Biden, Soft Everywhere, Is Soft On Jordan, Too

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Joe Biden recently met with Jordan’s King Abdullah. It was a meeting all full of smiles. The King was assured of continued American support, financial and diplomatic. Jordan receives $1.3 billion a year in American aid, more than any country save our ally Israel. But in return, the Jordanians have not been asked to do the one thing they should be willing to do: to extradite to the U.S. for trial the mastermind of the Sbarro pizzeria bombing. A report on this failure by Biden is here: “Biden, bring the Sbarro massacre mastermind to justice,” by Michael Freund, Jerusalem Post, July 30, 2021:

Two decades ago this week on the Hebrew calendar, a typical Thursday in downtown Jerusalem was instantly transformed into a horrifying day of carnage when a Palestinian suicide bomber entered a crowded Sbarro pizza restaurant intent on committing mass murder.

It was on the 20th of Av, or August 9, 2001, that Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri, a 22-year-old Palestinian from a well-to-do family, detonated an estimated five to 10 kilograms of explosives hidden inside a guitar, killing 15 people and injuring 130 others. Two of the dead, 15-year-old Malki Roth and Shoshana Greenbaum, who was pregnant at the time, were US citizens.

To cause maximum harm, the bomb was laced with nails along with nuts and bolts in order to shred and tear through the victims’ flesh with still greater force and efficacy.

Seven Jewish children were among those who died that day. One of the injured, Chana Nachenberg, a US national, remains hospitalized 20 years later in a vegetative state.

The Sbarro pizzeria was targeted by the mastermind of the attack, Ahlam Al-Tamimi, because it would, she knew, be full of families, mothers and children – and those victims would increase the horror inflicted on the Zionists. Tamimi also drove the suicide bomber to the site. Later, she reported on how happy she was when she first learned there had been so many dead and wounded, and how she had only wished that there had been more.

Incredibly, Ahlam Tamimi, one of the key masterminds and participants in this gruesome attack is living openly and freely in Jordan, a so-called ally of the United States, which has adamantly refused to hand her over to Washington. In mid-2020, the Trump administration said it was weighing “all options” to pressure Jordan into extraditing Tamimi. She is wanted on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals. This cannot be allowed to stand.

It is not only that Jordan has given this terrorist refuge, but that she has been lionized in the Kingdom.

Tamimi had been tried and convicted in an Israeli court, but released in the 2011 prisoner swap between Hamas and Israel that Jerusalem agreed to in order to obtain the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit. Hamas freed Shalit, and Israel – regrettably – freed 1000 Arab prisoners. That is how Tamimi ended up in Jordan.

Tamimi has long been on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list, ever since the American government unveiled terrorism charges against her, and requested her extradition in 2017 under the terms of a 1995 treaty with Jordan. Shortly thereafter, Jordan’s Court of Cassation ruled that the extradition treaty was invalid. But even without an extradition treaty, Jordan may, even if not required to do so, send a wanted criminal to another country. And that is where things have stood since: four years of attempts by the American government to have Al-Tamimi extradited, four years of refusals by Jordan to do so, and meanwhile, maddeningly, Jordan keeps being given enormous amounts of American aid.

Tamimi’s orchestration of the Sbarro pizzeria suicide bombing in Jerusalem and subsequent conviction in Israel quickly brought her accolades and rewards from fellow Arabs. Six weeks after the attack, Al Najah University in the West Bank town of Nablus glorified the perpetrators with a recreated Sbarro featuring bloody plastic body parts and partially-chewed pizza crusts. The PA even considered in 2008 awarding Tamimi the Al Quds Mark of Honor.

In Jordan, Ahlam Tamimi has turned her journalism background into stardom. Between February 2012 and September 2016, she hosted her own television program, Nassem al-Ahrar (“Breezes of the Free”), on Al Quds TV, one of Hamas’ two global satellite channels. Produced and distributed from an Amman studio, this program focused on incarcerated terrorists in Israel, as she had been. With these broadcasts, particularly during Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, Tamimi became central to the Arabs’ jihadist war against the hated Jews.

