Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Sbarro Pizza

Showing posts with label Sbarro Pizza. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 15, 2023

08/15 Links Pt2: The Sbarro bombing mastermind is still free. Put her back in jail; New York’s New Untouchables; There is no such thing as an Israeli ‘settler’ in the West Bank

From Ian:

The Sbarro bombing mastermind is still free. Put her back in jail

Whenever Tamimi’s name was mentioned in the media in reference to prisoner swaps, the Justice Ministry assured the Roth family that there were no plans to release her. Over the years, however, it became clear to the Roth family that the woman who orchestrated their daughter’s murder would not stay in prison for long.

In October 2011, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan to release 1,027 terrorists in a prisoner exchange for Gilad Schalit, an Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas for about five years. Despite the years of reassurance, the worst had come true for the Roth family: Ahlam Tamimi was one of the terrorists to be released.

The nature of Tamimi’s discharge was akin to twisting the knife and reopening wounds to the families of the Sbarro victims. Tamimi was taken to a private meeting with Khaled Mashaal, former leader of the Hamas terror organization. She was then put on a VIP flight to Jordan and was received as a hero and a model of Palestinian resistance. Today, Tamimi lives in a middle-class neighborhood and is a television presenter on a Hamas-affiliated Jordanian TV channel.

Several weeks following Tamimi’s return to Jordan, the US Department of Justice intervened, since a federal statute mandates that the United States pursue any terrorist accountable for the murder of an American citizen on foreign soil. Today, Tamimi is one of 24 terrorists on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Jordan has refused to comply with its 1995 Extradition Treaty with the US.

Although the US had charged Tamimi under the law in 2013 (and sealed those charges for four years), the Jordanian courts ruled that Tamimi would not be handed over to the FBI because “the treaty was invalid.” Arnold Roth responds, “This is a fabrication: the treaty is invalid because Jordan made it invalid.”

The Roth family has been campaigning and lobbying US officials since 2017, demanding justice for their daughter. Yet, according to Arnold, the US is making no attempts at making this happen while “Israel is playing a quiet role in encouraging the Americans not to press Jordan or put them in a position where they are pressured to hand over Tamimi.”

Time and again, the Roth family has been told that this case is a “priority” for the American government, yet “officials” also claim that handing over Tamimi would destabilize Jordan and the entire Middle East. Arnold points out that in the past, Jordan has extradited terrorists charged by the United States.

It has been 10 years since the charges against Tamimi were filed, and Jordan is no closer to handing her over than it was from day one. Tamimi is roaming as a free woman, without needing to hide or live in secret. As Israelis, we accept that terrorism is a reality, but we cannot accept when politicians, judges and other leaders let a terrorist walk away without paying for her crimes.

Israel has already failed the Roth family; we cannot allow the US to do so as well. We, especially Israeli Americans, are morally obligated to use our voices and demand that Ahlam Tamimi is back where she belongs: behind bars.

New York’s New Untouchables

More then ten years ago, then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg boasted of his unique courage in confronting his city’s Ḥaredim in a regulatory fight over circumcision, asking rhetorically, “Who wants to have 10,000 guys in black hats outside your office, screaming?” Avi Schick sees this as the beginning of a trend whereby state and local politicians don’t simply endorse policies to which Orthodox Jews object, but deliberately choose policies aimed at interfering with their religious practices:

In October 2020, just as the harshest pandemic restrictions were being eased, Governor Cuomo created gerrymandered districts covering Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods where houses of worship were subject to severe limitations on attendance. Churches in those zones were also affected, but the governor openly declared that his target was “these ultra-Orthodox communities, who are also very politically powerful.”

Only Orthodox Jews are targeted for harsh treatment and simultaneously described as (too) politically powerful. The message is that they deserve what they get.

Most recently, New York and its most powerful media institution have unleashed dangerous rules and rhetoric aimed at religious schooling. Yeshivas have been educating students in New York for more than 120 years, and the laws governing private schools have been on the books even longer. That history signifies deep satisfaction with the yeshiva system, but it is dismissed because, as the New York Times wrote, those “who might have taken action have instead accommodated a ḥasidic voting bloc.”

I don’t believe that New York’s mayors and governors are anti-Semites. But the New York we inhabit at the moment reflects the convergence of the nanny state and the secular state. There is little deference to individual or parental autonomy, and even less respect for religious activity. The result is government limitations on circumcision, prayer, and religious education.

