29-Sep-19: As we prepare for the High Holy Day season

This is about the king's breakfast. (We just tweeted about it here.)

(Clicking the photo will enlarge it.)

A king?

Yes, Abdullah II. He's the absolute ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Who else was there?

A select group - the king's selection, it seems - of leaders of the most important Jewish organizations in the United States. How or why these particular Jewish leaders were invited is a little mysterious but from what we understand, they all hold positions of prominence in US Jewish public affairs. Still, neither their names nor the names of whom they represent are in the published record. Nor are the views they expressed, assuming they expressed any at all. We recognize some of them from the photo. But others are unknown to us and the published photo - not of the highest quality - released by the Jordanian govvernment doesn't help.

Which breakfast?

A formal one, or maybe it was just coffee and cookies, in a New York City hotel dining room on September 22, 2019, in the week that the UN General Assembly got its year underway. The king often speaks in the US General Assembly's opening session and did this year too. The official report from the king's Royal Court says the breakfast meeting included discussion around the table covering efforts "to reach political solutions to regional crises" and "to fight terrorism within a holistic approach".

Holistic? An odd word in the context. We know from years of following their somewhat opaque reports about terror that the Hashemite Kingdom is the only country fighting terrorism that claims to do it holistically.

The word means "dealing with or treating the whole of something or someone and not just a part" (Cambridge English Dictionary). If they deal with terror by attacking all of it, but at the very same time keep Ahlam Tamimi, a confessed murderer, an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist and a celebrity savage whom they have allowed to become a national celebrity, safe and secure in Amman where she can do daily, irrepairable harm, does that make it holistic? It's hard to tell.

The Jordanian government's news release identifies only some of those breakfasting. The king of course, along with Jordan's long-surviving foreign minister Ayman Safadi. Also "Adviser to His Majesty for Communication and Coordination" Bisher Khasawneh, Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Sima Bahous and Jordan’s Ambassador in Washington Dina Kawar. (To her shame, Ms Kawar with whom we have been unfailingly polite and reasonable blocks us on Twitter.)

As we said, none of the Jews are named. Nor are the organizations they represent.

The Jordanians have no interest in dealing with the Jewish content of the breakfast. And even now, days later, the Jews themselves are silent. We're making enquiries. But so far we're getting zero co-operation. Given who we are and the unique circumstances, that hurts us deeply. We asked an official at one of the Jewish groups that attended (no names) for help in identifying who took part. We got this email from him yesterday:

I was unable to attend the meeting, which I know was off the record, so I can’t make any comment on it.

Can't make any comment? Off the record? Really? Because that's what the Jordanians wanted? Anyone can see the Jordanians have placed it on the record themselves; on their record, along with the photo. Is he open to the thought that his fellow leaders have been used?

Who did and who did not report this high-level event?

First, King Abdullah's personal website [here] gave it prominence along with this commentary (which differs slightly from the text provided by the Royal Heshemite Court):

The King meets representatives of international and American Jewish organizations in New York | 23 September 2019
His Majesty King Abdullah II met in New York on Sunday with representatives of international and American Jewish organizations on the sidelines of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly.
His Majesty stressed that the two-state solution is the only way to achieve peace between Palestinians and Israelis, which leads to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the lines of June 4, 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and live in peace and security alongside Israel.
His Majesty pointed to the role of international and American Jewish organizations in supporting efforts aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace in the region.
The crises of the region, the search for political solutions, as well as the war on terrorism efforts were reviewed in a holistic approach.
The meeting was attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Affairs, His Majesty the King's Advisor for Communication and Coordination, the Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations and the Jordanian Ambassador in Washington.

Essentially identical reports, accompanied by the same group photo, were re-published by

• Jordan's Royal Hashemite Court [here and archived here and here in case it disappears]
• Petra, the official Jordan government newsagency - in Arabic and in English
• A Jordanian commercial site: RoyaNewsTV. (They're the media organization that has taken a leading role in promoting Ahlam Tamimi, confessed bomber of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria, as a Jordanian national hero: see "24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers [Video]")
• Jordan's Al Ra'i, a government-owned daily Jordanian newspaper, the Arabic-language sibling of the English-language Jordan Times which also blocks us on Twitter
• Urdoni, a Jordanian site
• Akherkhabr Today, an Arabic-language news consolidation site
• Maqar, a Jordanian site
• Al Malaz News, a Jordanian site
• Al Bosala (Compass) News, a Jordanian site
• Khaberni, a Jordanian site
• Sabaq News, a Saudi site

There might be more by now. 

So while not a single Western media organization has given it attention, it's certainly all over the Jordanian news. So much for 'off the record'. More significantly, there's no reporting at all, as far as we can tell, by any of the Jewish organizations. (If we're wrong, we welcome corrections.)

