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25 years ago this Sunday, 15-year-old Malki Roth was murdered alongside fifteen other innocent civilians in a suicide bombing at Jerusalem’s Sbarro restaurant, one of the deadliest Palestinian terrorist massacres of the Second Intifada.
The bomber was brought to the pizzeria by Hamas operative Ahlam Tamimi, who was later arrested by Israel and sentenced to life in prison. However, she was released from a jail decade later as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal. Since then, Tamimi has lived freely in Jordan despite a U.S. indictment for her role in the death of Malki — who held U.S. citizenship — and two other American women killed in the attack, and a longstanding extradition request.
Ahead of the quarter-century anniversary of the Sbarro bombing, the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) spoke this week with Malki’s father Arnold Roth about his ongoing efforts to have Tamimi face American justice.
The Jordanians have ignored the U.S. extradition request, but why hasn’t the State Department forced the issue?
“For years, too many State Department people don’t take my calls, don’t respond to my emails and, when answering occasional media queries about the Tamimi case, respond with empty mantras.”
“After all these years of prodding and pushing and interacting with them, I don’t understand their obfuscation. There’s a treaty, the treaty says what has to happen. In 2017, the same week as the U.S. charges against Tamimi were finally made public, Jordan declared the 1995 Hussein/Clinton treaty invalid. Up until then, Jordan extradited fugitives to the U.S. several times.”
“Tamimi has not been extradited. She lives free, never in hiding, in Jordan’s capital. Jordan’s media fail to inform ordinary Jordanians that she’s America’s most-wanted female fugitive with a reward on her head. Jordan with its government-controlled media makes no effort to explain to its citizens who Tamimi really is and what harm is done by her living in their midst.”
“She’s shockingly influential, published, and accepted in polite company. Jordan is often called moderate but has phenomenally high antisemitic sentiment and it’s rising.”
“A lot of it has to do with the disgraceful education that the Jordanian state provides its children, analogous to how the Palestinian Authority and Hamas educate Palestinian children.”
“What Jordanians know about Tamimi is that most of the victims that she set out to murder were Jewish children. And that’s a popular issue. It makes her a hero. It’s not nice to say, but in Jordan, if you murder Jewish children, you arrive back at the airport as a conquering hero, you’re going to become a celebrity. And it’s a short distance from there for the government to say, well, we really need to keep this precious person safe.”
Has the Trump administration pushed for the extradition?
“At the start of the second Trump term, there were rumors in Jordan that the Jordanian government had warned the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan to get her to some other place ‘or we will come and hand her over to the Americans.’ King Abdullah was on the eve of his first visit to [Washington during] the second Trump administration and there was a perception that he needed to do something on the Tamimi issue, lest he face the wrath of President Trump. That never made sense to me, and it certainly didn’t play out that way. The media coverage of the visit showed that when Abdullah pledged Jordan was going to take in some number of injured children from Gaza, this went over really well. So Abdullah succeeded in his mission to the White House, and the issue has not arisen again.”
Is Washington protecting Abdullah?
“Abdullah has strong bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. Given the strong evidence that he’s seriously corrupt, this doesn’t make sense to me. But those lawmakers don’t want to hear from me. They’re making an assessment that Abdullah is better for what they stand for than Roth in Jerusalem, father of a murdered American child.”
“At various stages I’ve tried to tackle members of Congress who’ve gone on delegations to Jordan to see whether they were briefed about the Tamimi case by the State Department or the embassy. I want to know how they justify going on jaunts like this when Jordan tramples its treaty with the United States to protect a Hamas fugitive who makes no bones about the murders that she carried out. Without exception, the lawmakers and their staffers have ignored me.”
“The perception is that if you press the Tamimi issue, you’re going to cause damage to our relationship with Jordan. If the extradition takes place, then the sky will fall and King Abdullah will fall with it. Both of those terms have actually been used in my presence: The sky will fall, and King Abdullah will fall.”
“Roughly six months ago, Israel announced that it had set aside $1.7 billion to rebuild the barrier along the Jordan border. You don’t do that if you have an abiding conviction that we have reliable relations with Jordan — that they’re people who want the same things we do, which is peace and harmony and no war. What that tells me is that the relationship with Jordan is problematic, regardless of Tamimi’s extradition status. And to suggest that Tamimi shouldn’t be extradited because that would harm our peaceful relations with this moderate state is nonsense.”
Have House Members and Senators been helpful?
“In our pursuit of justice in the U.S., we are treated to bipartisan disdain.”
“Nobody on the Democrat side in the Congress has ever addressed the issue. We got no support there. And it’s hardly better on the Republican side where only a tiny handful have done anything helpful. Some avoid the question. Others say they are with us — say they agree we must get this woman over here and put her on trial, and then do nothing.”
“The Jewish advocacy groups on Capitol Hill really puzzle me. Τhey have ignored every effort that I’ve made to speak to them. It’s in the literal sense of the phrase ‘soul-destroying’ to go up to people who thrust their chests out when asked, do you have pride in the State of Israel? Do you feel good about being part of the Jewish people? People who say we’re all one, one people, we’re in this together, I’ve got your back. Those people walking away from the Jordan/Tamimi issue or pretending they don’t hear me — I just don’t understand them.”
“In fighting to get U.S. justice done, we are in a test and we’ve failed. The ‘we’ in that sentence encompasses America’s Jewish community at practically every level; the State of Israel; and to a great extent, the government of the United States.”
What would you like others to remember about your daughter?
“I think everyone understands that losing a child is one of those traumas that you never get out of your system, not even close. And in my family, there’s no exception. We have three grandchildren who have her name. And we have warm memories and deep, deep sadness that she’s not with us.”
“I write a lot about Malki, mostly in the context of explaining the good that is done in her name through the charity that we created in her name, the Malki Foundation. We turned tragedy into something that benefits people from every part of Israeli society without regard for their religion or ethnicity. It provides support for families like my own family who have a catastrophically disabled child. Malki adored her severely disabled youngest sister Haya. Haya is 31 now and lives with us.”
“A third of the families that we’ve helped over the years have been non-Jews, Arabs. I’m proud that we’re able to do things that aren’t tainted by any of the bigotry and hatred that brought about the murder of Malki and the other innocents at the Sbarro pizzeria. It leaves a certain part of my personality and my awareness in a slightly better place. Without the charitable work done in Malki’s memory, I think life would be harder.”
