stabbing operation #BDS" [Twitter account with more than 6,000 followers]

Source

How Palestinian Arab society weaponizes its children and encourages stabbing attacks in particular has troubled us for years. 

It's a chronic form of incitement that starts at the highest levels of the Palestinian Arab power structure: click for indexed articles.

Three years ago we wrote about how there is no way of avoiding the reality of large swathes of Palestinian Arab society being in the obvious thrall of a passionate embrace of vicious bigotry, murderous savagery and explicit incitement of their own children and grandchildren to murder and to be killed.

Two outside actors deserve a special mention in this grotesquerie:

• The central role of UNRWA, ostensibly an agency that exists to ameliorate the suffering of Arab refugees (Palestinian Arab refugees to be more precise) but in reality a cornerstone of the seven-decades-long Arab strategy to keep the Palestinian Arabs displaced, as miserable as possible and in the news - ought to be acknowledged at this point. By their own reckoning, they play a huge role in the education of Palestinian Arab children. They are certainly part of the problem and not of the solution.
• Amnesty International's increasingly explicit identification with the practitioners of the Palestinian Arab brand of terror makes plain their abandonment of principle and betrayal of their supporters' values. As we have noted several times [most recently here: "20-Sep-16: Another Pal Arab boy with a knife died today - exactly as the PA intended him to"], there's no longer anything to expect from them.

More than 80 of our blog posts have the tag "Weaponizing Children". This would be an excellent time to re-acquaint ourselves with the betrayal of, and the outrages perpetrated on, the children of Palestinian Arab society by those responsible for their well-being.

It's a reality that's difficult to deny or ignore though plenty of reporters and their editors nonetheless do just that.

11-Aug-19: What money can do: The Sbarro terrorists and the children of Ramot

Basing herself on the fine investigative work done routinely by Itamar Marcus and his colleagues at Palestinian Media Watch, Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman reported in the Jerusalem Post on the role played by money in the lives of the terrorists who destroyed Jerusalem's Sbarro Pizzeria exactly eighteen years earlier.

Here's how it starts:

Eighteen years ago, on August 9, female terrorist Ahlam Tamimi smuggled a bomb in a guitar case into Jerusalem and led a suicide bomber to the crowded Sbarro pizza shop in Jerusalem’s city center.

Suicide terrorist Izz Al-Din Al-Masri ate a slice of pizza and then blew himself up, murdering 15 people, seven of them children, and wounding close to 130 others.

“I have no regrets,” Tamimi told Channel 1 TV in an interview that was recently rebroadcast on Palestinian Authority TV. “No Palestinian prisoner regrets what he or she has done.”

Since that fateful day, in which two Americans – Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum – were among the murdered, the PA has paid the seven terrorists who helped orchestrate the attack as well as Al-Masri’s family $910,823 (3.2 million shekels), according to a report released Thursday by Palestinian Media Watch.

These payments include monthly salaries paid to the terrorists in prison; payments to the family of the dead terrorist; and payments to the terrorists, like Tamimi, who were released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal, brokered between the Israeli government and Hamas...

The report concludes with some observations about the catastrophic policies of the Mahmoud Abbas regime:

“The Palestinian Authority glorifies all its terrorists, including child murderers and suicide bombers, as heroes,” explained Maurice Hirsch, PMW’s head of legal strategies in a related release. “In addition to granting the terrorist prisoners a monthly salary, the 2004 PA Law of Prisoners and Released Prisoners prohibits the PA from signing any peace agreement that does not include the release of all the Palestinian terrorists, including the child-murderers who carried out this attack.”

In 2018, the PA admitted to spending $134 million in salary payments to terrorists. Currently, every terrorist salary starts at a minimum of NIS 1,400 per month and can reach as much as NIS 12,000 month after 30 years.

J-Wire, an online Australian Jewish news service, gave Arnold Roth the opportunity on Friday to respond and published his comments here today:

In the park down the street from where we live in Jerusalem, the local teens are putting final touches today to the annual charity bazaar held every year the day after Tisha B'Av. The bazaar exemplifies how Israel and its children deal with the bitter experience of ultra-violent hatred like that which blew up the Sbarro pizzeria 18 years ago today and obliterated so many futures. My daughter Malki's life ended there that day.