Tamimi has also taken her show on the road. She has traveled widely among the Arab states, addressing enthusiastic audiences with a message blending incitement and antisemitism. Her itinerary has included Algeria, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Tunisia, and Yemen.

In 2014, Tamimi won praise as a “success model” at the Arabic website of the Jordanian Media Institute (JMI). Tamimi’s laudatory biography, posted online, noted that she had attended “Martyr’s University,” or Ramallah’s Birzeit University, the alma mater of many terrorists. Jordanian television showed a televised “‘This is Your Life’-like tribute” to Tamimi and her fellow terrorist-in-love husband, her cousin Nizar, who also escaped an Israeli life sentence via the 2011 prisoner exchange. The October 23, 2018 edition of Caravan, a weekly show on Jordan’s most popular television channel, the privately-owned Ro’ya TV, focused on these “special guests” and “heroes.” In Jordan, she remains a star in the celebrity firmament.

Ahlam Al-Tamimi has continued to travel throughout the Arab world, to broadcast, to be lionized in Jordan and in many other Arab lands, for her part in the Sbarro Pizzeria attack. It is time to close down this intolerable spectacle, and have her extradited to the U.S., where 20 years after that attack, she can at long last be tried specifically for her role in the murder of several Americans. If the Jordanians won’t listen to reason or to any still small voice of decency (how would they react if another country not only protected but lionized the Al-Qaeda terrorists who in 2005 bombed three hotels in Amman?), then another method must be tried: not just decreasing, but eliminating altogether, America’s generous aid package to Jordan, that many believe ought to have ended long ago.

Jordan is the second highest recipient of American aid. Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the U.S. in 1995. Even if Jordan’s Court of Cassation has declared the treaty invalid, the timing of that opinion came just after the U.S. government had requested that Tamimi be handed over; it was clearly an attempt to prevent exactly one person, Tamimi, from being sent to the U.S. , which it cannot be allowed to simply ignore. Biden missed a chance to remind King Abdullah that Jordan is the second largest percipient of American aid, that Tamimi is responsible for the deaths of two American citizens and the severe wounding of a third, and that the Kingdom has not only failed to deliver her as requested by the Americans, but allowed her to be celebrated in Jordan. He could have asked Abdullah, then and there, face-to-face, to commit to extraditing Tamimi without further delay. He could have informed the King that there are many in Washington, and especially in Congress, who have lost all patience with Jordan’s refusal to extradite her, and are determined to end all aid to the Kingdom unless Tamimi is handed over to the Americans. If the King argues that “Tamimi is very popular” and “extraditing her would carry political risk for me,” Biden should be ready to reply that, first, the Jordanian government had only itself to blame, allowing her to become so popular by providing her with a television program; second, the Kingdom ought never to have given Tamimi refuge, after her conviction in Israel as a terrorist murderer; third, that Jordan’s solemn commitment to fulfill the extradition treaty with the U.S. has to be met and cannot be undone by a decision of the Court of Cassation, which has no power over foreign affairs, but even if the extradition treaty were held invalid, that does not prevent Jordan, in the absence of such a treaty, of delivering Tamimi to the Americans; fourth, that Abdullah has gotten away with protecting Ahlam Al-Tamimi for a decade, ever since her arrival from Israel and “that, c’mon man, we Americans are just not going to stand for this any longer. You’ve got to send us Tamimi.”

That’s enough. Abdullah will have to weigh the consequences — a possible loss of $1.3 billion a year in aid for Jordan – if he refuses to turn over Tamimi.

That’s what Biden should have said; he didn’t. But he can still say it all, if not face-to-face, then on the telephone with Abdullah, who should be firmly told that Congress won’t approve any aid package to Jordan without Tamimi being handed over. The continued brushing off by Amman of the American request for Tamimi should no longer be tolerated.

First published in Jihad Watch.