05-Sep-19: Thwarted justice, bearded women, painfully sloppy editing

Tamimi, now a high-profile fugitive from the FBI, 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 and has boasted of how she deliberately targeted and succeeded in massacring the Jewish children inside and on the street.

Recently, in her Instagram account, she called this Hamas attack “my operation“.

She is protected by the Kingdom of Jordan which, in flagrant 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. And for the nearly five years between early 2012 and mid 2016, it provided her with the freedom and means to have a television program of her own, “Breezes of the Free”, which she recorded in Amman, Jordan every week. The purpose of the show was to encourage support for Arab-on-Israeli terrorism and to provide a two-way channel for communication between terrorists imprisoned in Israel and their families.

Our personal efforts to get Tamimi in front of a US federal court to face charges there 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 the efforts we have made to bring the thwarted Tamimi extradition issue to a larger audience:

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 every Friday for years. We found what we saw there hard to believe:

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 obviously had nothing to do with the Haaretz reporter.

So we reacted via Twitter, addressing the newspaper’s well-known publisher:

In our years-long pursuit of justice in the wake of our daughter’s murder, @haaretzcom reported Friday that @RepJerryNadler, responding to our letter to him, has sent sharp questions to @TheJusticeDept.

A shame its editors think that’s #AhlamTamimi in the photo below. pic.twitter.com/OPf39CKTAW

— Arnold Roth (@arnoldroth) August 31, 2019

And then

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

So do the Haaretz editors know who Ahlam Tamimi is? We still have no idea. And yes, we’re troubled that no one from the paper-publishing side of Haaretz has bothered to respond.

Also, for the record, the Hebrew version of Haaretz has given no coverage at all to the Nadler initiative – not online, in its daily newspaper. Nor has it published a word about our years of efforts to see Tamimi tried on terrorism charges.

It also entirely ignores, as do many other mainstream news outlets, 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.