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eretzyisrael · 3 years ago

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Remembering the Sbarro Massacre

In my previous blog I wrote incorrectly that 16 Israelis were murdered in the 2001 Sbarro Restaurant bombing, with one victim remaining unconscious only to die later.

The truth is that 15 died in the explosion or immediately after, and 130 were injured, some of them very seriously. A 31-year old woman named Chana Nachenberg, who was there with Sarah, her toddler daughter, suffered a traumatic brain injury from one of the pieces of shrapnel in the bomb, and entered what doctors call a “persistent vegetative state.” Chana is still alive 20 years later, and still unresponsive. Her daughter Sarah was one of the few at the location who escaped unhurt.

A person in a vegetative state has some brain function, but is not able to communicate. Sometimes they recover, but the longer they have been in this condition, the less likely it becomes. Are they in any sense aware? Nobody knows, but I hope not. Here is something Sarah wrote about her mother some years ago. Twenty years is a long time, the length of a generation. Think about what happened in your life in the past 20 years. Today Sarah has a daughter of her own.

I was informed of my error by Arnold Roth, who lost his daughter Malki in the bombing. Malki was 15, and had gone to Sbarro’s for pizza with a friend, Michal Raziel. Both girls were among the murder victims. Several years ago I met Arnold for lunch in Jerusalem, and as we walked back along Jaffa Road toward his car and the bus station, I suddenly realized that we were at the corner with King George St. where the Sbarro restaurant had been. There is a plaque at the location with the names of the victims on it. I could only imagine what Arnold was feeling.

Since Malki’s death, Arnold and his wife Frimet have taken on two tasks. One is to help provide home care alternatives for disabled children, and to this end they established the Keren Malki Foundation in her name. The other is to get justice for their daughter, one of whose murderers walks free.

The Sbarro bombing was one of the most horrifying episodes of the Second Intifada, when Palestinian suicide bombers exploded on almost a daily basis in buses, restaurants, markets, and railroad and bus stations. The attack was planned by Ahlam Tamimi, then a 20-year old journalism student who chose the location and accompanied a suicide bomber, Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri to the restaurant. Al-Masri carried a guitar case containing 5-10 kg. of explosive and hundreds of nails and other shrapnel. Tamimi left him there and returned to Ramallah, where she had a part-time job as a TV news presenter, and reported on the attack to her Palestinian audience. A remarkably cold killer, Tamimi later smiled broadly and thanked Allah when an interviewer noted that she had killed seven children, and not just three as she had thought. She has said that she is not sorry for what she did and would do it again.

Tamimi was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences, and the bomb-maker, Hamas commander Abdullah Barghouti, to 67 (!) of them for his role in multiple murders. But in 2011 when the Israeli government foolishly agreed to trade 1027 convicted terrorists for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, Tamimi was among them. She was released and deported to Jordan, where she was given a job on Jordanian TV and became a media celebrity. Frimet Roth wrote then that the release and hero’s welcome of Ahlam Tamimi made her feel as though her daughter were being murdered a second time.

Chana Nachenberg, Malki Roth, and another victim, Shoshana Hayman Greenbaum – who was pregnant – all had American citizenship, and the US has demanded Tamimi’s extradition, in part due to the efforts of Arnold and Frimet Roth. But Jordan refuses to honor its extradition treaty, probably because the king fears the reaction of his subjects. Apparently American officials agree with him, because they haven’t tried to force him to give her up, despite her position on the FBI’s list of most wanted terrorists.

In the last few weeks there has been an uptick in Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. There have been stabbings, car rammings, an attempted mass shooting (only one death, thanks to quick police reaction), and the recent ambush of a car carrying yeshiva students, which resulted in the death of one of them. And of course, there is also the “background noise” of daily rock-throwing and firebomb attacks which don’t make the news, even in Israel, unless a terrorist gets lucky and kills someone. We get used to all of this, and perhaps don’t think about the suffering of the terror victims and their families. And we don’t dare ask ourselves what it must be like to be as full of hate as Ahlam Tamimi.

One thing that we do know is that Palestinian terrorism is more than just an expression of rage; it is a targeted act with a specific objective. Terrorists and their supporters believe that they can make life here unbearable for Jews, who will pack up and “go back where they came from.”