How we manage and use resources says a lot about society. Money, spent wisely, would make Palestinian Arab lives better, improving their prospects in life, their health and education.

The chronically insolvent Mahmoud Abbas regime that lives from foreign aid chooses loudly, aggressively and without shame to devote a massive share of its budget to honoring the killers of children and to nurturing yet more of them. Tragically, this is one of the few ways the inept Palestinian Authority manages to change its hapless subjects' destiny.

The children on our street raise substantial funds each year from a fine event that remembers Malki and her dearest friend Michal Raziel. Their values symbolize and honour Israel and the Jewish people's efforts to create better futures - tikun olam. It's not an outlook our Arab neighbors share with us.

Eventually it will prevail. But only after the politicians behind the foolish funding policies of the governments refilling Abbas' purse understand the chronic damage they do and stop.

If you're in Jerusalem tomorrow, August 12, 2019, you won't regret coming along to the annual Ezra Charity bazaar that honors the lives of our daughter Malki Roth and her friend Michal Raziel. It's held in the northern Jerusalem community of Ramot: jumping castle, face painting, caricatures, live performances by Yam Refaeli and Harel Tal and the magic act of Lior Laufer. Proceeds of the bazaar benefit the Malki Foundation.

That's the official poster above, with details. Feel free to email us [click] if you need translation or directions.

21-Jul-19: Jordan, peace and how little has actually changed

Today happens to mark the seventieth anniversary of a Middle East milestone:

The quote is from a scholarly tome dealing with the work of the United Nations Security Council. Turns out the military phase they mentioned had several more violent and deadly rounds to go over the following decades. So much has changed, especially here in Jerusalem where we live.

And in some ways so little too.

British-led soldiers of the Arab Legion, Jordan's state army, at the
renowned Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in Jerusalem's Old City
shortly after conquering, and just before utterly destroying, the synagogue.
[Wikipedia]

Starting in 1948 when the Kingdom of Jordan's British-led military overran Jerusalem's eastern part and occupied the Old City and its unique holy places, unrestrained state-inspired vandalism became the fate of one of the world's most revered places.

Here's how the Jewish Telegraphic Agency described it in a 1967 report compiled shortly after Israel finally took over:

A shocking record of destruction and desecration of Jewish holy places in and around Old Jerusalem during 19 years of Jordanian rule was documented today in the report of an inter-ministerial committee that was appointed after the Six-Day War to determine the state of Jewish shrines in Jordan held territory. The findings of the committee were summarized by Zerach Warhaftig, Minister of Religious Affairs, at a press conference here. 

As examples of the wanton disregard of the religious rights of others, Mr. Warhaftig noted the destruction of all but two of the 58 synagogues in the Jewish quarter of the Old City and the almost total destruction of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives which has been in continuous use for more than 2,000 years. 

The cemetery was one of the Jewish holy places to which access was promised by the Jordanians in the 1949 armistice agreements although the promise was never observed. Tombstones were carried away for purposes ranging from fortifying mortar positions to building lavatories and the report says, documentary evidence and eye witnesses “make it clear beyond doubt that the desecration of the cemetery was carried out by Jordanian authorities for official purposes.”

The Jordanian Government, according to the report, had placed a special guard at the cemetery, but only to prevent tombstones from being pilfered by private persons. Their use was authorized for building military camps, fortifications, pathways and other installations and the walls of the building that housed the army commanders. Part of the road to the Intercontinental Hotel was paved with tombstones, the report said. And the Jordanians never bothered to remove the remains of the dead. In the Old City of Jerusalem, the report went on, only the synagogue of the Chabad Hassidim and the Torat Chayim yeshiva were left standing.

