This is a great development. The traditional approach has been to pretend that Americans aren't being killed by Islamic terrorists in Israel. Enforcement has been meaningless. I don't remotely expect Jordan to extradite, but this is already an important statement about, as Obama would have put it, who we are. We are not the people who just shrug when terrorists kill Americans.
The United States Department of Justice announced on Tuesday that it filed an extradition request with Jordan for a Palestinian terrorist who helped carry out the 2001 Sbarro massacre in Jerusalem, The Jerusalem Post reported.
The subject of the request, Ahlam Tamimi, has previously admitted to picking the location for the lethal attack on behalf of Hamas, as well as transporting Izz al-Din Shuheil al-Masri to the pizzeria on August 9, 2001. Al-Masri detonated 5 to 10 kilograms of explosives — packed with nails, screws, and bolts to ensure maximum damage — in the crowded restaurant, killing 15 civilians, including seven children and a pregnant woman, and injuring 130 more.
Two of those killed, Malka Roth and Shoshana Yehudit (Judy) Greenbaum, were American citizens. Several Americans were also wounded in the attack, including Chana Nachenberg, who remains in a coma more than 15 years later.
Nachenberg’s father, Yitzhak Bennett Finer, applauded the Justice Department’s efforts to extradite Tamimi. “Our daughter Chana Nachenberg had the prime of her life taken from her because she has spent the past 15 and half years in a vegetative state on a respirator as a result of this inhuman act of the heinous bombing of Sbarros,” he said. “Her daughter Sarah has grown up without a mother and her husband David without the love of his wife.”
The Post reported that a delegation of Justice Department prosecutors recently visited Israel and met with both law enforcement officials and terror victims in order to build support for the extradition request.
This is the new Sessions DOJ. And it's one of those "big change" moments. While I don't expect Jordan to extradite, there are killers of Americans in Palestinian Authority territory. A better approach might be to hold up further transfers of aid, we sent a rather large payment to them recently, unless they extradite them. But that's politically explosive and Tillerson and Mattis might get their backs up.
After all we wouldn't want to expect the taxpayer-funded terrorists to stop the terrorism. What will happen to the imaginary peace process then?
Here's a bit more about the Nachenberg family.
It has been 12 years since the Sbarro’s bombing in which my wife, Chana was critically injured. Chana is still in the hospital, in a permanent vegetative state.
It has been 12 years since our lives were changed forever.
It is not a good day to reflect on… for me, for her parents or for our daughter.
Our daughter, Sarah has been growing up without a mommy…no hugs, no kisses, no loving glances, no freshly baked chocolate chip cookies when she comes home, not even a reprimand when she needs it, and no motherly advice.
And my wife’s parents?
They lost their daughter that day, and with it, their hopes for her future.
They have had to come to terms with the hard facts of her reality… in one moment, she became a shell of the person she once was.
And me?
I have no partner to share my life with, raise Sarah with, and plan a future with…
That is the legacy that the terrorists have left on our family.
This is what Islamic terrorism is meant to do. This profoundly destructive cult glories in destroying human lives and families.
Throughout my life, I told myself that this is my life, this is my normal. Deep inside I knew it wasn’t normal because most kids have a father and a mother at home. I was escaping reality. Just before my Bat Mitzvah, I felt a strong longing for my mother and I missed her so much. A month earlier, during my cousin’s Bat Mitzvah, I heard her mother give a speech and I started to cry. The understanding that my mother won’t be there during my Bat Mitzvah finally came to my realization. What was I to do? It was suppose to be a happy celebration.
My father is my role model since he is so strong. He copes all on his own while taking care of me and the household, playing both roles of the mother and the father of the household. No matter how hard it is for him, he hardly ever breaks down in front of me. I feel bad for him since having to take care of me is a difficult task all on its own. I start an argument over every little thing. Since I don’t have siblings to argue with, I argue with my father.
Sometimes I wonder how life would be like if my mother were a part of our life. When I think such thoughts, I know in my heart I would have ended up a different person. I can’t really imagine it so I am not sure how it would be. I am not even sure if it would be better or worse.
These are the wages of the peace process and the two-state solution. This is the price that the Jewish people are paying for the empowerment of the PLO and the rest of the infrastructure of Islamic terrorism. That must end.