This is a remarkable mistake for Palestinians, who are usually relatively clever and resourceful. Very few Israeli Jews have a place to go “back” to; certainly Mizrachi Jews are not welcome in North Africa, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and so on. Nor do the descendants of Jews displaced or murdered in the Holocaust, nor the children of those who came from Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire prior to WWII. I doubt that Russia would welcome former Soviet Jews, either. But even those from Western countries, like the Roths, are not going anywhere, despite the pain, sometimes felt very personally, of terrorism.

Israel is not a colony, and it is not a temporary arrangement. The land is soaked in Jewish blood, and the Jewish people have taken root in it. The idea that they can be dislodged by Palestinian terrorism, either the organized kind coming from Hamas or the random acts of hatred by “lone wolf terrorists” is ludicrous. All the terrorists can do is provoke a reaction – one that may ultimately lead to their expulsion in a second Nakba.

Abu Yehuda

#Israel and Palestinian Arabs #Terrorism

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eretzyisrael · 3 years ago

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An extinguished, precious life remembered in Melbourne

Twenty years ago we started the endless process of adjusting to life without our delightful first-born daughter Malka Chana - Malki to her friends - stolen from us before she reached her sixteenth birthday.

Our copy of the Melbourne Herald-Sun's front page report on August 11, 2001 isdamaged. We are trying to acquire a repairedimage.

It wasn't an illness or a tragic accident that removed Malki from the warm embrace of those who loved her. It was a gang of ideology-crazed thugs led by a chillingly satanic Jordanian woman, armed with a powerful explosive package disguised as a human being, an Arab man in his twenties, and egged on by millions of backers.

Those millions still exert a deeply painful influence on our lives.

We scan the Arabic social media six days a week. This week on the day of the twentieth anniversary we saw - though we didn't need it - plenty of evidence of how utterly different the world in which they live their lives is from ours in this generations-long war of terror.

It's a war that Arabs launched against against Jews in Palestine long before the name Palestine was appropriated by the Arab side. And decades before the State of Israel announced its existence as new-born state on the 1948 day the British Mandate ended and six Arab armies invaded.

A random selection of some deeply hostile and ugly anniversary messages appearing on Twitter (minus the links - we have interest in giving these people any traffic or attention):

Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Operation Sbarro carried out by the martyr Izz Al-Din Al-Masri in Jaffa Street in occupied Jerusalem with the help of the liberated captive Ahlam Al-Tamimi in retaliation for the martyrdom of the two leaders Gamal Selim and Jamal Mansour [Arabic]

..A martyrdom operation in the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem which led to the deaths of 20 Zionists and the wounding of 100 [Arabic]

We do not want to forget the liberated captive, Ahlam Al-Tamimi, who carried the attacker of the Sbarro restaurant, Izz Al-Din Al-Masri, to the restaurant after which she was arrested by the occupation army [Arabic]

Prepare it for them in the manner of the people of Aqaba and serve it [pizza] hot and delicious. Al-Masri [the name of the human bomb], go through here. Occupied Jerusalem August 9, 2001 [Arabic]

Proud of our representative from the family in the heroic operation. The liberated captive, Ahlam Al-Tamimi, who transported the martyr Izz Al-Din Al-Masri and handed him a guitar stuffed with maddening death [Arabic - posted by a male with the surname Tamimi]

...Al-Masri was killed on the responsibility of the Jews and their responsibility is extensive [Arabic]

If her parents hadn’t chosen to become foreign invaders she’d probably be alive now

My argument is with the creation of an apartheid theocratic state created by the West (mostly by the US and Britain) in Palestine largely so Jews wouldn't immigrate to the US. I'm a Jew not an Israeli Zionist. She should never have been put in this position by her dad.

We saw no Arabic messages condemning or criticizing Tamimi or the massacre. They might exist and we're just not seeing them, but the truth is we have been looking for years and not finding.

Malki, like her father, was born in Australia. The current edition of the Australian Jewish News, a weekly community-focused newspaper, ran this editorial on Thursday. It's reprinted with the permission of its editor, Zeddy Lawrence.

‘A precious life extinguished’

"THE Australian Jewish community was in mourning this week," reported The AJN 20 years ago, on Friday, August 17, 2001. "The death of 15-year-old Malki Roth in the Sbarro bombing catapulted Israel's crisis into personal grief for much of this community."