Dr. Warhaftig said that there was only one known instance of a clergyman protesting against the desecration and he was told by the Jordanian authorities to mind his own business. Moslem dignitaries whom Dr. Warhaftig questioned about the outrages disclaimed all knowledge. ["Cabinet Report Says Jordan Destroyed 56 Old City Synagogues, Desecrated Cemetery", JTA, November 2, 1967]

An armistice agreement signed almost exactly seventy years ago (April 3, 1949) in Greece governed relations between the new-born state of Israel and the Jordanians. The burden of the safeguards it included never really troubled the Arabs who ignored them totally. No one else seems to have cared:

• Jordan had undertaken to give free access to the Holy Places and to cultural institutions, and use of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives [Section III, Document 6, Article VIII, and Section V, subsection E, Documents 15 and 16]. It breached all of these obligations and it kept on breaching down through the years before its armed men were forcibly removed by the IDF in 1967. 
• Jews were entirely barred from the Old City and denied access to the Western Wall and the other Holy Places of incomparable importance.
• The Jewish Quarter in the Old City was systematically destroyed. (It took years, starting in 1967, for what was lost to start to be painstakingly reconstructed. The  job is still underway.)
• Moslem residents of Israel were not permitted to visit their Holy Places in East Jerusalem. 
• Christians didn't fare much better. In 1958, Jordanian legislation required all members of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre to adopt Jordanian citizenship. In 1965, Christian institutions were forbidden to acquire any land or rights in or near Jerusalem. 
• In 1966, Christian schools were compelled to close on Fridays instead of Sundays, customs privileges of Christian religious institutions were abolished. 
• In May 1967, the Temple Mount became a military base for the Jordanian National Guard.

On 24 April 1950, a year after the largely-ignored armistice, a joint session of Jordan's House of Deputies and its House of Notables adopted a resolution [source] seizing formal control of all of the West Bank and the eastern (and older) part of Jerusalem.

Viewed through the lens of today, the opening words of the annexation document are startling:

In the expression of the people's faith in the efforts spent by His Majesty, Abdullah [great-grandfather of the present-day king of Jordan who has the same name], toward attainment of natural aspirations, and basing itself on the right of self-determination and on the existing de facto position between Jordan and Palestine and their national, natural and geographic unity and their common interests and living space, Parliament, which represents both sides of the Jordan, resolves this day and declares:
First, its support for complete unity between the two sides of the Jordan and their union into one State, which is the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, at whose head reigns King Abdullah Ibn al Husain, on a basis of constitutional representative government and equality of the rights and duties of all citizens...

It's easy to forget now that when the Hashemite military was riding high, the Jordanians and the Palestinian Arabs had no problem seeing themselves as a single Arab entity with shared interests, shared living space, national unity.

Occupied territories? National self-determination for a Palestinian people? Two-state solution? In your dreams.

Most readers understand that Jordan - the Hashemite Kingdom and its absolute ruler King Abdullah II - gets a lot of our attention these days. This of course is mostly because they harbor our daughter's killer and so far at least refuse to hand her over for criminal prosecution in the United States despite a treaty that requires them to do just that.

Hussein, Clinton, Rabin at the 1994 peace treaty signing

Jordan has never publicly addressed this issue, but simply persists in refusing to extradite her despite the perfectly valid extradition treaty the two countries signed, and have basically honored, since 1994. 

In Israeli circles, and despite wars in which Israel has had to defend itself from Jordanian invasion, there's long been a sense that in the unstable and frequently violent and bigoted Arab world, Jordan's has been a voice (relatively speaking) of moderation and reason.

It's a complex situation, and is growing more complex as Jordan's troubles mount, particularly the widespread and deep dissatisfaction with how the country's economy is being managed.