There is no such thing as an Israeli ‘settler’ in the West Bank

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a settler is, “a person who arrives, especially from another country, to a new place in order to live there and use the land.” A settlement, according to vocabulary.com, is, “a colony or any small community of people.”

However, these definitions take on negative connotations when it pertains to Israel and Israelis. Even Israeli media have headlines such as, “Settlers arrested after deadly clash in Palestinian village.”

Various biblical texts refer to Israel as a “land flowing with milk and honey.” This description is in stark contrast to Mark Twain’s observations in 1867 that Israel (then called Palestine) was a desolate and barren country in both people and vegetation.

It was only after the start of the aliyah movement in the late 1800s, when many Jews joined their fellow Jews who had maintained a continuous presence in the Jewish homeland, did the land begin to bloom again with people and agriculture. The phrase “a land flowing with milk and honey” can be applied both in reality and metaphorically.

Jews meet the UN definition of indigenous people. Therefore, they are not “settlers,” and the places they live are not “settlements.” Which raises the rhetorical question: Why are there “Arab villages” but “Jewish settlements?”

Why are Jews settlers if they are indigenous people?
One unfortunate reason is a mistranslation of the Hebrew word Yishuv. The root of this word is shuv, to return. According to Wikipedia, the term Yishuv came into use in the 1880s to denote the body of Jewish residents in the Land of Israel, and became the word to describe the Jewish population of Israel prior to the establishment of the modern State in 1948.

The Hebrew word Yishuv translates to “community” in the form of towns, population, inhabitants, neighborhoods, villages, etc.

In 2016, Congressman DeSantis pointed out the double standard between extraditing murderers of Americans in Israel and everywhere else (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Chana Nachenberg, an American, died on May 31.

She was the last of the 16 victims of the Sbarro Massacre to die, the last victim of the Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi who masterminded that terrorist attack and lives today in Jordan, free and something of a celebrity.

If the US is frustrated by Jordan's refusal to honor its extradition treaty and hand over the terrorist, it is hiding it well. On May 25, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on the 77th anniversary of Jordanian independence:

The United States and Jordan share an enduring, strategic relationship deeply rooted in shared interests and values. We appreciate the important role Jordan plays in promoting peace and security across the region and countering violent extremism. (emphasis added)

During her hearing a few weeks ago on her nomination as the next US Ambassador to Jordan, Yael Lempert resisted Sen. Ted Cruz's suggestion that every tool should be used in order to pressure Jordan into honoring its treaty, including withholding aid. Lempert replied:

I think that that would need to be weighed very carefully against the range of issues and priorities that we have with the Jordanians before considering such a step, which I think would be profound.

Of course, Lempert added the expected, "I think that what I can confirm to you is that I will do everything in my power to ensure that Ahlam Tamimi faces justice in the United States," but the impression remains that somehow in the interests of Middle East peace, the US has to be careful not to apply too much pressure, that special considerations need to be taken into account.

But it's not that Jordan is completely opposed to extraditing terrorists.

Just last month, Jordan agreed with UAE to extradite Khalaf Abdul Rahman Al-Rumaithi. According to UAE, Al-Rumaithi was a wanted terrorist they had tried in absentia and sentenced to 15 years for "establishing a secret organization affiliated with the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood." On the other hand, HRW claimed he was one of the victims of the mass trials of 94 government critics of the government, resulting in 69 convictions. The Jordanian court opposed the extradition, yet Al-Rumaithi ended up being extradited anyway.

That is an interesting counterpoint to the case of Ahlam Tamimi, where the court also opposed extradition, yet despite a formal treaty, the court's decision stood, while in the case of UAE, the decision -- and authority -- of the Jordanian court was pushed aside. Arnold Roth, whose daughter was one of Tamimi's victims, pointed out the double standard:

Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies suggested that a different consideration was at play:

Of course, the difference might be whether the victims were Arabs -- or Jews.

This inability of the US to pressure Arab countries on the issue of terrorism -- even when the US provides funding -- is evident in US relations with the Palestinian Authority as well.

At the end of May, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. During her testimony, Leaf admitted that the PA was still making "pay-to-slay" payments to the terrorists including the families of terrorists who killed Americans and Israelis.

“We are working to bring pay-to-slay to an end. Period,” Leaf said. Asked if the administration had succeeded, Leaf replied, “not yet.”

