Frimet Roth responds to Guardian story sympathetic to terrorist responsible for her daughter’s murder

The following was written by Frimet Roth.  

The letter is a response to a Guardian report, “Palestine families wait to hear prisoners’ fate“, Oct. 13, by Phoebe Greenwood, about the Palestinian terrorist (Ahlam Tamimim) serving 6 life terms for her major role in carrying out a suicide attack at the Jerusalem Sbarro’s in 2001 which killed the Roth’s 15 year old daughter Malka.

Tamimim is reported to be among those terrorists who will shortly be released by Israel in exchange for Gilad Shalit.

Contrary to what Phoebe Greenwoood writes from Ramallah, Ahlam Tamimi did not drive the Sbarro restaurant suicide bomber to his target.

On the day of the massacre (which killed 15, and injured 130) she personally transported a bomb weighing 10kg from a West Bank town into Jerusalem. The bomb was concealed inside a guitar case. She arranged for a taxi to bring her and an accomplice by the name of Al Masri, a young newly religious fanatic, to an Israeli security checkpoint. To reduce suspicion, they were dressed to look like Israelis. It worked. The bomb was not detected, and Tamimi led her “weapon” – Al Masri – to the target that had been carefully selected by her.

That target was a pizza restaurant, selected because it was located in the heart of Jerusalem and on a hot summer vacation afternoon it would be teeming with women and children. Tamimi instructed Al Masri to wait fifteen minutes before detonating the explosives to give her sufficient time to flee the scene safely. He followed her orders.

Our precious daughter, Malki, who was 15, perished in the ensuing inferno.

The contention, in Greenwood’s report, that Tamimi was pressured into committing this barbaric act that took the lives of seven men and women, and eight children, and left a sixteenth woman in a coma until today, is patently false.

Since being sentenced to 16 life terms, she has been interviewed twice, once for a full-length documentary. She has repeatedly stated that she does not regret her actions. She smiled to the camera when she learned that she had murdered eight children; she had been under the impression it was fewer.

Tamimi was also found guilty of a failed attempt at a terror attack several months before her “success”. On that occasion she planted a bomb in a wastebasket in a large Jerusalem supermarket. Fortunately, the bomb did not explode. 

Now, I ask you, are these the deeds and words of someone who simply “was a perfect target” for Hamas and who hadn’t “fully thought through what she was doing”, as her brother contends in the Guardian story?

Mention of the egregious injustice and betrayal that is now being perpetrated upon the families of Israeli terror victims is the least that the Guardian could do in reporting this news event.

Frimet Roth, Jerusalem

Suicide bombing at Jerusalem Sbarro's, Aug. 9, 2001

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