But complex or not, when Jordan has the opportunity to join moderate Arab voices but pointedly refuses, then Israelis and those who care for Israel's well-being will notice and draw inferences. For instance:

Oman FM: Palestinians must reassure Israel it’s not in peril  | Associated Press Omar Akour | AP | April 6, 2019 at 2:40 PM

DEAD SEA, Jordan — Oman’s foreign minister urged Palestinians on Saturday to reassure Israel that it is not under threat in the Middle East, drawing a rare public rebuke from his Jordanian counterpart. Oman’s Yusuf bin Alawi and Jordan’s Ayman Safadi shared the stage at a regional gathering of the World Economic Forum, held on Jordan’s shores of the Dead Sea. Bin Alawi spoke at a time of warming ties between Israel and several Gulf Arab states, as part of an unofficial alliance against Iranian influence in the region. The Omani minister said that Palestinians “should help Israel to get away from” what he said was its mistaken sense of being threatened.
Safadi responded sharply, to applause from the audience. “I beg to differ on a number of issues,” said Safadi. He noted that in 2002, as part of the Arab Peace Initiative, scores of Arab and Muslim countries offered Israel recognition in exchange for a withdrawal from occupied lands sought for a Palestinian state. Safadi said the problem is whether Israeli occupation “is going to end.”
Lebanon’s defense minister and Bahrain’s foreign minister were also present on stage during the exchange.
The recent rapprochement between Israel and several Gulf states has been fueled by deepening rivalries between regional camps, led by Saudi Arabia and Iran, respectively. The Trump administration’s hard anti-Iran line has contributed to growing regional tensions.
In October, Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a surprise visit to Oman and Israeli officials visited the United Arab Emirates in recent months.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians feel increasingly sidelined, fearing Israel, Gulf states and the U.S. plan to strike a deal behind their backs about the future of war-won lands they seek for a future state.
Jordan, which has a peace treaty with Israel, considers itself a strong advocate for Palestinian political demands. A majority of the kingdom’s citizens are of Palestinian origin.

Jordan's public bellowing over how Israel deals with Muslim rights in Jerusalem provides a sadly rich source of intemperate and frankly ugly stamping of the foot by Jordan's foreign ministry. This is from just a few weeks ago:

Jordan has called for an immediate halt to Israeli “provocations” at East Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, warning of a new cycle of violence in the Middle East region, Anadolu reports. Hundreds of settlers forced their way into the flashpoint site on Sunday, in a rare tour in the final days of the fasting month of Ramadan, which ends this week. The tour has triggered clashes between Muslim worshippers and Israeli police, which chased assaulted a number of worshippers during the violence. In a statement, Jordan’s Foreign Ministry warned of the “dangerous consequences of Israel’s provocative and repulsive escalatory Israeli practices, which will drag the region into a new cycle of violence that may threaten the security of the region as a whole”. It called on the Israeli authorities to “immediately cease all these provocations”, which it described as “absurd, irresponsible, rejected and condemned”. ["Israeli ‘provocations’ will lead to violence: Jordan", Middle East Monitor, June 2, 2019]

For anyone who knows something of the history of the region and the devastation wrought by Jordan's heavy-booted occupation over nearly two decades, it's odd to note those ridiculous adjectives. Jordan, when it had the opportunity during the 19 years of its illegal and violent military occupation of Jordan and the West Bank, carried out deliberate, massive and systematic destruction and desecration of Jewish holy sites in and around Jerusalem.

The "provocations" are the sight of polite, respectful Israelis and Jews visiting Judaism's single holiest ancient place. For certain kinds of political analysts, politicians and politically-warped media reporters, this sight is just unbearable.

Note how certain especially bizarre elements play a role:

Image Source: Turkey's Anadolu Agency, a source of rabidly anti-Israel news

• Jewish and Israeli visitors to the Temple Mount never walk, stroll or simply visit. They storm. The word is used religiously these days. (A quick Google search produces more than 600,000 hits.)
• The Arab sources quoted in shabby reporting like this always seem to know, without ever speaking with them, that the Jews are "settlers". Even if they're visiting from Brooklyn or Brussels or Bangkok.
• These Jewish and/or Israeli visitors don't actually go anywhere near the mosque constructed on the ruins of the First Temple and Second Temple. But in ideologically-obsessed parts of the Arab media, the entire football-field size plateau is lately termed "the Al Aqsa complex" to confer some spiritual air to the largest possible space. And yes, football is indeed played there by Arab boys.