Is the Biden administration working as hard to end "pay-to-slay" as it is on getting Jordan to extradite Tamimi, who is responsible for the Americans who died in the Sbarro Massacre?

Putting aside the claim by the White House that they can bypass both the PA and the PLO and provide money directly to the Palestinian Arabs without violating the Taylor Force Act, why is the Biden Administration welcoming terrorists to the White House?

As Sen. Cruz put it:

You sent a report to Congress that officially certified that the Palestinian Authority and the PLO…have not met the legal requirements for ‘terminating payments for acts of terrorism against Israeli and US citizens. Now publicly, the administration defends engaging with terrorists, you claim things are going well, but when you file a statutorily mandated report with Congress, you admit the PLO is continuing what are called ‘pay-to-slay’ payments. They are paying for terrorists to murder Americans and to murder Israelis. And nonetheless, this administration is bringing those terrorist leaders to Washington, is bringing them to cocktail parties to wine and dine political leaders. [emphasis added]

Is this so different from King Abdullah II of Jordan being welcomed in the US and praised as a great friend of the US and ally in the fight against terrorism, while he refuses to honor his extradition treaty with the US and harbors the women who masterminded the Sbarro Massacre which killed Americans?

This possibility of a double standard when it comes to Middle East terrorism that affects Americans was expressed out loud in 2016 during a hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. The subject was Seeking Justice for Victims of Palestinian Terrorism in Israel. Chairing the hearing was then-Congressman Ron DeSantis. The issue was the Office of Justice for Victims of Overseas Terrorism within the Department of Justice and whether it was fulfilling its function in obtaining justice for the families of the victims of Palestinian terrorism.

At one point, DeSantis addressed Brad Wiegmann, Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the US Department of Justice. It became clear that there was a discrepancy between the number of terrorists being brought to justice who killed Americans in the Middle East as opposed to terrorists who killed Americans anywhere else in the world:

Mr. DeSantis: Mr. Wiegmann, the committee has counted that since '93, at least 64 Americans have been killed, as well as two unborn children, and 91 have been wounded by terrorists in Israel in disputed territories.

How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans in Israel or disputed territories has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted during this time period?

Mr. Wiegmann: I think the answer is--is none.

Mr. DeSantis: Okay. How many terrorists who have killed or wounded Americans anywhere else overseas has the United States indicted, extradited, or prosecuted?

Mr. Wiegmann: I don't have an exact figure for you.

Mr. DeSantis: But it would be a decent size number, though, correct?

Mr. Wiegmann: It would be a significant number, yes.

Here is the video:

A little later, DeSantis looked for an explanation for this discrepancy:

Mr. DeSantis: Now, it's- been alleged that the reason that DOJ does not prosecute the Palestinian terrorists who harm Americans in Israel, the disputed territories, is that the Department of Justice is concerned that such prosecutions will harm efforts to promote the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, or that it will actually harm the Palestinian Authority.

So let me ask you straight up, is that a consideration the Department of Justice?

Mr. Wiegmann: I can assure that is absolutely not the case.

Mr. DeSantis: And has the State Department ever made arguments to the Department of Justice to handle some of the Palestinian terrorism cases differently than you may normally handle, say, a terrorism case in Asia?

Mr. Wiegmann: Absolutely not.

Here is the video:

Wiegmann says flat out in his testimony that there is no consideration making the US pull their punches when it comes to bringing Palestinian terrorists to justice -- neither a concern for possible harm to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, nor a concern that extraditing Palestinian terrorists might harm the Palestinian Authority.

Yet those suspicions persist and now some believe that it is Jordan that the US is concerned might be harmed by insisting on extraditing the terrorist responsible for the deaths of Americans, even as we see that there are considerations that cause Jordan to extradite to a fellow Arab country but not to its US ally.

There is nothing to indicate that Wiegmann was not telling the truth.
Yet the fact remains that American survivors of Palestinian terrorism, the families of the victims -- and the families who lost loved ones in the Sbarro Massacre are not getting the justice that was promised to them and that they deserve.

If this is not because of political reasons, then what is the reason?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

State Department Prioritizes Abu Akleh Death, Ignoring that of Malki Roth (Judean Rose)

Ned Price, US State Department spokesman, reacting to Israel’s report on the Abu Akleh shooting, said that the United States has made it a priority to get involved and try to help when civilians get hurt during military operations: “The United States has made it a priority to mitigate and respond to civilian harm caused by military operations,” said Price.