It's obvious this September 22, 2019 gathering held considerably more significance for the Jordanians than it did for the Jewish attendees. On that basis, and deeply bothered by what's just happened, we're left to ask:

1. why some of the most influential US Jewish leaders in the US would want to get involved in a PR exercise like this without trying to get their own views heard by a wider audience; 
2. why the mattter of justice for the murdered Jewish victims, three of them Jewish Americans, all of them females, one of them our fifteen year old daughter, somehow doesn't rise to the level of being worth speaking out about or appearing on their agenda papers; 
3. why these careful and thoughtful people imagined there was something in this for them and those they represent. If they did, what was it, ladies and gentlemen?
4. did they omit any mention of the Tamimi extradition so as to avoid offending their host? Or out of fear of spoiling the congenial breakfast mood? Or missing out on an invitation to next year's royal get-together? Or do they simply know nothing about the Jordan extradition issue and the ongoing Tamimi scandal? Can someone tell them about our efforts and those of the US Department of Justice, to see Malki's killer finally brought to justice? Because if they don't know, that's simply incredible.

It's a troubling affair.

As bereaved parents of a murdered Jewish child with US citizenship who are determined to see long-delayed justice done, we're perfectly aware of how few US Jews appear to be bothered by it. And of course how few know anything about it all, thanks to a certain disgraceful media understanding (don't report on Jordan harboring the killer) that's never discussed.

And not for the first time. Did you know another breakfast meeting hosted by the Jordanian king for Jewish US leaders exactly a year ago similarly got publicized only by the Jordanians and almost no one else? (The only exception, we think, is Haaretz which published an interesting Amir Tibon report.)

Here's how the Jordanian royal court reported that 2018 gathering on Twitter:

جلالة الملك عبدالله الثاني يلتقي، بحضور جلالة الملكة رانيا العبدالله، ممثلين من منظمات يهودية دولية وأمريكية #الأردن

His Majesty King Abdullah II accompanied by Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah meets with representatives of international and #US Jewish organisations#Jordan pic.twitter.com/NEPN17CciO

— RHC (@RHCJO) September 21, 2018

That's about all we want to say about Jewish leadership for now.

A happy new year and good wishes to all.

11-Sep-19: Looking back into the dark

The oldest of our daughters holds the youngest. Malki ז"ל adored
Haya, her brain-damaged and blind little sister.

The Malki Foundation, which was created under the worst of all conceivable situations exactly eighteen years ago to the day, is more than just a charity for those of us who started it.

It's a living memorial to the life of a greatly-loved child who was murdered when, being Jewish and living in the capital city of the Jewish state, she was in a pizzeria with her best friend precisely when a human bomb planted by a deeply-bigoted agent of the Hamas terrorist organization - a woman of 21 called Ahlam Tamimi - walked in with an undetected explosives-and-nails-filled guitar case and pressed a detonator.

The precious lives lost in the carnage that followed are gone forever. Their memories remain among those who loved them.

Malki's memory is honored by work that goes on every day in a modest Jerusalem office from where meaningful, constructive, supportive activities enable families from every part of Israeli society to do things for their child with special needs that otherwise would very likely not happen.

It's a cause we're very, very proud to be connected with.

Unlike this blog and some of the things we do, the Malki Foundation's work has absolutely no political dimension. It's one hundred per cent about helping people based on their need; nothing else.

A letter received by Arnold Roth last week makes the point in a charming way:

You probably won't remember me - that's okay :). But we traded a couple emails a couple years ago when Ahed Tamimi was arrested. I got offended by something you posted online etc. It was a cordial exchange - we even hoped to tag up in Jerusalem but I haven't made it back there yet - but we strongly disagreed with each other. And we probably still do.
However, I have often thought of this incident and honestly, I think my reaction was wrong. I was never a big donor to the Malki Foundation (I'm not wealthy, just a working stiff) but I realize I should have never stopped giving because of that reason. You do good work with those in need of that type of care. So, I want to apologize to you. We can disagree on politics but a good work is a good work.
I actually tried to make a small donation a couple weeks ago but I guess your site is being revamped. I'll give it another go next month. Still not wealthy so donations will be small but hey, it all counts, right? I hope you will accept my apology. Keep up the good work.

When we conceived of the Malki Foundation, sitting on the floor of our home in Jerusalem late at night after all the friends and strangers who had filled our apartment had left on one of the seven days of mourning, our heads were filled with the horror of what hatred can do to people.

It seemed to us that the world had reached one of its lowest points.

Then, on the morning that the registration papers for the new charity - Keren Malki, Hebrew for Malki Foundation - were issued by Israel's registrar of not-for-profits, a more optimistic sense emerged: with this new creation, a legal entity with a mission, we're going to do some good things for people who need more good in their lives.

Then a few hours later the sky fell again. The date was September 11, 2001, nine-eleven.

In very large measure, our conviction is the world, its leaders, many of its most thoughtful people, haven't come close to grasping what terrorism is, what it does to lives, to society, to the values that enable us to live together. What we ought to be doing is, at best, imperfectly understood and perhaps a lot worse than that.

One thing though is clear to us from our experience: that responding to the chaos and deep pain by helping others has value, not just in what it does for others but for how it helps to heal and improve us.

05-Sep-19: On thwarted justice and bearded women

We have devoted several years and considerable effort to generating awareness of the almost unfathomable evil of a Jordanian woman, Ahlam Tamimi (speaking on this video).

Tamimi is a high-profile fugitive from the FBI with a $5 million reward on her head from the US State Department. She freely admits for the record and in public that she played a key role in the August 9, 2001 bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem. She has boasted of how she deliberately targeted and succeeded in massacring the Jewish children inside and on the street. One of them was our fifteen year old daughter Malki.