Fifteen innocent people were killed in the terrorist attack just a few days earlier, when a guitar case packed with nails was detonated at the central Jerusalem pizza restaurant. Among the victims were seven people aged between just two and 16. Scores of other diners were wounded.

Reflecting on the death of his daughter at the time, Arnold Roth told The AJN, "This was the extinguishing of a precious life."

Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, who masterminded the attack and drove the bomber to the restaurant, was apprehended by Israel soon afterwards and sentenced to 16 life terms in an Israeli jail. But in 2011, she was one of more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage in Gaza for five years.

Since that time, Tamimi has lived in Jordan, feted as a celebrity, and expressing her joy at the high death toll the Sbarro bombing inflicted.

Determined to bring her back to justice, Arnold and his American-born wife Frimet have long called for her to be extradited to the US, as Malki and another victim held American citizenship.

A warrant was issued, but insisting the extradition treaty between the countries was never ratified, Jordan has never acted on it.

The latest evidence, however, appears to show that the treaty was indeed signed.

With that in mind, as the community marks 20 years since Malki's death, the Roths are hoping their sustained campaign may bear fruit.

Pressure is mounting within Washington for the US to withhold foreign assistance from Jordan, and they're urging the Australian government – who they claim have been reticent to speak out – to also take a stand.

Twenty years on, we share their hope that the authorities, both here and Stateside, will take action, so that the unrepentant, bragging terrorist who has Malki's blood on her hands will soon be back behind bars, where she belongs.

The same AJN edition carried this article by senior journalist Peter Kohn:

Still seeking justice for Malki Roth

ON the 20th of Av this year (July 29), Arnold and Frimet Roth visited the Israeli grave of Malki Roth and recited Kaddish. It was their daughter’s yahrzeit – 20 years after the Australian-born teenager was murdered in a Palestinian terrorist attack at a Jerusalem pizzeria, along with 15 others, including seven children.

“Life was heavy,” Malki’s father told The AJN this week, reflecting on the yahrzeit. “You’re missing somebody desperately and feel awful about the fact that she’s not part of your life.”

But this Monday, August 9, the secular anniversary of Malki’s killing, Roth was back on Zoom and on the phone continuing his relentless campaign to see Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the attack, extradited from Jordan to the US. “The ninth of August … that’s all about justice,” he stated.

Tamimi had picked out the Sbarro pizzeria targeted by her and another bomber on August 9, 2001, her accomplice dying in the attack. Tamimi left the scene disguised as a tourist, later professing her glee as the ever-rising death toll was reported.

Although sentenced in Israel to 16 consecutive life terms, she was exchanged in a 2011 prisoner swap to free Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity. She continues to be feted as a media celebrity in Jordan, and, according to Roth, she recently added a regular newspaper column to her stint as a Jordanian TV show host.

In the US, she faces charges relating to the death of two American citizens – Malki, who held dual citizenship, being one of them – and an extradition request was issued in 2017.

But four years on, Roth is still battling three governments to get Tamimi extradited.

For years, the US had maintained its hands were tied because Jordan had not ratified its extradition treaty, a position stated by a Jordanian court in 2017. However, in 2019, Roth learned from an American official that Jordan had indeed ratified the treaty as far back as 1995.

Last year, under US freedom-of-information laws, he even received an archived letter from Jordan’s former monarch King Hussein to the US State Department confirming that fact. He is hopeful this legal development will provide a much needed stepping stone.

Desperate for the Australian government to weigh in, Roth’s entreaties to Malcolm Turnbull when he was PM did not bear fruit. Approaches to Prime Minister Scott Morrison last year were referred to Foreign Minister Marise Payne, whose office cited constitutional problems in Jordan with extraditing its nationals, an assertion Roth rejects because oddly “it goes beyond what the Jordanians say”.

In Israel meanwhile, Roth says his fight to have Tamimi extradited to the US has been “betrayed by a chain of Netanyahu governments and, so far at least, by the new government. Of course, Israel could do something. But Israel has no charges against this woman. Israel has washed its hands of the case.”

Roth’s growing perception is that justice for Malki has become expendable to higher policy priorities in Jerusalem, Washington and Canberra.

“There’s a lot of group-think going on – among Israelis, among Americans, among media people,” he said, describing Tamimi as “the most wanted female fugitive alive today”.

