The media’s complicity in giving a shining face to a cold dark murderer. I can only imagine the digust and anger that the relatives and friends must feel, when they see news media giving a veneer of respectablility to the murderers of their loved ones.
Here is a classic case of such gross disrespect and immoral journalism in a June 27, 2007, New York Times’ TV-film review by Neil Genzlinger, who writes of Ahlam Tamimi:
“Hot House,” Shimon Dotan’s absorbing look at Palestinians held in Israeli jails, is full of remarkable interviews. Prisoners talk about how they issue orders to followers on the outside via smuggled cellphones. A former Palestinian newscaster, Ahlam Tamimi, recalls the day she dropped a suicide bomber off at his target, then coolly went on television to report on the resulting bombing.
Compounding the outrage of the NYT’s including the smiling Tamimi photo, is that the reviewer left out some important facts concerning this cold blooded “darling” killer. Tamimi is an unrepentant female terrorist who smuggled explosives into Jerusalem –used in the Sbarro Pizzeria attack that left 16 people dead– in a guitar case, as well as providing cover for the terrorist who eventually carried out the attack.
Arnold Roth, whom I had the honor of meeting in Jerusalem some years ago, is the father of 15 year-old Malki Roth who was murdered by Tamimi’s accomplice at the Sbarro Pizzeria in 2001.
Arnold Roth’s email concerning the NYT’s review and HBO’s film is as follows. Solomonia has more here.
Today’s [Yesterday now. -S] New York Times carries a review of a film called “Hot House” that goes inside Israeli prisons and examines the lives of Palestinian prisoners. We’re not recommending the film or the review. But we do want to share our feelings with you about the beaming female face that adorns the article. You can see it here.
The film is produced by HBO. So it’s presumably HBO’s publicity department that was responsible for creating and distributing a glamor-style photograph of a smiling, contented-looking young woman in her twenties to promote the movie.
That female is our child’s murderer. She was sentenced to sixteen life sentences or 320 years which she is serving in an Israeli jail. Fifteen people were killed and more than a hundred maimed and injured by the actions of this attractive person and her associates. The background is here.
Neither the New York Times nor HBO are likely to give even a moment’s attention to the victims of the barbarians who destroyed the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem and the lives of so many victims. So we would be grateful if you would pass along this link to some pictures of our daughter whose name was Malki. She was unable to reach her twenties – Hamas saw to that.
Though she was only fifteen years old when her life was stolen from her and from us, we think Malki was a beautiful young woman, living a beautiful life. We ask your help so that other people – far fewer than the number who will see the New York Times, of course – can know about her. Please ask your friends to look at the pictures – some of the very few we have – of our murdered daughter. They are at http://www.kerenmalki.org/photo.htm
And remind them of what the woman in the Israeli prison – the woman smiling so happily in the New York Times – said last year. “I’m not sorry for what I did. We’ll become free from the occupation and then I will be free from prison.”
With so many voices demanding that Israel release its terrorist prisoners, small wonder she’s smiling. With greetings from Jerusalem, Frimet and Arnold Roth
On behalf of Keren Malki
I remember listening to Arnold Roth speaking of the tragedy of losing his daughter, as well as the need to “not give in to the hate“, that naturally comes with the loss of a loved one …at the hands of such unthinkable barbarism. His thinking is typical in Israeli society. *L* KGS