Recently, in her (since-shut-down) Instagram account, Tamimi called this Hamas attack "my operation":

Instagram shut down this account, which was Tamimi's over a period of years, a few days
after this posting appeared in August 2019

She is protected by the Kingdom of Jordan which, in cynical breach of its 1995 extradition treaty with the United States, has refused since 2013 to hand her over to the US authorities for prosecution on terrorism charges. It continues to give her safe haven.

But her hitherto-frequent travel in and around the Arab world, a key part of her evolution as a pan-Arab celebrity, has come to a halt as a result of an Interpol Red Notice.

What's more, for the nearly five years starting early 2012 and ending in mid-2016, it provided her with the freedom and means to have a TV program of her own called "Breezes of the Free", which she recorded in Amman, Jordan every week [see "27-Apr-17: Satellite TV and other basic rights of terrorist life behind Israeli bars"] for a global TV and Internet audience.

The purpose of the show was to encourage support for Arab-on-Israeli terrorism, to celebrate and honor the terrorists and to provide a two-way channel for communication between terrorists imprisoned in Israel and their families.

It's important to keep in mind that the privilege of engaging in years of incitement to extreme violence given to a confessed mass murderer comes against a background where Jordan has one of the most tightly controlled and un-free media regimes in the world [see "20-Jan-18: Shutting down media critics in Jordan isn't quite the challenge it might seem to be"]. Had Jordan wanted, Tamimi - along with her Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood sponsors - could never have gotten these hideous "Breezes" off the ground.

Our personal efforts to get Tamimi in front of a US federal court to face charges in Washington DC involve a good deal of political awareness-raising and lobbying in the US. Our daughter Malki was a US citizen.

Exactly a week ago, Haaretz - in a story filed from Washington by Amir Tibon who is its correspondent in the US capital - reported online on efforts to bring the thwarted Tamimi extradition issue to a larger audience. (Though we're not mentioned, we are the instigators of those efforts.)

Ahlam al-Tamimi took part in the organization of a 2001 bombing at a pizza place in Jerusalem that killed 15. These American lawmakers want Jordan to extradite her to the U.S. https://t.co/wCuXak29Jq

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) August 29, 2019

The following day, the paper edition of Haaretz arrived at our front door as it has, in both Hebrew and English editions, every Friday for years. We rubbed our eyes at what we saw:

The almost-comical use of the photo of a bearded man to depict a 39 year old female media celebrity with a long history of public appearances and blowing children to pieces obviously had nothing to do with the Haaretz reporter. He was simply conveying the facts.

So we reacted by addressing the newspaper's well-known publisher via Twitter:

Mr @AmosSchocken:

As #MalkiRoth's father, it's troubling that our battle to get her killer, #AhlamTamimi, extradited from Jordan to face terror charges in the US gets zero coverage in @Haaretz and other mainstream media.

Do your editors know who she is?https://t.co/cejqdloCcz

— Arnold Roth (@arnoldroth) August 31, 2019

Obviously the editors had the wrong person. But do they even know at Haaretz who Ahlam Tamimi is? It's hard to tell.

And if you're wondering - yes, we're troubled by how no one from the paper-publishing side of Haaretz has bothered to respond to us. Of course being ignored, as anyone following this blog knows, is hardly a new experience for us.

And there's this: over at the Hebrew version of Haaretz, they have given no coverage at all, zero, nada, to the Nadler initiative: not online, not in their highly influential daily newspaper. It seems, as friends have told us, that the Israeli election campaigns now underway dwarf everything else.

But then nor has Haaretz ever published a word about our years of efforts to see Tamimi tried on terrorism charges.

And a lot more importantly, given its unexamined implications, Haaretz in all its various Hebrew, English, online, on-paper editions entirely ignores, just as do many other mainstream news outlets do, the much larger and weightier matter of Jordan's mendaciousness in purporting to fight terror while keeping one of its highest profile practitioners safe, well and protected in the bosom of the Hashemite Kingdom and its law courts.

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.

15-Aug-19: We remember

העליה לקבר והאזכרה לזכרן של 

מיכל רזיאל הי"ד 

ומלכה חנה רוט הי"ד 

תתקיים במקום קבורתן בהר תמיר ירושלים
ביום ד', כ' אב (21 באוגוסט 2019) בשעה 17:30 

המשפחות

The annual Aliyah Lakever (going up to the gravesides) and Azkara (memorial service)
in memory of our daughters 

Malka Chana Roth HY"D and Michal Raziel HY"D, 

may their memories be for a blessing, 

will take place at the Har Tamir cemetery in Jerusalem
Wednesday, August 21, 2019 at 5:30 pm 

For driving directions, please email us.

The families

12-Aug-19: The pain of a child's murder: A burden of grief and injustice

Malki Z"L was deeply devoted to her blind and profoundly
disabled youngest sister

It appears that the pain of a child's murder is so inconceivable in our society that it is down-played. Swept under the carpet.

Frimet Roth | This op ed was originally published on the Israel National News website, August 8, 2019

I don't mention my murdered child, Malki, often.

Over the eighteen years since the terror bombing at Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria, I have learned that most people are bored, disconcerted or annoyed by my dredging up that "ancient incident".