Intemperate news reporting is a problem. But some other problems carry greater weight. For instance these three which bear a disturbing integrity-of-the-homeland similarity to each other:

• This past October, Jordan decided to terminate the lease by Israel of two small areas on the Jordan River, roughly a thousand acres of agricultural ‎land‎, which had been farmed by Israelis for the past 25 years. The leases were part of the 1994 Jordan/Israel peace treaty. As the Jerusalem Post noted: "The 30 families which reside [there] live off these lands and export millions of dollars' worth of crops to the world as well as to the Israeli market." Jordan's king announced that he seeks “full sovereignty on our land”. There's surely a message in the unexpected and unwelcome move. From our conversations with relevant people, there's some doubt what that message is.
• Another important deal between Jordan and Israel, a far larger and more strategic one signed in 2016, is arousing angst and furor as a result of a bizarre speech by a member of Jordan's parliament a couple of weeks ago. The deal concerns the sale of natural gas which is to be piped from Israel's Leviathan offshore gas field to Jordan's electric company. It's a $10 billion deal to be executed over 15 years; the first gas is due to be delivered early next year. But as  critically important as this is to Jordan's need for energy, it's (of course) opposed by a range of Jordanian political factions including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas' local affiliate, on the customary grounds that if it involves normalization and cooperation with Israel, it has to be bad. Tareq Khouri, a Christian and an opponent of the transaction said at a Muslim Brotherhood gathering on July 3, 2019 that good Jordanians should bomb the gas pipeline. "Every lover of freedom in Jordan [should] give up his life and the lives of his children in order to bomb any gas pipeline [from Israel] that passes through Jordanian territory. We shall all be potential martyrs [and] prevent this pipeline from entering one centimeter of Jordanian soil."
• A decade ago, reports emerged of the uncovering of an ancient Jerusalem pathway with considerable historical significance. Haaretz said: "Israel Antiquities Authority researchers have re-exposed a stretch of road in Jerusalem dating to the Second Temple period that is believed to have been used by pilgrims on their ascent to the Temple. Existence of the 40-meter segment of road, cleared over the past few months to open it to visitors, has been known of for more than a century. The excavation is taking place in the neighborhood of Silwan near the Siloam Spring." Then on June 30, 2019, this Israeli update: "After six years of extensive archaeological excavations led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, a 350-meter-long section of the Pilgrimage Road was unveiled at a festive ceremony in the City of David." Cause for celebration, right? Not necessarily, since Jerusalem is involved. So here's the full text of Jordan's official reaction: ["Amman condemns Israeli opening of "pilgrims road"", PETRA Jordan Gov't News Agency, June 30, 2019]: 

"Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Sunday slammed Israel for opening a tunnel beneath the Silwad town that is called the "pilgrims road" towards al-Aqsa Mosque/ Haram al-Sharif, issuing a warning that such "illegal and irresponsible" actions escalate tension. The official spokesperson of the ministry Sufian Qudah underscored Jordan's utter rejection of Israeli attempts that seek to alter the identity of the occupied city of Jerusalem, especially the al-Aqsa Mosque and its surroundings.  Such Israeli actions are "vile violations" of the international and human law, he said, calling on the international community to assume its moral and political responsibilities in promptly halting these practices and to emphasize the importance of respecting East Jerusalem's status as an integral part of the Palestinian territories, which have been under occupation since 1967, in accordance with the international law and resolutions of the international legitimacy."

She's King Abdullah II's long-serving ambassador to Washington.
A talented lady but not above blocking a pair
of pesky bereaved parents from Jerusalem

When they want to, Jordan's official representatives can be quite talkative. A shame that on the subject of extraditing Ahlam Tamimi, they have not uttered a single official word as a government, leaving it to the media and their highest court to say the relatively little that has been offered to explain their indefensible policy.

As for their official spokesperson in the United States, Ambassador Dina Kawar of Jordan's Washington embassy blocks us on Twitter.

That of course doesn't change very much and certainly doesn't mean we will stop our efforts to be heard. But along with plenty of other evidence of Jordan being today very far from its moderate image, it contributes to the sense that they haven't really come a great distance since the days of blowing up ancient synagogues on a massive scale and maliciously denying Jewish history.

