SHELTERING KILLERS AND MAKING EXCUSES

Peloni:  America has ALWAYS had the ability to bring the likes of Nafez Sabih and Bassam Issa to justice, just as they have always had the ability to bring Ahlam Tamimi to justice for her role in the Sbarro Pizza bombing in which two other Americans were killed, Malka Chana Roth, a 15-year-old, and Judith Shoshana Greenbaum, a pregnant 31-year-old teacher.  Of course, the facetious claim put forward by Dennis Ross is not sincere, which is why there will never be justice for the likes of these American victims whose murderers remain in a state of constant protection by governments and authorities which are directly funded by the US taxpayers.

by Rafael Medoff

Thirty years ago this week, Palestinian Arab terrorists bombed a bus on Jaffa Road, in downtown Jerusalem. Twenty-six passengers were murdered.

Among the victims were U.S. citizens Sara Duker, of New Jersey, and Matthew Eisenfeld, of Connecticut, students at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America who were engaged to be married.

The Israeli government subsequently identified a terrorist named Bassam Issa, a resident of the Palestinian Authority territories, as having assisted in the bombing. On July 7, 1996, Israel formally asked the PA to extradite Issa.

According to the Oslo II accord—Annex IV, Article II(7)—the PA is required to honor such requests. Instead, the PA ignored it.

Eight months later, the pattern repeated itself. The Israelis identified Nafez Sabih, another resident of the PA areas, as one of the masterminds of the bombing. On March 31, 1997, Israel formally asked the PA to extradite Sabih. Again, the PA ignored the request.

For some reason, the various governments that enthusiastically promoted the Oslo accords have never been troubled by such blatant violations of the accords.

There has always been another option for bringing the killers of Sara and Matthew to justice: American law permits the prosecution, in the United States, of terrorists who have harmed American citizens abroad. Yet no U.S. administration has ever demanded that the PA hand them over.

In June 1997, U.S. Mideast envoy Dennis Ross met with students at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and one of them asked Ross why the U.S. government was not pressing the PA to surrender the killers for prosecution.

Ross’s response was profoundly disingenuous.

He said that “one of the obstacles to doing that [bringing Palestinian killers to the U.S. for trial] is the fact that the United States does not have an extradition treaty with the Palestinian Authority.”

In reality, the U.S. frequently finds ways to bring criminals to justice, outside official extradition channels. Sometimes it does so through economic or political pressure. Sometimes it uses other means, as in the recent case of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores.

With his decades of experience in the political and legal aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Ambassador Ross must have known that the absence of an extradition treaty is not a genuine obstacle to apprehending the killers.

So why did Ross mislead the JTS students? Why was he making excuses for the failure to bring the Jerusalem bus bombers to justice?

The Times of Israel reported last year that another terrorist involved in the 1996 bus bombing, Mohammad Abu Warda, lives freely in Gaza and was even seen attending one of the Hamas propaganda events involving the bodies of dead Israeli hostages.

Will the “international stabilization force” now being formed by the U.S. Board of Peace arrest Abu Warda and hand him over to the American government to face justice?

Dr. Medoff is the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.