Closure, moving on, forgiving are the trendiest notions circulating in the world of grief.

A few years back, my husband, who had just delivered a talk about terrorism in his hometown, Melbourne, overheard an old acquaintance gripe about him. "Hasn’t gotten over that yet?"

I recall a CNN journalist reporting about a tragic mass shooting in the US involving children, commenting "The families of the victims certainly have several tough weeks ahead of them."

Weeks? Make that lives.

It appears that the pain of a child's murder is so inconceivable in our society that it is down-played. Swept under the carpet.

I vividly recall the silky feel of my Malki's hair, the way we swam the crawl together holding hands, the way we always walked up the ramp to our car arm in arm, the tears of pride I would shed whenever I heard her play the flute in a concert.

Her smile as she walked through our front door was infectious.

Her concern for anyone with disabilities was incomparable and unique for a teen. It was expressed not by vacuous words of compassion but rather active involvement with them.

Malki sought out places to volunteer as a caregiver even to the most profoundly affected children.

That included her youngest sibling Chaya who suffers from a rare genetic illness that includes severe epilepsy and blindness. Malki’s tenderness and devotion to her were incomparable.

And I remember the last time I heard her voice; she phoned me an hour before her life ended and we closed always, with the words “I love you.”

For the past eight years, our grief has been exacerbated by anger over injustice. The mastermind of that terror bombing, a Jordanian terrorist called Ahlam Tamimi, sentenced to 16 life terms in an Israeli court, was freed in the 2001 Shalit Deal.

She was “exiled” to her home – Amman – where she was reunited with her family. Some exile.

On March 14, 2017, the US Department of Justice unsealed charges against Tamimi and said it was requiring the Jordanian regime to extradite her to Washington. This was due to Malki and two other victims of that attack being US citizens.

But Jordan’s King Abdullah II has provided Tamimi with refuge, refusing to abide by his kingdom’s 1995 extradition treaty with the US.

My husband and I have asked that US officials pressure the king to hand over the monster he is protecting. Instead, the current US administration fetes him and his family, receives him in the White House as an honored guest, lavishes his shaky kingdom with massive cash gifts and other support.

The terror attack on Sbarro was unique in several ways.

One family was nearly decimated: a mother, father and three of their eight children perished.

Another couple lost their one and only child along with the baby she was carrying who would have been their first grandchild. I visit that bereft mother regularly as she now faces myriad health crises, confined to a wheelchair.

Sbarro is also unique in that Tamimi boasts to this day of “her operation". She has described in televised interviews how she scoured Jerusalem's city center for the perfect target - one that would be filled with women and children.

For years she hosted a weekly program beamed from Amman to viewers throughout the Arab world on Hamas' Al Quds TV station.

She smiled joyfully when she learned that her 15 victims included 8 children, not the mere three she claimed to believe.

She has been a constant presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter where she incites her fans to follow her example. She is undeniably the incarnation of evil.

And yet she is safe, free and raising a family. Every day of this reality is another stab in our hearts.

This week, grieving Americans were assured by Federal authorities that the El Paso shooter who murdered 22 innocent victims would be deemed a terrorist. He would receive “swift and certain justice.”

The victims of terrorist Tamimi are still waiting for that.

Frimet Roth's daughter, Malki, was murdered in the Sbarro terrorist attack at the age of fifteen. She had gone to enjoy a summer vacation pizza with her friend Michal Raziel, who was killed with her. Frimet is a freelance writer. She and her husband live in Jerusalem with their family. More from the author ►

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.

30-May-19: Paris, Amman, Washington: Extradition and what it can reveal about governments and terror

The landmark Jewish restaurant in Paris whose patrons were

targeted in 1982 by Palestinian Arab jihadists

and their machine guns and hand grenades.

In this post, we explain why an important court decision handed down in Jordan this week by its highest court throws a sharply negative light on Jordan's controversial 2017 claim that the kingdom's 1995 Extradition Treaty with the US in invalid and non-binding.

That earlier ruling, concerning Ahlam Tamimi, now looks contrived and unconvincing. And though the United States isn't saying much about it, we think people ought to know.

Terror and the Hashemite Kingdom

Jordan's creativity with the definition of terror is not new and hardly a secret.

But in polite circles, especially circles which view King Abdullah II as a valuable friend of the West and a strategic ally in the battle against "the terrorists", discussion of the matter is largely confined to whispers.

That's an insight we keep re-acquiring as we pursue Ahlam Tamimi, the confessed Jordanian killer of our daughter [24-Mar-17: Our daughter's smiling killer: "Shocked" that US "decided to go after her for no obvious reason"]. The Hashemite Kingdom's role in that process, and few know this as well as we do, has been obstructive, deceptive and dangerous.

Ahlam Tamimi, now a fugitive from US justice with her own "Most Wanted" poster (in English and Arabic versions), is a Jordanian woman of 39 who faces serious US Federal terrorism-related charges that were announced in Washington on March 14, 2017.

Ahlam Tamimi the fugitive

The brief version: At the age of 21 and as Hamas' first female terrorist, Tamimi masterminded the bombing of the Jerusalem Sbarro pizzeria massacre and the many Jewish children inside. (She has proudly admitted for the record that it was Jewish children she sought to kill. And why.) She carefully chose the site, scouted out the access path, brought the bomb (a human bomb - a young religious fanatic also in the service of Hamas) and then fled back to Ramallah moments before the explosion where she read the evening TV news bulletin for Istiqlal TV.