* * *

[This post, like a number of others before it, has been translated to Polish ("Jordania, pokój i jak niewiele się naprawdę zmieniło") by courtesy of Malgorzata Koraszewska over on the Listy z naszego sadu website. Our sincere thanks to her, and great appreciation to readers of this blog in Poland.]

31-May-19: Al Quds Day kicks off with double-stabbing attack in Jerusalem's Old City

The Times of Israel caption to this photo: "Israeli security forces 

and medics remove the body of a Palestinian man who had 

stabbed two Israelis in the Old City of Jerusalem, 

on May 31, 2019. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

At least two people were injured, one seriously, in stabbing attacks in Jerusalem’s Old City this morning. Times of Israel reports that the suspected terrorist was shot by police officers at the scene. His condition is not currently known (it's 7:20 am here).

But according to the rather laconic Haaretz version, "Israeli police said officers at the scene apprehended the suspect." (It appears now, some hours later, that Haaretz understated the impact on the terrorist. See below.)

Medics were treating one victim in serious condition, an approximately 50-year-old man, near the Old City’s Damascus Gate, which has seen a number of stabbing attacks in recent years. The Magen David Adom ambulance service said a second man was also lightly wounded near the Hurva Synagogue... [Times of Israel]

From Israel National News:

A man was very seriously wounded in a stabbing attack on Friday morning in an area in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem. The man was stabbed in his upper body and Magen David Adom paramedics are making efforts to save his life. A short time later, reports were received about an 18-year-old who was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack in the vicinity of the Hurva Synagogue. An initial investigation into the attack revealed that a terrorist arrived at the Damascus Gate, stabbed a man, and then stabbed another man in the Old City. The attacker was neutralized by police forces... Magen David Adom reported that at 6:31 a.m., a report was received of two men who were stabbed, one near Damscus Gate and the other near the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem Post (7:30 am) also believes the two attacks are the work of one knifer:

Israel Police spokesman Superintendent Micky Rosenfeld told The Jerusalem Post that a "terrorist stabbed one person at Damascus Gate, critically injuring him, and made his way into the Old City and stabbed a second person inside injuring him moderately."

We're not yet seeing reports stating the obvious - that it's Al Quds Day:

an annual event held on the last Friday of Ramadan that was initiated by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 to express support for the Palestinians and oppose Zionism and Israel... [and] also held in several other countries, mainly in the Arab and Muslim world, with protests against Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem.Rallies are held in various cities by both Muslim and non-Muslim communities around the world.

Urged on by Iran [here], there are large-scale Al Quds Day events scheduled for this weekend in Sydney and Melbourne, in London and other locations.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 10:00 am: From Times of Israel:

“Around 6:20 a.m., the assailant entered through the Damascus Gate. He stabbed a man inside and began running from the scene. Along the way, he saw [a 16-year-old boy] and stabbed him as well,” police said. The suspected terrorist, a 19-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank, was shot dead by police officers at the scene, a police spokesperson said.

A quick scan of Arabic social media, mainly Twitter, shows the attacker is now called "martyr" which strongly suggests the financial future of another Palestinian Arab family has gotten a lot stronger thanks to Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 11:00 am:  No names announced yet but it's reported that the first of the two stabbing victims this morning was a 16-year-old boy, attacked as he made his way from Shacharit morning prayers at a synagogue in the Old City back to his yeshiva.
From Israel National News: 

“On his way back from the Hurva synagogue to the yeshiva, someone jumped him from one of the courtyards,” the victim’s father told Reshet Bet... The victim had been learning overnight at his yeshiva [a tradition on Thursday nights], then went to the Hurva synagogue for morning prayers. “At first he didn’t realize that he had been stabbed by a knife,” his father continued, “he thought he had been punched in the back. His brother was with him, and they started to run towards the Hurva synagogue, and there they called for help.”
During the terror attack another victim, estimated to be about 50 years of age, was also stabbed, leaving him in critical condition. He was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center. He has been admitted to the hospital’s intensive care ward, and is unconscious and on assisted breathing.
Authorities say the terrorist entered the Old City at around 6:20 a.m. via Damascus Gate, stabbed his first victim on a side street, then fled the scene. As he ran, the terrorist spotted his second victim, stabbing him before being shot to death by Israeli police officers... The terrorist has been identified as a 19-year-old Palestinian Authority resident.