That seems to be true in regard to the accidental shooting death of journalist and American citizen Abu Akleh. But it seems that some American citizens are more equal than others. A recent letter from the parents of Sbarro terror victim and American citizen Malki Roth requesting a meeting with President Biden, went unanswered.

From the AP (emphasis added):

“Something is obviously terribly wrong with how the pursuit of America’s most wanted female fugitive is going,” the Roths wrote in their letter, sent to Biden through the U.S. Embassy.

“We want to explain this to you better in a face-to-face meeting,” they added. “We want you to look us in the eyes, Mr. President, and tell us how Jordan’s king can be a praiseworthy ally.”

. . . There was no immediate comment from either the White House or the Jordanian Royal Hashemite Court.

Roth’s letter was sent days after the family of a Palestinian-American journalist killed while covering an Israeli military raid in the occupied West Bank lashed out at Biden over his administration’s response to her death.

Relatives of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh expressed “grief, outrage and (a) sense of betrayal” in a letter accusing the U.S. of trying to erase Israeli responsibility for her death.

A U.S. investigation concluded that Abu Akleh was likely killed by Israeli fire, but also said there was “no reason to believe” she was deliberately targeted. Israel says Abu Akleh was killed during a gun battle with Palestinian militants, and it is unclear who fired the deadly shot. The Palestinians say Israel intentionally killed her.

The White House declined to comment on the letter or the [Roth] family’s request for a meeting during his visit.

Maybe making a priority of mitigating and responding to civilian harm doesn’t apply when the civilian and American citizen happens to be a Jewish child. At least, that is my conclusion. And what really rankles is the fact that Abu Akleh’s death was a work accident. For a journalist like Shireen Abu Akleh, entering a combat zone in order to write up a conflict is part of the job. Abu Akleh knew the dangers. She is not the first journalist to be shot and killed while covering a military operation, nor will she unfortunately be the last.

Reporters like Abu Akleh, literally and knowingly take their lives in their hands to cover such stories. And they revel in it. It’s exciting. There’s a cause involved. Audiences eat it up which means more attention to them. “Journalists can’t hide the seductive draw of the bloodworks. They can’t help themselves. They love war,” wrote Politico’s Jack Shafer in Why Journalists Love War.

Abu Akleh entered a shooting zone because she wanted to, even though she knew she could be shot. There is no doubt she thought about it: imagined her death, and the events leading up to and after that not implausible event. Whether Shireen thought she would be shot by accident or on purpose, by her own or by Israelis is anyone’s guess. But she would have been well aware it could happen. She was not a civilian accidentally caught in the fray. She entered the fray of her own volition.

Malki Roth, on the other hand, did not know, when she entered the Sbarro pizzeria with her best friend, that she was entering a conflict zone. She didn’t know when she chose her destination that arms would be used in the vicinity, and that she might be blown up. She was a teenager--a child, really--who wanted to have a slice of pizza with a friend, during the final days of her summer vacation.

Ahlam Tamimi planned and helped to execute the terror attack that killed Malki Roth. Released by Israel as part of the prisoner exchange for captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, Tamimi now lives in Jordan. As Tamimi is no longer in Israel's hands, it falls to the United States to seek justice in this case. Why? Because Tamimi is directly responsible for civilian harm to American citizens--for example, Malka Chana Roth--and while America twiddles its thumbs and looks away, Tamimi is free to commit more such terror attacks and kill even more American children, God forbid.

The FBI offers a reward for the capture of Tamimi. But the offer is only symbolic: a meaningless gesture. King Abdullah of Jordan has been wined and dined at the White House by Democrat and Republican administrations alike. No one says boo to Abdullah in regard to his harboring of a monster who has murdered Americans. No president has spoken to Abdullah of children deliberately murdered because they were Jews. Nothing is ever said of the failure of Jordan to honor its extradition treaty with the US.

In essence, there is a reward, not a reward. State doesn’t really care how you look at this. They’ve got their priorities: Shireen yes, Malki no. Because State does not, apparently, prioritize mitigating and responding to the deliberate murder of Jews. If there were a basic formula to this, it might be: Arabs=Kosher, Jews=Treif—that is if anyone ever gave it any active thought. The truth is that State, as a body, has always been irredeemably antisemitic.

