With terrorist behind Sbarro bombing still free, Roths urge US Jewish groups to act

Aug. 9 marked 24 years since the Sbarro pizzeria bombing in Jerusalem, when a Hamas suicide bomber entered the bustling establishment and took the lives of 16 people, including eight children and a pregnant woman. Some 130 were wounded.

Three Americans were killed in the attack. Two died on the day of the bombing: Malki Roth, 15, and Judith Shoshana Greenbaum, a pregnant 31-year-old teacher. A third American, Chana Nachenberg, died in May 2023 after 22 years in a coma.

Malki Roth held Israeli, U.S. and Australian citizenship. She was born in Melbourne.

Ahlam Tamimi, 44, the terrorist who helped plan and engineer the attack, lives freely in her native Jordan. Israel had arrested her within weeks of the attack but released her as part of the Gilad Shalit deal in October 2011. Under a then-Netanyahu government, 1,027 prisoners, 280 of them serving life terms, were released for Shalit, a captured IDF soldier. Tamimi had served only eight years of her 16 life terms.

Arnold Roth, Malki’s father, called that Israeli decision a “catastrophe” and has spent years together with his wife, Frimet, urging America to demand that Jordan, which has an extradition treaty with the United States, extradite Tamimi to stand trial in the U.S. For various reasons, prior U.S. administrations were reluctant to apply pressure on Amman.

 

That may be changing as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is the first to signal an openness to the Roths’ appeals. The Roths met with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee at the embassy in Jerusalem in May. In July, they held a video conference with U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro.

Pirro assured the Roths that the case remains a priority for the Justice Department and that she would do everything in her power to make the Tamimi extradition happen.

The Roths told JNS they plan a major push as the 25th anniversary of the attack approaches. Arnold Roth shared with JNS his hope that major American Jewish organizations would join that drive. He said that the “muted response” of American Jewish groups had been “a deeply disheartening reality for us.”

He said the present moment is “a time to call for action. America’s Jewish organizations, entrusted to uphold shared values of unity, justice, and the sanctity of life, can rise to this challenge.

“We call on these organizations to seize this moment with courage. … Their voices can galvanize lawmakers, ignite public campaigns and reaffirm the principles that bind us as a people,” Roth said.

William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group composed of 53 national Jewish organizations, agreed.

“It is helpful for the Jewish community to continue to speak out to ensure that it is well-known that this is an injustice that must be corrected,” he told JNS.

On Jan. 20, 2025, the day of Trump’s inauguration, the Conference of Presidents issued a statement calling on the U.S. government to start the extradition process to transfer Tamimi from Jordan to American courts.

“Malka Roth could have been any of our daughters, any of our sisters. Americans must feel protected by the long arm of American justice, and this is a situation where, for far too long, justice has evaded the Roth family,” Daroff said.

Tamini remains on the FBI’s “Most Wanted List,” and the U.S. State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is still offering up to $5 million for information leading to her arrest.

Tamimi picked the Sbarro location as it was lively with schoolchildren on vacation. She accompanied the suicide bomber to the target, helping him pass through the Israeli checkpoints.

The killer entered the pizzeria with a guitar case slung over his shoulder, hiding 10 to 20 pounds of explosives. The resulting blast gutted the restaurant at the height of the lunch hour on a Thursday.

Tamimi continues to express pride in her role in the Sbarro murders. In Jordan, she lives like a celebrity, having hosted her own Hamas-friendly TV show.

“Tamimi’s celebrity, built on the ruins of that devastated pizzeria, stands as a stark challenge to Jordan’s image as a beacon of moderation. Antisemitism festers there, unchecked, with little evidence that there have been any efforts to foster peace or coexistence,” Roth said.

“Sensitivity” to Jordan’s government has been the main obstacle to extraditing Tamimi. Jordan has warned the U.S. that it would set off internal dissent among Jordan’s large Palestinian Arab population, Daroff said.

“While I recognize that there are sensitivities in Jordan, we have sensitivities here, too,” he said.

Daroff said the Trump White House makes him “cautiously optimistic” that Tamimi will be extradited. “I say cautiously optimistic, because the history of this has been a roller coaster of disappointment as presidential administration after presidential administration has not pursued this case,” he said.

Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, a member of the Conference of Presidents, said that though he believes Trump should demand extradition, he is pessimistic that it will happen.

Klein recalled a debate he had years ago with Hanan Ashrawi, then a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s leadership. He brought up the issue of extraditing terrorists, which was required under the Oslo Accords.

“I said to her, ‘You have at least 100 terrorists in the Palestinian territories that you control, and you haven’t extradited any of the terrorists. And she said, ‘We will never extradite a single terrorist to Israel. She was fervent, like, ‘How dare you? Are you crazy.’”

Klein said, “It tells you something about the vicious Arab Islamic enmity toward the Jewish people that King Abdullah is afraid to release Tamimi to the U.S. The Jordanian king will tell Trump, ‘The best leader in Jordan you’ll ever have is me. You want to get one of those lunatic Muslims?’ Trump is not going to upset King Abdullah if Abdullah says to him, ‘It could threaten my regime.’”

As far as action by American Jewish groups, Klein said that at the very least a letter should be sent to the administration signed by all the Conference of Presidents’ constituent member organizations. “There should be a letter from all of us, signed by all of us, to make a serious issue out of this. Otherwise, there’s no real feeling that American groups are behind it,” he said.

Moshe Phillips, chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI), said, “Malka Roth was an American citizen, as were other victims of that day, and demanding justice on behalf of an American citizen is always the right thing to do. But right now is an especially good time, in part, because of the willingness of the administration to meet with the Roths. The American Jewish establishment needs to push this.”

AFSI regularly reposts social media messages from the Roths. Phillips posited that one reason for U.S. administrations’ past reluctance to pursue the Tamimi case is that it’s a stark reminder that Palestinians “have never retreated from the belief that terrorism is a way forward.

“From [Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud] Abbas on down, they continue to not just materially support terrorists but lionize them. This is a key thing about which past administrations have wanted to avoid challenging the P.A. and Abbas,” Phillips said.