There's no coverage at this point on the scurrilous Maan News Service English-language site. But on its Arabic site, under a headline that calls him "martyr", it says

"Israeli occupation forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank town of Jerusalem... The Israeli occupation forces closed all the doors of the Old City and the Al-Aqsa Mosque and prevented thousands of worshipers from reaching the Al-Aqsa Mosque."

No mention of today being Al Quds Day.

UPDATE May 31, 2019 at 2:30 pm: We have the names of the stabbing victims. One is 16-year-old Yisrael Meir Nachumberg, in moderate condition at the Hadassah Hospital on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus.. The other is Gavriel Lavi, 50, who underwent emergency surgery at Shaarei Zedek Medical Center this morning and is now hospitalized in SZMC's intensive care unit. Israel National News quotes one of the doctors there saying "He arrived at the trauma unit with stab wounds all over his body - scalp, neck, back, chest and legs."

Video of the attack and its aftermath is posted on YouTube and embedded below.



UPDATE June 2, 2019 at 4:00 pm: Times of Israel says Gabriel Lavi who was seriously injured in Friday's stabbing attack is now breathing without the help of a respirator though he remains in intensive care at Shaare Zedek Medical Center. May he continue to a complete recovery. 

11-Apr-19: Two more thwarted terror attacks at heavily-traveled security checkpoint outside Jerusalem

Image Source: Video of the young female attacker
recorded from inside the Arab bus [Source]

Too many observers of what goes on here in Israel talk about terrorism being behind us, finished, defeated. 

It's certainly not so.

A Palestinian woman tried to stab security forces while they were checking a bus passing through the A'Zaim checkpoint next to Jerusalem on Wednesday. Police fired into the air and police detectives who happened to be in the area were able to incapacitate the woman and take away the knife. No injuries were reported. The woman is being interrogated.
On Tuesday, at the same checkpoint, multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

The "Palestinian woman" in yesterday's mid-afternoon attack looks to us more like a girl than an adult woman. Israel National News says she was a resident of Tulkarm.

The video captured from inside the Arab bus out of which she emerged during what we think was a routine security check leaves no doubt that she was armed with and was brandishing a knife. In the specific circumstances, it's clear she was more interested in offense than defence.

A-Zaim (sometimes written Az-Za'ayyem and Al-Zaim; א-זעיים in Hebrew; الزعيم in Arabic) is a busy security checkpoint on one of the roads connecting Maale Adumim with Israel's capital.

A 16 year-old Arab female was intercepted just three months ago ["30-Jan-19: Pal Arab would-be stabber, a 16 year old girl, is stopped before executing an attack near Jerusalem"] at the very same location on Jerusalem's eastern edge. The outcome was far more serious then:

A Palestinian teenage girl was shot dead as she tried to stab an Israeli security officer at a checkpoint outside Jerusalem on Wednesday, police said. According to police, the assailant attacked one of the guards at the A’Zaim crossing east of the capital, in the central West Bank. The Palestinian girl was identified as Samah Mubarak, 16, from the nearby village of al-Ram, the Palestinian Authority’s official Wafa news agency reported... Israeli security officials have said that many attacks by Palestinians, especially women, are driven by personal and domestic issues, more than by ideological considerations. In some cases, Israeli officials have said Palestinians appeared to have carried out attacks or attempted to do so in order to be shot dead by Israeli security forces, as a form of “suicide by cop.” [Times of Israel, January XX, 2019]

Again at A-Zaim, two days ago:

...multiple guns and magazines and hundreds of bullets were found in the car of a Palestinian family. The driver's wife, young daughter and days-old son were in the car when it was stopped. [Jerusalem Post, April 10, 2019]

No one seems to be noting in the news reports (there are very few of them) how appalling it is that a man smuggling a serious weapons cache would use his family, including a new-born infant, as human shields.

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.