As a result of this institutional anti-Jewish bias, the world watched as US government officials pressured Israel to investigate what Israel was already investigating: the shooting death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. The world did not, however, see anything about Jordan’s failure to extradite the terrorist responsible for murdering American citizen Malki Roth. The world didn’t see or hear about the extradition issue because the media doesn’t care to cover the Roth family’s campaign for justice. Is it because in this case, the victim was Jewish?

"Increasingly, you're hearing members of the Jewish community saying things like 'the world doesn’t care about Jewish lives,’” says CAMERA Communication Director Jonah Cohen. “You see the sentiment expressed in recent books such as Dara Horn’s 'People Love Dead Jews' and Fiamma Nirenstein’s 'Jewish Lives Matter.'
It’s heartbreaking, and the media is feeding this sentiment. Nothing so illustrates the problem as the difference in media coverage between Abu Akleh and Malki Roth,” says Cohen. “The former gets wall-to-wall coverage, while the latter takes a grassroots campaign to get attention. CAMERA, in fact, had to take out advertisements in several newspapers so that Malki would not be forgotten.”

Arnold and Frimet Roth are determined that no one will forget their daughter. But it is difficult for them to stomach the double standard of US officials. The US exerted intense pressure on Israel in the matter of the accidental death of a journalist who knowingly entered a war zone. Meanwhile, no pressure is brought to bear on Jordan, and no US official holds Abdullah to account for his harboring of a terrorist who deliberately murdered children, among them Malki Roth, an American citizen. Arnold Roth, speaking to the disparity in the way US officials treat these two situations, notes that the US has no jurisdiction in the matter of Abu Akleh’s death.

“The Abu Akleh clan have pursued what they call accountability with fierceness and with heavy suggestions that not only did someone Israeli do the killing but that it was deliberate and focused on her. In reality, no smoking gun has been found. The Aljazeera reporter’s death came in a flurry of live gunfire captured on video coming from two opposite directions.

“They have a problem however, and it’s not one of proving what happened. It’s simply that this took place outside the territory of the United States. The US has no jurisdiction in Shireen Abu Akleh’s death-by-shooting,” says Roth, who reveals what it has been like for him to watch the attention showered on the Abu Akleh family by American government officials.

“It’s been distressing to watch high-level US officials and politicians respond to the waves of Abu Akleh outrage with boundless support, sympathy and understanding.

“Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Washington with representatives of the Abu Akleh clan in July 2022 after personally inviting them there. The report is that he ‘expressed deepest condolences and commitment to pursue accountability for her tragic killing’ [JTA, July 27, 2022].

“Did I say distressing? It’s very, very different from how those very same officials along with their predecessors in office have treated us.

“Mr Blinken and his State Department colleagues – a long line of them - have maintained total public silence in the face of repeated efforts by my wife Frimet and me to engage on a different matter of accountability – one that is absolutely a matter of US justice.

“Failed US justice,” says Roth, who points out that while some questioned whether Abu Akleh’s death was accidental, there is no question at all that Malki Roth was killed in a deliberate act of terror.

“Our daughter Malki was murdered at the age of 15 in a pizzeria bombing. There is not the smallest doubt that this was terrorism. Also: that it targeted children, that the goal was to inflict the heaviest possible loss of life; that it met with appallingly widespread approval in Palestinian Arab and Jordanian society; and that the exploding man (misleadingly called a suicide bomber in the news industry) who is a legend today in Palestinian Arab society was brought there to kill by a Jordanian woman.

“Ahlam Aref Ahmad Al-Tamimi, an avowed Hamas terrorist, is the Jordanian woman. A journalism student at the time she chose the site for the atrocity and brought the bomb to the door of the pizzeria, she has made a spectacular career out of confessing her central role. She continues to inspire audiences throughout the Arabic-speaking world with the re-telling of the details.

“For instance, she chose the site because of the many Jewish youngsters likely to be there on that particular school-vacation afternoon. She has explained that the Arab/Israeli conflict is a religious one and that what she did in planting the human bomb had great religious significance. She has no regrets about doing what she did, Heaven forbid, except this: a sincere-sounding regret that she did not manage to achieve a larger death toll.