One of her many innocent victims, as regular visitors to this blog know, was our daughter Malki, 15. She was an American citizen.

In October 2011, Tamimi was released prematurely to our horror from a prison sentence of 16-life-terms in Israel in the Shalit Deal. Israel sent her off to Jordan where she came from ["19-Oct-11: Haaretz: Shalit prisoner swap marks 'colossal failure' for mother of Israeli bombing victim"]. She quickly set about developing an enhanced career in terror and terror-incitement under Jordanian protection.

Some weeks later, in early 2012, we went to Washington and asked the US Department of Justice to prosecute Tamimi. Under a Federal law, the US can go after terrorists who kill US citizens on foreign soil. Its jurisdiction is world-wide.

And indeed, this eventually happened. The background is here: "14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?"

The details of how terrorism charges were finally announced against Tamimi are not well known. For instance, the fact that the judge who signed off on the charges actually did so in 2014, three years earlier. There's a reason for those lost three years; not such a good reason.

And this:

All three of the DOJ officials quoted in the 2017 announcement have moved on to other positions during these past two years. We wrote a letter last week [i.e. in March 2019], addressed to them and to the three officials who filled their places in the DOJ. Among other things, we asked them whether the DOJ is going to address certain serious problems that we described for them. At this stage, we do not plan to publish the letter; we continue to hope that we will get a meaningful DOJ response that deals with the important issues we raised. However we do want people to know (which is why we are posting this now to our blog) that we sent that letter and that it respectfully requests the DOJ to take specific steps... [Our March 14, 2019 post]

It's distressing to report that the Justice Department has still not responded to our letter. But our concern here and now is with other aspects of the Tamimi case.

The 1982 Paris killings

Let's turn now to a murderous Palestinian Arab terror attack on one of France's best-known Jewish landmarks, a Paris restaurant called Chez Jo Goldenberg. In a 2016 post (13-Feb-16: Three decades after a terror attack on a Paris restaurant, some things remain just as they were"), we made some pungent observations about Jordan and the poorly understood, even surprising, way it approaches terrorism in general and ultra-violent antisemitic attacks in particular.

In November 2018, Mr and Mrs Tamimi, unrepentant murderers both,

were paid generous tribute on Jordan's most-watched TV channel.

Not one word about the Israelis they killed.

We wrote this:

We wish there was much wider awareness of how Jordan has provided a friendly environment since 2011 for the woman who masterminded the murder of our daughter, allowing her to operate freely from within Jordan's borders; to speak as an honored guest at its universities, professional guilds, law courts and other venues; to record her television program "Naseem Al Ahrar" (translation: “Breezes of the Free”) week after week for beaming out to the Arabic-speaking world throughout the past 4 years; and to emerge as a genuine pan-Arab celebrity.

In a Jordanian courthouse

So now to the events of this week. Ben Cohen's fine report today ["Jordanian Refusal to Extradite Paris Kosher Restaurant Killer to France Renews Concern Over Amman’s Terrorism Policy"] on The Algemeiner website sets the stage:

The Kingdom of Jordan’s highest court has rejected a French appeal for the extradition of a suspect in a deadly attack on a Jewish restaurant in Paris more than 30 years ago — raising further concerns that the stalwart ally of the West continues to offer safe haven to terrorists wanted by the courts of other countries, including the United States.
On Tuesday, Jordan’s Court of Cassation ruled against the extradition of 57-year-old Nizar Tawfiq Mussa Hamada, one of the alleged participants in the Aug. 9, 1982 attack at Chez Jo Goldenberg, a kosher restaurant in the traditionally Jewish Marais district of Paris.
After exploding a grenade inside the packed restaurant during its lunchtime service, two terrorists then opened fire on the diners with machine guns. Six people died and 22 more were wounded in the assault.
The atrocity was carried out by the Abu Nidal Organization — a radical Palestinian terrorist group that was active during the 1970s and 1980s, when it carried out attacks in over 20 countries. Named after the nom de guerre of its founder, Sabri al-Banna, the Abu Nidal group was backed at different times by the Iraqi, Syrian and Libyan regimes.
Speaking after Tuesday’s decision in favor of his client, Hamada’s lawyer, Mazan al-Tawil, praised the Jordanian judges for “categorically refusing” the French extradition request. Al-Tawil referred to the court’s decision to reject an earlier extradition request for Hamada in Feb. 2016 for the same reason — that a period of more than 30 years had elapsed since the atrocity, exceeding Jordan’s “limitation period” for extradition.
Al-Tawil’s co-conspirators in the attack on the restaurant have similarly escaped French justice because of the intervention of Jordanian courts.
The suspects in the Chez Jo Goldenberg attack were not formally identified until 2014, when two anonymous informants associated with Abu Nidal’s group supplied the French authorities with the missing information.
The following year, France’s top magistrate tasked with combating terrorism, Marc Trévidic, issued arrest warrants for several suspects, including Hamada and fellow Jordanian citizen Souhair Mouhamed Hassan Khalid al-Abassi — aka Amjad Atta — reputedly the mastermind behind the attack.
A French request to the Jordanian courts for al-Abassi’s extradition was similarly rejected in Oct. 2015 — just three months after the Hashemite Kingdom signed an extradition treaty with the French government.
But France is not the only country to have been turned down by Jordan after submitting an extradition request in connection with terrorism... [The Algemeiner today]

The Tamimi extradition

Ben Cohen is of course right.

