Parents’ plea – Don’t free our daughter’s killer
As the Jewish world holds its breath pending the safe release of Gilad Shalit, held prisoner by Hamas for over five years, the parents of a teenager who died at the hands of one of the exchange prisoners have pleaded not to release their daughter’s killer.
Arnold Roth, the father of 15-yr-old Melbourne teenager Malki Roth who was murdered in the 2001, has issued the following statement:
Malki Roth - photographed the day before she died
“Under normal circumstances, requests to sign a petition are unlikely to lead to any significant outcome. In this case, we are hoping to do something important.
The petition asks for the removal of one specific name from the list of more than one thousand terrorists, including hundreds of convicted murderers, to be published by the government of Israel tomorrow, Sunday. That list is the basis of a transaction by which Israel will get back Gilad Shalit, held hostage by the terrorists of Hamas for more than five years. The deal involves Israel throwing open the gates of its top-security prisons and issuing wholesale pardons. My wife Frimet and I have expressed our principled objection to the deal. While others are busy trying to stop it in the courts, we are focusing our energies on one specific person, and getting her off the list.
Her name is Tamimi. An article in today’s New York Times [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/middleeast/israel-prisoner-swap-touches-old-wounds.html ] provides some background:
Among those is Ahlam Tamimi, a 31-year-old woman who was a key figure in the pizzeria attack. She is often described as the driver of the car that brought the suicide bomber to the Sbarro restaurant and killed 15 people. But the Roths say her role went far beyond that, to the actual planning of the attack. In interviews from prison, Ms. Tamimi, who was a journalist, has told of having brought the suicide bomber to Jerusalem and then going on Palestinian television’s afternoon broadcast to announce the news of the attack without acknowledging her involvement. “I’m not sorry for what I did,” she told an Israeli news organization in 2006. “I will get out of prison, and I refuse to recognize Israel’s existence. Discussions will only take place after Israel recognizes that this is Islamic land.”
The Roths said their anger over the prisoner exchange was focused on Ms. Tamimi, who is being sent to Jordan. She is young, fervent and charismatic, Mr. Roth said, and proud of what she did. In a documentary on Palestinian prisoners, she was asked whether she knew how many children had been killed in the attack. She did not. When told the number was eight, she smiled.
There is a fuller background about the circumstances in which our daughter was murdered on the Keren Malki website: http://www.kerenmalki.org/Sbarro_Massacre.htm
And there are many articles on the web tonight showing her family and supporters celebrating her impending return to freedom and to a full and active life as a heroine and inspiration.
Time is very limited. We really only have until Sunday (16th October) to get a significant number of signatures. If we succeed, we can then put pressure on the Prime Minister’s Office and the Justice Ministry and publicize this in the media.
Even if you do not normally sign petitions, or pass them along to friends, we ask you to seriously consider signing this one. Once again, it’s online here:
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/remove-ahlam-tamimi-from-the-list-of-terrorists-to-be-f.html
Finally, allow me to mention that Keren Malki, the non-sectarian not-for-profit we created in our daughter’s memory in 2001, does very good work in our murdered daughter’s name for the benefit of families raising a special-needs child. Your support for that work will be much appreciated. More at www.kerenmalki.org
Thank you for reading this far. Together with our friends and their friends, we hope – despite the odds – to do something constructive in the face of the terrible transaction being done with the terrorists of Hamas.”
Federal MP Michael Danby told J-Wire: “Whereas I totally support the Israeli government’s position, they do have extremely difficult decisions to make. I will be signing the Roths’ petition.
I have sent the following email to my friends and would urge your readers to do so similarly in memory of Malki Roth:
“Dear Friend
I am sending you this email after reading the following in J Wire:
http://www.jwire.com.au/news/parents-plea-dont-free-our-daughters-killer/19718
After reading the above article I visited GoPetition at the following page
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/remove-ahlam-tamimi-from-the-list-of-terrorists-to-be-f.html
Releasing 1027 terrorists – many of them convicted murderers like Ahlam Tamimi – flies in the face of what Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued in his book in 1995:
“The release of convicted terrorists before they have served their full sentences seems like an easy and tempting way of defusing blackmail situations in which innocent people may lose their lives, but its utility is momentary at best.
“Prisoner releases only embolden terrorists by giving them the feeling that even if they are caught, their punishment will be brief. Worse, by leading terrorists to think such demands are likely to be met, they encourage precisely the terrorist blackmail they are supposed to defuse.”
Fighting Terrorism: How Democracies Can Defeat Domestic and International Terrorists.
Please consider signing this petition and forwarding it to your email list to do likewise.
It is indeed a difficult choice for us all to make – the certainty of seeing Gilad Shalit being returned to his parents after enduring more than five years of hell – or the uncertainty that the future will extract in the death and suffering caused to other families for the price that has been paid
Regards”