“But the 15 dead, including seven children and a babe in the womb of her mother, were ‘the crown on my head,’ entitling her to join ‘the annals of history by committing the best act.’ She said that in a YouTube clip that is still viewable, delivered to a gathering of Islamist zealots, all of them woman and many of them girls, in Turkey less than a year ago,” said Roth, who has been stymied in his quest for US justice since Tamimi’s release from an Israeli prison in 2011.

Roth recites the details of how he and his wife have been shafted by the US government, and what comes through is the way officials tried to keep things quiet—how they tried to make the Roths think they were actually doing something about this, when they were not (emphasis added):

“The US charged Tamimi in 2013 and then kept the indictment sealed – a total secret – for the following four years. It unsealed them in March 2017 and made her only the second woman on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists list. From then until July 2022, no US government figure even once mentioned her name in public, let alone the disgraceful reality of an American ally - Jordan – brazenly breaching the treaty between them because of a technical “flaw” that does not exist and that, even if it did, was a Jordanian flaw, caused by the Jordanians, fixable by the Jordanians right up until this morning – and never fixed.

“Meanwhile quiet efforts were rumored to be underway, intended to persuade Jordan (where she was born, where she lives and works today) to hand Tamimi over to US law enforcement as the treaty demands.

“But no one in the Trump or Biden administrations addressed any of this in all the years since the charges were laid. That has been maddening for us.

“Then this,” said Arnold, referring to all the attention focused on the accidental shooting death of Abu Akleh.

Of course, the plausible deniability of American officials is key to the game of evading the Roth family while looking as if official America actually gives a damn. As if to underscore the point, Arnold quotes a startling public statement by Jake Sullivan, head of the National Security Council in the White House. As reported by the AP, Sullivan said: "The US government continues to seek her extradition and the Government of Jordan’s assistance in bringing her to justice for her role in the heinous attack."

“Continues to seek”? says Roth, with some astonishment. “That’s a challenging way of framing this. How does it fit, for instance, with President Joe Biden’s lavish and repeated praise of Jordan’s ruler in the most public of ways?

“In fact, we have a long list of questions that only senior American government figures can answer. The details of our efforts to engage, to get responses, to encourage the doing of American justice, are many. And we have consciously avoided making them public.”

Things have changed, however, and the Roths have stepped up their campaign to get America to sit up listen, and act. The way the Abu Akleh affair was handled must have felt like an insult to their daughter’s memory, but that wasn’t really the catalyst that infused their fight for justice with new vigor. The catalyst was the realization of just how much time has passed in the annals of American inattention to their plight. “Now that 2,000 days have elapsed (a depressing milestone that was passed last Sunday) since those Department of Justice charges were made public in Washington,” says Roth, “we feel it’s time we spoke out.

“We are preparing ourselves for that now.”

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

What do the Nazi-collaborating Grand Mufti and terrorist Ahlam Tamimi have in common?

Malki Roth, z"l

Later today, there will be an extensive interview with Arnold Roth on this site by columnist Varda Epstein. Roth is the father of Malki Roth, a 15 year old girl with American citizenship who was one of 15 civilians killed, including six other children and a pregnant American woman, at the Sbarro Restaurant massacre of August 9, 2001.

One of the terrorists who engineered the attack is Ahlam Tamimi, who was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in a prisoner swap and now lives as a celebrity in Jordan.

Even though Jordan has an extradition treaty with the United States it has refused to honor that treaty to have Tamimi tried in the US and brought to justice.

Arnold Roth, along with his wife Frimet, have been very frustrated these last few days. Last week, Jordan's King abdullah visited the US for the third time since Joe Biden became president. Yet not only was the topic of Ahlam Tamimi not brought up by any US government official, but not one mainstream media outlet even mentioned this ongoing travesty - no questions in any White House or State Department briefings about what the US is doing.

I was reminded of this seeming conspiracy of silence as I read this book review of Jeffrey Herf's Israel’s Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949 by Sol Stern in Quilette.

Herf notes that the notorious Nazi collaborator and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, was under house arrest in Paris after World War II. Yugoslavia requested extradition of the Mufti to try him for war crimes he committed in the Balkans for the Nazis.

French Foreign Ministry documents unearthed by Herf explain why this was never going to happen. A diplomatic memo put the matter quite directly: If the French government complied with the extradition request from Yugoslavia, or indeed from any other allied government, “we would unleash a new wave of hostility against us in all the Arab countries, and would also deprive ourselves of the interesting and fruitful contacts that the Mufti maintains with important figures from the Arab world.”