That very same Jordanian tribunal, the Court of Cassation in Amman (the equivalent of a Supreme Court), handed down a highly problematic ruling in an unrelated extradition case two years ago. That 2017 case is about Mrs Tamimi. Its larger importance is that it considers the legality of an extradition treaty between Jordan and the United States that the US considers - without any doubt - in effect and binding.

The US had made a formal request years earlier (we think in 2013 but can't be sure) for Jordan to hand Tamimi over to them for bringing her to the US as required in their treaty. Jordan had persisted for the following three-plus years in its refusal.

The Jordanian court was asked, in effect, to rule on whether Jordan could, should or had to extradite Tamimi to face US terror charges.

It decided within the same week as the announcement of Federal charges against Tamimi, in fact just days later. In a somewhat bizarre ruling it first confirmed what everyone already knew, that there is indeed an extradition treaty with the US and has been since 1995. The Clinton Administration had signed it with King Hussein's government when it wanted to get its hands - and did get its hands - on Eyad Ismoil, one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plotters.

But, said the court, embarking on a Save Tamimi strategy, a constitutional flaw in the process meant that the treaty with the US could not be used to send the confessed killer to a Washington courthouse. Moreover, the treaty was not only invalid now. It had been invalid since the day it was signed.

This is an astounding thing for a US ally to claim.

It gets worse. Jordan has in reality happily extradited other Jordanian terrorists after 1995, The most recent was sentenced in the US just last year. None of them, as it happens, targeted Jews. (Could that be the missing key?)

The flaw, said the court, was in the fact that the treaty needed to get the approval of Jordan's rubber-stamp parliament. But it somehow never did. And it continues not to get it. Never getting it meant, the court implies, that Jordan's constitution prohibits the treaty from going into effect. And so Ahlam Tamimi could not be handed over to the US for prosecution. Case closed.

The US government reward

In its March 14, 2017 announcement, the DOJ did more than just unveil charges against Tamimi. It also added her to the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list where she still is today. A $5 Million reward for "information that leads to [her] arrest or conviction" was announced nine months later by the Rewards for Justice Unit (RFJ) of the Department of State.

Never in hiding: The Tamimis in their Amman apartment

in March 2017 where Associated Press reporters and

video people visited them [link including video]

That reward, which we pressed for is a curious thing. Why?

Because Tamimi has never been in hiding. She lives free-as-a-bird in Jordan today in a pleasant, well-equipped apartment with her family in Amman. Her husband, who is her cousin and also a convicted murderer was also released in the Shalit Deal. News crews, among them Associated Press visit regularly and interview her there.

The DOJ and the State Department's RFJ clearly know this.

Jordan's legal stance

Consider now what Jordan's Court of Cassation did in the Jo Goldenberg Massacre decision on Tuesday. It said (our words, not theirs):

We would simply love to do the right thing and extradite these evil shooters back to Paris. But - such rotten luck - the 2015 France/Jordan extradition treaty doesn't help since the statute of limitations has expired. Yes, it's too late. Our judicial hands are tied.

To which a pair of grieving parents in far-away Jerusalem say: So which one is it, Your Honors?

In your French decision, you treated that 2015 extradition treaty as legal and binding but you discovered an unrelated problem that meant the alleged perpetrator of the Paris massacre didn't have to be handed over to the French prosecutors. But in your American decision, you found the US treaty was invalid; some additional signature was needed, you said, and 22 years later Jordan's rulers still hadn't found the pen (except when it was needed for that French treaty). So Tamimi is saved the trouble of being prosecuted in Washington.

What a farce.

Did the 2015 France/Jordan extradition treaty get approved by the Jordanian rubber stamps that, according to the 2017 Tamimi decision, had to approve it? Apparently yes. Jordan's most senior judges aren't claiming the agreement with France is tainted constitutionally (as the 1995 US/Jordan one is, they say). If the French treaty was flawed, they would have said it. And they didn't.

We say: So then let that same Jordanian rubber stamp come now, this afternoon, right this hour, and at the king's command fix Jordan's allegedly invalid US Extradition Treaty. Isn't that how rubber stamps are supposed to work?

Or take the opposite view. Let's say the French treaty was never rubber stamped by Jordan's parliament. Yet the judges, who are silent on this point, treat it as being perfectly effective. No constitutional flaw. No need for it to be rubber stamped because, well, you know. But, oops, sadly there's this statute of limitations.

Taken together, the two Jordanian Court of Cassation decisions, one from 2017, one from this month, underscore the very high likelihood that the Jordan/US Treaty is in reality perfectly valid. That is precisely what the US says though it has not yet said it in public for reasons that bother us a great deal. (We have it in writing from multiple US government sources).

Without being excessively blunt on this, let's just say there's much room to be deeply cynical about Jordan's claims and its highest court's decision to refuse the US extradition request in the specific case of Tamimi. (Jordan's government itself, as distinct from its Court of Cassation, has never said a word in public about their refusal to extradite Tamimi.)

