13-Mar-20: It’s been three years

A year ago, on this blog, we posted a rueful summary of events that had taken place since the unsealing of US Federal charges against our child’s killer on March 14, 2017, two years earlier. See: “14-Mar-19: Two years after Federal charges are unsealed, Ahlam Tamimi remains free. How is this happening?“

Ahlam Tamimi remains today, as she has since October 18, 2011, free in Jordan, unrestricted in her movements. She’s able with ease to publish her views widely, undisguisedly contemptuous of the efforts made by the United States and her victims to see her brought to American justice. Without any doubt, she has become a celebrity because of the grotesque savagery of which she openly boasts and to which she confesses.

Three years have now passed. Here are some of the events of this past year as reflected in our blog postings:

• “21-Mar-19: The Secretary of State is in Jerusalem“: We made efforts to draw Secretary Pompeo into a discussion about the lack of material progress in bringing Tamimi into a US Federal court to face charges. We were rebuffed.
• “21-Mar-19: The Sbarro Massacre mastermind worries she isn’t getting enough sympathy“: A US official, Jason Greenblatt, who has never responded to any of our attempts to communicate with him, addressed Tamimi via Twitter. This prompted her to respond via a lengthy op ed in the Arabic media. We fisked her piece which we called a mixture of “outright lies, self-aggrandizing exaggerations and a small handful of intriguing revelations“. Here’s how we ended it: “The real take-away here is her toxic influence. This dedicated murderer, now living free as a bird, not in hiding, not on the run, in the capital of an Arab kingdom reckoned to be a US ally, has standing, celebrity and access to the media. What Tamimi says in her explosive region of the world has the potent and quickly-out-of-control flammable impact of a lit match in a field of tinder-dry brush. And even though much of what she has to say is plainly distorted, dishonest and provocative, we have not yet seen even a single instance where her appearance in the Arabic-language media includes criticism or even any serious analysis of the woman, her narrative or her views. We wish this would disturb other people as much as it disturbs us.”
• “25-Mar-19: On justice and decency for American victims of terrorism: When US indignation leads to a troubling comparison” We delved into a little-reported but enraging story that involves a Turkish terrorist who had just been freed from his German prison cell and then, despite US efforts to take him into custody in Germany and extradite him to Washington, was then flown to Turkey where he promptly disappeared. The part that interested us more than  the preamble was the fury expressed by the State Department of the US at what Germany did. The parallels with what Jordan is doing are strong. The Anti Defamation League in New York took up the matter and wrote what we think is an inspirational letter to the State Department.
• “02-Apr-19: Setting facts, ethics, context aside, Aljazeera salutes a couple of murderers” We wish people paid more attention to what Aljazeera is and does. Its chairman Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani served as a minister in Qatar’s government in the eighties and nineties and he is a member of Qater’s ruling family, the House of Thani. Aljazeera has some 80 bureaux and more than 100,000 employees distributed around the world. And when they decided to go market a mass murderer like Tamimi, there is major impact.
• “30-May-19: Paris, Amman, Washington: Extradition and what it can reveal about governments and terror” The legal basis on which Jordan claims it is free to ignore the US request to extradite Tamimi is highly problematic. We don’t believe those claims get much respect among lawyers or experts in extradition. France’s experience with Jordan’s legal system underscores this and makes for disturbing reading.
• “11-Jul-19: Keeping Ahlam Tamimi safe: A Jordanian case for double jeopardy?” If you’re looking for arguments that bolster the Jordanian case, they’re not here. It’s puzzling to us that Jordan’s claims are taken apart by the news industry so rarely (meaning never). A Jordanian journalist called Kuttab exemplifies how ineffectually the thwarted extradition effort is handled by the media.
• “21-Jul-19: Jordan, peace and how little has actually changed” Jordan gets lots of good press and, on the whole, is greatly admired by many of the good and open-minded Jews we know. But our involvement with the Tamimi extradition makes us feel they’re ignoring a great deal of the evidence. In this lengthy post, we include this: “When they want to, Jordan’s official representatives can be quite talkative. A shame that on the subject of extraditing Ahlam Tamimi, they have not uttered a single official word as a government, leaving it to the media and their highest court to say the relatively little that has been offered to explain their indefensible policy. As for their official spokesperson in the United States, Ambassador Dina Kawar of Jordan’s Washington embassy blocks us on Twitter. That of course doesn’t change very much and certainly doesn’t mean we will stop our efforts to be heard. But along with plenty of other evidence of Jordan being today very far from its moderate image, it contributes to the sense that they haven’t really come a great distance since the days of [Jordanians] blowing up ancient synagogues on a massive scale and maliciously denying Jewish history.”