In June 1946, French security forces guarding the house where Husseini was detained conveniently left the door open and he “escaped” to Egypt. The Mufti was granted asylum by King Farouk and received a rapturous reception upon his return. In Cairo, he was greeted as a conquering hero by the founder of the islamofascist Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. The Mufti, al-Banna declared, was a great leader who “challenged an empire and fought Zionism with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin al-Husseini will continue the struggle.”

Doing the right thing takes a back seat to pretending that monsters can be useful, directly or indirectly.

Like the Mufti, Ahlam Tamimi is popular in the Arab world. The US wants to maintain friendly relations with Jordan. Instead of acting like a superpower, giving a message to the world that the US will pursue justice, the Biden administration is continuing the policy of sending hundreds of millions of dollars annually to Jordan to prop up its "moderate" king.

Like post WWII France, the US has decided that a murderous war criminal is an ally in achieving its foreign policy aims.

There is one significant difference between the Mufti and Ahlam Tamimi, though.

American progressives and leftists who later pushed for Israel’s independence first came together to launch a public campaign to bring the Mufti to justice for his collaboration with the Nazis and for possible war crimes. But Husseini was shielded from prosecution by high-level government officials in the US and France who were determined to protect Western influence in the Arab world. In Washington, the sudden concern for the Mufti’s safety came from the same anti-Zionist faction within the Truman administration that later tried to block the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine.

The people fighting for justice in the 1940s were progressives and liberals. The people who are fighting against justice today are progressives and liberals.

The media in 1946 were aghast at how the allies allowed the Mufti to escape to freedom.

But the media today has erected a wall of silence to protect the murderer of Jews and Americans.

Even though the Roths and others have tirelessly contacted media outlets and fought for coverage of the Tamimi case, the people who pretend to care so much about "justice" in other contexts have decided to bury this story.

And the people who are shielding the criminals then and now happen to also be the people who are the most critical of Israel in the name of the same "justice" they trample.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Hamas brags of killing Jewish children 20 years ago at the Sbarro pizza shop

The Al Qassam Brigades of Hamas loves to celebrate anniversaries of major terror attacks. The infamous Sbarro massacre, which happened on August 9, 2001, is no exception. Today is the Hebrew date anniversary of that attack.

It proves the utter depravity of not only Hamas but of all the Palestinians who celebrated at the time.

The ghoulish article exaggerates the death toll in order to make it sound even more "successful" than it was, claiming that 19 were killed. The facts are horrific enough - 15 murdered, including 7 children and a pregnant woman.

The Arabic text is revolting:

It caused an unprecedented state of terror and chaos among the Jews.
-....The operation is commensurate with the ability of the battalions to plan, develop and reach the depth of the enemy and in the most secure places, which astonished the enemy and made loved ones and family rejoice (and heal the hearts of a believing people).
...The mujahadeen chose the prime time for lunch at the restaurant.

Hamas freely admits that it targets Jews - not Israelis, not Zionists, but Jews.

In a separate article celebrating the "martyrdom" of the suicide bomber, Hamas describes the happiness of the Palestinians who heard about the attack. "Jenin received the news with demonstrations and rallies that came out to bless this qualitative process that gladdened the hearts of a believing people."

Interestingly, the article did not mention Ahlam Tamimi, the 20-year old monster who chose that restaurant as the target and who accompanied the suicide bomber while disguised as a Jewish woman.

Her description of going on an Arab bus as she escaped the scene is perverted and sickening:

Afterwards, when I took the bus, the Palestinians around Damascus Gate [in Jerusalem] were all smiling. You could sense that everybody was happy. When I got on the bus, nobody knew that it was me who had led [the suicide bomber to the target]... I was feeling quite strange, because I had left [the bomber] 'Izz Al-Din behind, but inside the bus, they were all congratulating one another. They didn't even know one another, yet they were exchanging greetings...While I was sitting on the bus, the driver turned on the radio. But first, let me tell you about the gradual rise in the number of casualties. While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another....I admit that I was a bit disappointed, because I had hoped for a larger toll. Yet when they said "three dead," I said: 'Allah be praised'...Two minutes later, they said on the radio that the number had increased to five. I wanted to hide my smile, but I just couldn't. Allah be praised, it was great. As the number of dead kept increasing, the passengers were applauding.