The Roths maintain their ties to the families of other victims of the Sbarro bombing, particularly to a victim who remains “in a vegetative state”, he said.

Arnold remains honorary chair of the Malki Foundation, established in his daughter’s memory to support children with disabilities. Malki had been a caring, loving companion to her severely disabled younger sister and others with special needs.

“A 15-year-old girl who had a legacy – it’s unbelievable, but she did,” exclaimed Roth. “She was so good, so empathetic, so involved in making the world better for children with special needs.”

This blog isn't a memorial to our daughter. That function belongs to the website of the Malki Foundation (www.kerenmalki.org). We hope you will visit it.

In the context of terrorism and the worldwide efforts to defeat it, we write here at the site you are now visiting about our efforts to bring Malki's killers to justice - in particular Ahlam Tamimi. the Jordanian orchestrator of the massacre at Sbarro twenty years ago.

Tamimi, now 41 years old and a celebrity in the Arab world, lives free and famous in her homeland despite being the world's most woman female fugitive with a $5M reward issued by the US State Department for her capture and conviction.

One valuable way to give us your support is to sign our petition at change.org/ExtraditeTamimi

#AJN #Australia #Herald Sun #Jordan #JusticeForMalki #melbourne #Rewards for Justice #Sbarro #State Department

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eretzyisrael · 5 years ago

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The odds tend to be stacked against people who want to see actual justice done

David Horovitz, founder and editor of Times of Israel, sent this letter today to the TOI Community list. It's shared here with his permission. Last month, as some of you may recall, I wrote a lengthy story about Malki Roth, a 15-year-old Israeli girl who was one of the 14 people killed in the 2001 Sbarro bombing in Jerusalem. The article detailed the years-long effort by her bereaved family to have Ahlam Tamimi extradited from Jordan to stand trial in the United States. Tamimi, the unrepentant terrorist who orchestrated that monstrous attack in the popular pizza parlor, was freed by Israel in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner “exchange.” Roth held dual Israeli-American citizenship, and the US has been focusing increasing attention on the case — filing charges against Tamimi in 2013; announcing those charges in 2017; urging Jordan to honor its extradition treaty in her case; and, in December 2019, passing legislation enabling the withholding of US foreign aid to Jordan if the kingdom continues to refuse to do so. Now, the Trump Administration’s ambassador-designate to Jordan, Henry Wooster, has promised in written answers to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to “explore all options” to secure Tamimi’s extradition and bring her to justice, noting: “US generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing as well as economic support and other assistance is carefully calibrated to protect and advance the range of US interests in Jordan and in the region.” No potential US ambassador would comment in this way on so sensitive an issue without careful consultation among his superiors. A cynical take on the timing of Wooster’s remarks might suggest that the Trump Administration is sending a signal to Jordan’s King Abdullah amid the escalating tension surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declared intention to start annexing the Jordan Valley and the West Bank settlements two weeks from now — a move bitterly opposed by Amman and deemed “unacceptable” by the king only yesterday. US pressure on Abdullah to extradite Tamimi is extremely discomfiting for the monarch. The unrepentant killer has become quite the celebrity in her home country, and acquiescence to the US extradition request could cause ructions. Is the US indicating to Abdullah that he might want to dial down his anti-annexation efforts, or risk a dialing up of the US pressure for Tamimi to be handed over? If that sounds conspiratorial, it is worth noting that the Roth family’s battle for justice has played out through almost a decade of geopolitical maneuverings, betrayals and hypocrisies. As Malki’s father, Arnold Roth, noted yesterday, when the news broke of Wooster’s comments, “the odds tend to be stacked against people who want to see actual justice done in actual cases where they feel personally engaged.” At the same time, he also called Wooster’s remarks “encouraging” and “a meaningful step forward in exposing and we hope ending a dark chapter.” Tamimi, “who chose Sbarro as her target and brought the human bomb there because of the children she knew would be murdered,” Arnold Roth noted, “should never have been freed. And once freed and back in Jordan, she should never have been allowed to become an adored celebrity. And once she was famous, Jordan should have jumped at the opportunity to hand over to their most important ally, the US. “We long for the day she faces justice in a US court,” he concluded. Maybe, just maybe, that day is now a little nearer.

#Ahlam Tamimi #jordan #JusticeForMalki #Sbarro

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