• “11-Aug-19: What money can do: The Sbarro terrorists and the children of Ramot“: Not much politics in this, but some serious thoughts on how money and the way it’s used tells us a lot about where people stand on terrorism.
• “12-Aug-19: The pain of a child’s murder: A burden of grief and injustice“: Frimet Roth writes on the anniversary of the Sbarro massacre about how the pain of a child’s murder is so inconceivable in our society that it is down-played. Swept under the carpet.
• “25-Aug-19: A rising sense of something awful started settling in“: An excerpt from an interview of Arnold Roth conducted by Varda Meyers Epstein and published by the ElderofZiyon blog.
• “05-Sep-19: On thwarted justice and bearded women“: A serious but rare article about our extradition efforts appeared in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, the paper edition. With a bizarre twist.
• “18-Sep-19: With Jordan’s King Abdullah II visiting the United States again, things worth knowing“: The first thing is to know just how often, and with how much respect, the absolute ruler of Jordan is received by his Washington hosts. 
• “29-Sep-19: As we prepare for the High Holy Day season“: King Abdullah had breakast with a serious group of Jewish American leaders in New York. We have lots of questions. Most Americans don’t because although this event, which has happened several times, got wide coverage in the Arabic media, it got almost none in the US. There are reasons for every aspect of what happened. But discovering what they are is a challenge.
• “03-Oct-19: What lies behind a decade of “progress” at an influential Jordanian graduate school“: Knowing what has gone on at the Jordan Media Institute has been instructive to us but then we’re troubled by so many aspects of how Tamimi stays free and Jordan remains in large measure uncriticized and unchallenged. Reporters and editors in the West seem both oblivious and uninterested. Read this if only to know where CNN’s Richard Quest fits in.
• “08-Oct-19: Again: Jordan’s inscrutable US relationship“: Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan’s king in his deluxe palace? This time it’s principally about US Representative Jason Crow whose staff ignored us totally.
• “19-Oct-19: House Speaker Pelosi led an official visit today to the chief protector of our child’s killer“: Again: Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan’s king in his deluxe palace? This time it’s principally about Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; whose staff ignored us totally. Along with Ranking Member Mac Thornberry, House Armed Services Committee; Chairman Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Chairman Bennie Thompson, Homeland Security Committee; Chairman Adam Schiff, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; Congressman Ron Kind, House Ways and Means Committee; Congresswoman Susan Davis, House Armed Services Committee; Congressman Stephen Lynch, Chairman, House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security; Congresswoman Elaine Luria, House Armed Services Committee. They all ignored all our questions.
• “03-Nov-19: In Washington, a step towards bringing the Sbarro bomber to justice“: This is important. It starts with this opening: “We report here on an unexpected, modestly encouraging development in our efforts to bring to justice the fugitive Hamas savage who bombed a Jerusalem pizzeria because of the children inside it. Jewish children, as it happens. Exactly whom the bomber was targeting.“
• “12-Nov-19: On Jordan, the US and the children killed in a pizzeria“: Worth reading if you want a taste of the diabolical evil being shielded via the thwarted Tamimi extradition. But here for the first time, we write about the US explicitly rejecting Jordan’s view of the extradition treaty. It’s a major step forward.
• “13-Nov-19: Thank you, Mr Foreign Minister“: An important article, if we say it ourselves. Almost totally ignored by the world’s media (but not by the Arab world), Jordan now says openly and proudly (after dodging the issue for years) that it has no intention of respecting what the US calls a valid treaty. It will take the side of the Sbarro bomber, and it doesn’t care who knows. Or objects.
• “16-Dec-19: Like talking to the wall“: Once more: Why do delegations of US politicians turn up every so often to make official visits to Jordan’s king in his deluxe palace? This time it’s principally about Chairman of the House Armed Forces Committtee, Representative Adam Smith. And yes, his staff – after appearing to be ready to dialogue – ignored us too.
• “17-Nov-19: Jordan’s king to be honored for profound commitment to peace and moderation“
• “15-Dec-19: The Sbarro bomber trashes the ruler who protects her from the FBI” No one else but us wrote about this. We can’t understand why.
• “31-Jan-20: Fox News break ranks with the mainstream media on Tamimi and Jordan” Starts with this: “For us, it’s something of a milestone. On Wednesday, over on the heavily-trafficked Fox News website , there’s an informative long-form piece that in large measure deals with our efforts to see Ahlam Tamimi, the Jordanian Islamist who masterminded the massacre at Jerusalem’s Sbarro pizzeria in 2001, finally brought before US justice. Written by Hollie McKay, the article is…” Please read.