We saw Palestinians celebrate murdered Jews only this past May. This isn't a one time thing - consistently, a vast majority of Palestinians have shown support for specific terror attacks after the fact, including, infamously, the 9/11 attacks that occurred only a month after Sbarro.

Here is a celebration after the 2014 attack at the Har Nof synagogue, killing four rabbis.

Ahlam Tamimi is still living a free, celebrity life in Jordan - not in spite of her murderous role but because of it. The parents of child victim Malki Roth, who are marking Malki's yahrzeit today, have been waging a heroic and lonely battle to convince the United States to extradite Tamimi, but even though King Abdullah visited Washington last week, nothing seems to have been done.

As gruesome as Hamas proves itself to be every single day, the international human rights community and As-A-Jew haters expend huge amounts of time and effort to try to prove that Israel is the worst human rights violator in the world while excusing the actions and words of Hamas terrorists.

Monster Ahlam Tamimi celebrates Interpol's removal of her "red" status

The architect of the Sbarro pizza shop bombing, Ahlam Tamimi, is celebrating her name being removed from Interpol's list of people wanted for arrest.

This photo seems to have been taken at a party for Tamimi's legal victory.

The photo has been circulated only in the past few days, so it seems to be a reaction to the Interpol news.

Interpol's letter itself is sickening:

This means that this murderous and proud child killer can now travel to other countries besides Jordan without fear of being arrested by local police.

Tamimi's supporters say that this was the result of one and a half years of legal pressure to Interpol.

Her lawyer, Mustafa Nasrallah, claims that the US attempt at extradition is illegal because she has already been tried and convicted in Israeli courts and this is therefore "double jeopardy." That is simply not true, the US has every right to try her for her role in the murder of two Americans killed in the Sbarro attack.

Meanwhile , Tamimi is celebrating her new freedom in a country that treats her like a celebrity while pretending to be against terror.

Female terrorists are so progressive!

San Francisco State University will be hosting a Zoom event called “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled,” on September 23.

Leila Khaled, of course, is the PFLP terrorist who hijacked planes in 1969 and 1970. Her image with a machine gun is ubiquitous at lots of leftist rallies.

The PFLP, which she is still involved with, was behind the murder of 17-year old Rina Shnerb last year.

But no progressive groups march with photos of Rina Shnerb. They fetishize female terrorists, not female Jewish victims of terror.

Khaled is not the only heroine of the progressive crowd. They love Rasmea Odeh, responsible for the murder of two people. Also a PFLP member, Odeh has admitted that she was involved in bombing attacks against civilians. and fought to have photo-ops with her before she was deported from the US.

Odeh, a violent terrorist, was treated like a rock star by the supposedly anti-violent BDSers.

Palestinian "moderates" have been the originators of this mindset where female terrorists are role models. The Miftah NGO, which is headed by Hanan Ashrawi and is in the forefront of Palestinian feminism, has multiple articles in Arabic that praise female suicide bombers as role models - and they had English articles praising female suicide bombers as well before I exposed them.

Palestinian women have also participated in the resistance. As the conflict grew more intense and young men were recruited to carry out military operations against Israeli targets, several young women also decided to join the ranks of the resistance movement. In January 2002, 28-year-old nurse Wafa Idrees, detonated a bomb in Jerusalem’s Jaffa Street, killing one Israeli and injuring 150 others. She was also killed in the blast.

This marked the beginning of a string of Palestinian women dedicated to sacrificing their lives for the cause. Over the next two years, seven other women carried out similar operations, the most deadly of which was carried out by Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old attorney from Jenin. Hanadi detonated explosives strapped to her body in a busy Haifa restaurant, killing 19 Israelis and injuring 50 others.

The "moderate" PLO has become a cult of sorts for Dalal Mughrabi, responsible for murdering 38 civilians. Numerous institutions are named after her and her likeness can be seen all over Palestinian towns.

And "moderate" Jordan has been sheltering another celebrity female terrorist, Ahlam Tamimi, who murdered 15 civilians including seven children.

It appears that the "progressive" Left in the West has embraced the idea of female terrorists as role models. It is this immoral and disgusting thinking that is behind a university effectively honoring a terrorist as if she can teach students something about life, and behind prominent American and European progressives literally embracing a murderer.

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