"Stop bothering Jordan"

Respected observers have noted that the kingdom of Jordan is going through a rocky period. There seems to be a sense that its dear friends in the West need to cut it some slack, not press too hard and do what needs to be done so its widely admired anti-terrorism monarch, King Abdullah II, can get on with the job of fixing the economy and building a stable, prosperous Western-facing state.

The man speaking is the Palestinian Arab father of the human bomb who

was brought to the Sbarro site by Ahlam Tamimi. (The Middle East bureau
chief of Australia's national broadcaster, ABC, at the time of the Sbarro 

massacre tried to persuade us to be interviewed with because he's so opposed
to violence and so pro-peace.) She fled to the safety of Ramallah
after instructing him to explode a few minutes later. Which he did.

We don't agree.

Jordan, entirely unreported by the news industry, has turned the Sbarro savage, Tamimi, into a pan-Arab hero from her safe, government-guaranteed perch in Amman, Jordan's capital.

Since 2011 via TV, social media and Internet-streamed video all over the Arabic speaking world and even into Israel's security prisons, she has become an inspiration to the powerful and very large forces inside the kingdom (and far beyond it) who want more bloodshed and conflict, more killing of Israelis and Jews, more "dignity" for the 80+ percent of Jordanians who call themselves Palestinians.

Tamimi no longer takes part in the weekly terror-promoting TV program we mentioned earlier. (Leaving it was not her choice - another story.) But she continues to play a key role in Jordan's fascination with Arab-on-Israeli terror. For a good example, see "24-Nov-18: How Jordan's mainstream media showcase a couple of role-model jihadist murderers".

Justice

The thwarted Jo Goldenberg extradition underscores what we already learned as we have tried (and continue to try) to bring our child's killer to justice since 2012:

You can have healthy bilateral relations based on justice, openness and honesty. Or you can pander to the powerful pro-terror forces operating inside Jordan. No one and certainly not a government that aligns itself strategically with the US can expect to have both.

It's a message we still hope (and fully expect) to hear articulated by officials of the US government.

25-Mar-19: On justice and decency for American victims of terrorism: When US indignation leads to a troubling comparison

Yilmaz [Image Source]

What follows might at first not seem a relevant contribution to our battle for the extradition to Washington DC of our child's killer. But in a surprising and little-noted way, that is just what it is.

In early February, we became aware for the first time of a terrorism case involving a Turk by the name of Adem Yilmaz. (He's actually quite peripheral to our purpose in this post.)

Yilmaz was indicted by the United States in 2015 on a variety of charges tied to terrorism activity. This included his alleged role in a human bomb attack in Afghanistan that took the lives of two American soldiers. Eleven other people were injured.

From the Associated Press report, we learned that the case against Yilmaz had been kept under seal - unpublicized, a secret - for some years right up until early February 2019. During those years, he was serving time in a German prison. He was convicted by a court in Dusseldorf in 2010 which

sentenced Yilmaz to 11 years in prison for trying to mount what the German judge reportedly called a "second September 11." [VOA] 

The American charges related to Yilmaz being part of a foiled 2007 plot to attack American citizens and facilities in Germany including the U.S. Air Force's Ramstein base. In order to bring him to justice, the American authorities needed to wait till he completed that German prison term.

This Yilmaz story caught our eye.

Why? Because of the parallels with Ahlam Tamimi who, though not held in custody, lived free and unencumbered in Jordan for five and a half years before the US Department of Justice unsealed criminal charges against her that had been issued in 2012.

Yilmaz behind bullet proof glass inside the courtroom
of the district court in Duesseldorf,
western Germany [Image Source]

Those Tamimi charges relate to her role in the devastating bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem in 2001. We described that process in a post ten days ago ["14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?"]

But what happened after the charges against the Turkish jihadist were unsealed is simply stunning.

Within a few days of being formally asked by the US to extradite Yilmaz who was "still deemed dangerous by German authorities", the Germans - according to another AP report - decided instead to put him on a plane to his native Turkey.

He was briefly held by anti-terrorism authorities at Istanbul's Ataturk Airport. And then he was simply let loose. He's now free [source].

How very not surprising.

The reaction from the United States, however, is the real point. A February 25, 2019 report quotes Robert Palladino, deputy spokesman for the State Department, telling a press briefing that the US has been in talks with Ankara about Yılmaz:

"Yılmaz is a convicted terrorist; he's charged with serious crimes by the United States... The United States will never relent in its efforts to bring Yılmaz to justice.”

Bravo!

AP again:

Deputy U.S. Secretary of State John Sullivan immediately called a meeting with German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, who was in Washington to take part in meetings of the coalition fighting against the Islamic State group, to express American displeasure. "We are gravely disappointed by Germany's decision to deport a dangerous terrorist — Adem Yilmaz — to Turkey, rather than to extradite him to the United States to face justice for his complicity in the murder of two American servicemen," acting U.S. Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in a statement later Wednesday after the two diplomats had met.

Gravely disappointed is a fine start.

And then this:

"Adem Yilmaz is responsible for the deaths of U.S. servicemembers," U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell said in a tweet on Thursday. "This failure to extradite him to the United States violates the terms and spirit of our Extradition Treaty."

