In this issue: Twenty-five years since the Sbarro bombing. Two American women murdered, two killers free, two petitions to sign.
Twenty-five years ago today, a bomber walked into the Sbarro pizzeria at the corner of King George and Jaffa in Jerusalem. Sixteen people were murdered. The woman who guided him there chose that restaurant. She chose it because it was full of children. She has said so. Malki Roth was fifteen. She was an American citizen.
Last month I introduced Arnold Roth to our community on a Zoom call. He has spent twenty-five years trying to bring his daughter’s killer into an American courtroom. Ahlam Tamimi served eight years. She walked free in a hostage deal and has lived openly in Jordan since 2011, where she has hosted a television programme. Arnold has done this for twenty-five years without a courtroom, without an extradition, and mostly without company. That last part is the one we can do something about today.
She is one of twenty-two people on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list. She is the only woman on it. There is a five-million-dollar reward on her head, an American indictment with her name on it, and an extradition treaty between the United States and Jordan that Jordan has not honoured.
Kristine Luken was an American too. A Christian, murdered on a hiking trail near Beit Shemesh in December 2010 by a man who confessed he killed her because he thought she was Jewish. He walked free in a hostage exchange last October. Her sister Kathleen and Tal Hartuv, who survived that attack with more than a dozen stab wounds, learned it from the news. Not from anyone official.
Two American women. One Jewish, one Christian. Both murdered for being taken for Jews. Both killers at liberty. Both families told nothing.
Tzedek, tzedek tirdof. Justice, justice shall you pursue. The verb is pursue. It does not say wait, and it does not say grieve quietly and hope somebody in Washington remembers. Twenty-five years is long enough to know that the pursuing is the whole of it.
Sign for Malki Sign for Kristine
Two minutes for both signatures. Twenty-five years for Arnold. I do not think that is an unfair trade. Sign them, then send this to someone who does not know her name yet — that is how a name stays in front of the people who can act on it.
— Cheryl