On Aug. 9, 2001, just before 2 p.m., Ahlam Tamimi, a journalism student from Birzeit University, accompanied Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri to a well-chosen, crowded pizza restaurant. Tamimi knew that the Sbarro Restaurant, in the heart of Western Jerusalem, was a place where many young Jewish families come to dine. Al-Masri carried with him a guitar case, concealing explosives packed with nails, screws and bolts to maximize the damage. He calmly ordered his lunch and detonated the bomb, instantly killing himself and 15 people.
Among the dead were two Americans: 15-year-old Malki Roth and Judith Greenbaum, a young teacher who was pregnant at the time. Chana Nachenberg, a young American mother of a 2-year-old daughter, was put in a vegetative state. Twenty-two years later, in May of 2023, she finally succumbed to her wounds, making her the 16th fatality.
Aside from the Americans, a family of five Dutch citizens was murdered. The Schijveschuurders included Mordechai, 43, the father; Tzira, 41, the mother; daughter Raaya, 13; son Yitzhak, 3; and daughter Hemda, just 18 months old. Their other three children were left orphaned.
More than 130 others were injured. The victims were all Jewish.
In an article, translated by MEMRI (July 12, 2012), Tamimi exclaimed: “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]. … While I was on the bus and everybody was congratulating one another, they said on the radio that there had been a martyrdom attack at the Sbarro restaurant, and that three people were killed. 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. They didn’t even know that I was among them.”
“On the way back [to Ramallah], we passed a Palestinian police checkpoint, and the policemen were laughing. One of them stuck his head in and said: ‘Congratulations to us all.’ Everybody was happy.”
Ahlem Tamimi was arrested by the Israeli authorities and convicted of 16 life sentences. When Tamimi first learned from a journalist who was interviewing her in an Israeli prison that she had murdered eight children—not just three, as she had initially believed—she broke into a broad, contented smile and continued with the interview.
In the 2011 prisoner-exchange deal for Israeli Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, she, along with 1,026 other convicted terrorists, was released.
Tamimi immediately flew to Amman, Jordan, where she was welcomed with open arms at the airport and showered with flowers. She became a television personality, hosting a Hamas-affiliated Palestinian TV show. On it, she instructed other women on how to become terrorists.
In 2017, the United States formally requested her extradition under a 1995 extradition treaty with Jordan. The FBI added her to its “Most Wanted” terrorists list the same day. Months later, a U.S. State Department $5 million reward for information leading to her capture was announced.
EMET has labored for decades upon decades, arranging congressional hearings and letters demanding that Jordan fulfill its extradition treaty with the United States.
However, none labored as diligently throughout this time as Arnold and Frimet Roth, the parents of Malki. They have not rested one single day in the 24 years since this horrific terrorist attack took place.
On Feb. 2, in preparation for King Abdullah’s upcoming trip to meet U.S. President Donald Trump, Jordan suddenly announced that it intends to “deport” Tamimi. Will they finally, actually, extradite her to the United States, where she will be prosecuted for her crimes and made to serve in American correctional facilities?
Under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1991, 18 USC Sec. 2332(b), it is stated that whenever an American is killed or harmed overseas in an act of international terrorism, the United States has the right and the responsibility to prosecute and punish, in U.S. courts, the individual(s) who murdered or maimed the American citizen. A conspirator in such a crime can get up to 20 years imprisonment, and no statute of limitations precludes prosecution of old offenses.
I reached out to Arnold Roth this week, and, after so many years, he was doubtful that the Hashemite Kingdom would finally extradite Tamimi.
To allow for this sort of immoral savagery to go unchecked is simply to reward and invite further acts of barbarism not only in Israel but throughout the civilized world. As the late Martin Luther King Jr. often stated: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
One can only hope …