Yes, it does.

And seeing those words there both uplifts us and depresses us. If only we had heard something even remotely like them in the Tamimi case.

Indeed, several disturbing Tamimi/Jordan-related questions suggested themselves to us as we thought through what had just happened. For instance why has the US evidently accepted Jordan's abrogation of its treaty obligations with vastly more understanding and grace and far less indignation than in the Germany/Turkey case? 

What wouldn't we give to hear a robust declaration from the State Department to its Jordanian counterparts calling them out on Jordan's dereliction of the responsibility to extradite Tamimi to the US; on flouting their treaty obligations; on undermining the rule of law.

Ahlam Tamimi

Then we learned that the Anti-Defamation League in Washington was thinking similar thoughts.

On March 12, 2019, the ADL'S CEO and National Director Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a public letter to the US Attorney General William P. Barr highlighting some of the parallels between the Yilmaz and Tamimi cases.

And, to our rising optimism, he asked for an official public response. (The emphasis in the quotes that follow is ours.)

Greenblatt noted that

Ms. Tamimi’s case is almost identical in many respects to the Yilmaz case on which the Justice Department recently spoke out. As you may know, Tamimi is on the list of America’s Most Wanted Terrorists because of her role in a 2001 suicide bombing at a Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem by the U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas that killed 15 people, including two American civilians.

One of those killed American civilians, as most regular readers of this blog will know, is our daughter Malki whose life ended when she was just 15.

That attack also injured over 100 others, including four Americans, one of whom remains in a permanent vegetative state since that attack over 17 years ago. Tamimi was indicted in 2013 by the U.S. Department of Justice for precisely this reason after Israel reluctantly released her under duress as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner swap. Like Yilmaz, Tamimi is a dangerous terrorist who has been enjoying legal impunity in a U.S. ally (Jordan) that since March 2017 has refused to honor its treaty to extradite her to the United States, even though the State Department lists that treaty as still in force on its website. Jordan has previously extradited terrorism suspects to the United States under this treaty. In the meantime, Tamimi has bragged (on camera) about her role in killing Jewish children and makes repeated public appearances as a celebrity and role model, including on Jordanian television, seated beside Jordanian politicians, and at the country’s main trade union office.

We were thrilled by how the ADL letter then set about framing the issue:

This is a vital matter of justice and decency for American victims of terrorism, and for ensuring that America does not apply a double-standard in pursuing justice when the victims are American Jews or other American citizens visiting the Jewish State. 

As the criminal charges the U.S. Department of Justice has filed against Tamimi illustrate, American law clearly grants our government the right – and the obligation – to pursue and prosecute terrorists who murder American citizens abroad, and yet not a single terrorist who has killed an American in Israel or the disputed territories has ever been successfully tried by the U.S. government, and almost none have even been indicted by the U.S. government. 

This case is a welcome exception in that the Department of Justice has taken vigorous steps to bring this terrorist to American justice, but the government of Jordan is thwarting the Department of Justice efforts. (To be best of our knowledge, there is no indication that the State Department has acted as vigorously as the Justice Department to ensure that Jordan complies with America’s extradition request.)

The letter goes on to pose some sharp and very welcome questions:

As such, I have several questions for you that go to the heart of whether America is equally committed to ensuring justice for these victims of terrorist acts, including:

First, has the U.S. government sought a review of the Jordanian Court of Cassation’s March 2017 decision to invalidate America’s 1995 extradition treaty with Jordan on narrow, technical grounds, rendering it void from the day it was signed until today, and denying the extradition to the United States of Ahlam al-Tamimi, an admitted mass murderer whose victims include three U.S. citizens?

Second, does the U.S. government agree that this Jordanian decision runs counter to the reality that Jordan has extradited at least three Jordanian citizens to the United States, where they were prosecuted and imprisoned for serious crimes? And that these extraditions related to the deaths of fewer American citizens than the number of killings of U.S. citizens for which Tamimi has been charged?

Third, will the U.S. government clarify to its Jordanian ally its extreme dissatisfaction at the highest levels regarding how this action has resulted in Tamimi evading justice while developing a celebrity persona and a career as a media commentator, as a figure of significant influence in Jordan advocating terrorist attacks and as a person actively encouraging Jordanians and Arabic-speakers outside Jordan (via a television program she broadcast globally from Amman between 2012 and 2016) to provide material support to terrorist organizations?

Fourth, does the U.S. government see the Jordanian court ruling, Jordan’s subsequent refusal to do anything to ratify the extradition treaty to overcome that ruling, and its refusal to extradite Tamimi outside of the framework of that treaty as an unacceptable dereliction of a strategic ally’s responsibility to uphold its legal obligations and the rule of law, as well as a stain on Jordan’s record as a generally staunch partner in the fight against terrorism and extremism?

And fifth, what does the U.S. government intend to do to ensure that Tamimi does not continue to enjoy her legal impunity and public profile in Jordan in the same manner that Adem Yilmaz will likely be able to do as a result of Germany’s refusal to extradite him to the United States, which, as you noted, helped him “deliberately... escape justice”?

As far as we know, the ADL has not yet heard back from the DOJ. We will be watching.

And hoping.