If you\u2019re old enough, you remember the photos: A bombed-out storefront. Debris everywhere. Medics and first responders scrambling in their vests to tend to the wounded. The terrorist who detonated the bomb had packed it with nuts and bolts and nails to cause maximum pain to the adults and children he was about to kill and maim. It worked.<\/p>\n
A quarter-century later, who still thinks about this terrible attack? It was not the deadliest suicide bombing of the Second Intifada, or even of 2001. Globally, it was overshadowed 33 days later when terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and another into the Pentagon, killing exponentially more people. More than two decades after that, the same Hamas terror group that killed 16 at Sbarro would kill 1,200 in southern Israel.<\/p>\n
But of course, 25 years after it happened, there are those who still think about it: The parents, children, siblings and other loved ones of the 16 victims who walked into a pizzeria on that Thursday afternoon and never came out. At least one of those parents has never stopped thinking about it, because for him, 25 years later, it isn\u2019t really over.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only reason I\u2019m involved in this is because my daughter was murdered and the murderer has been free all these years,\u201d Arnold Roth, whose daughter Malki was killed in the Sbarro attack, told The Times of Israel in an interview last week. \u201cIt\u2019s unthinkable to me that we\u2019re still fighting for justice for a child who was murdered in broad daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t One of the terrorists who committed the attack killed himself along with the 16 victims. But another, Ahlam Tamimi, walked away and has lived free in Jordan for more than a decade. Roth and his wife have dedicated the past 15 years of their lives to making her face justice<\/a>, so far without success.<\/p>\n And in recent years, that struggle has become harder. Because losing Malki is not the Roths\u2019 most recent bereavement: They lost a son-in-law in Gaza, shortly after Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023, attack.<\/p>\n \u201cLosing a son-in-law along the way to the very same enemy that this savage barbarian represents has not been easy,\u201d Roth said. \u201cIt\u2019s a replay of having to address the need of keeping my loved ones safe and unharmed by the grief.\u201d<\/p>\n The Roth family\u2019s grief, and its ongoing fight for justice, also raises a set of questions that Israel has faced since its earliest days: How do we keep the memory of previous tragedies alive when new ones keep coming? And as the country struggles to heal from its freshest wounds, who will still be there to help right the wrongs of the past?<\/p>\n \u2018An eviscerating sense of bitterness\u2019<\/p>\n When Roth describes the past quarter-century, he speaks of \u201can eviscerating sense of bitterness at the failure.\u201d He\u2019s not talking about his own failure. He\u2019s talking about the failure of those who are meant to support him \u2014 who have pledged to support him \u2014 to do what is in his mind the most important and unimpeachable thing one can do: bring his daughter\u2019s killer to justice.<\/p>\n \t Tamimi, who orchestrated the attack and accompanied the bomber, walked out of Sbarro that day, was arrested shortly thereafter, and was released in the 2011 exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in which more than 1,000 Palestinian terrorists went free. She lives in Jordan now. The Roths have invested 15 years of effort into having her extradited to the United States, where she could stand trial for killing American citizens, including Malki, and is on the FBI\u2019s Most Wanted list<\/a>. But despite a criminal indictment against her, she has not been brought to the US and still lives across the border, in Jordan, unconstrained and wholly unrepentant.<\/p>\n Roth blames presidents of both parties for being too timid to extract a known criminal from the territory of an ally that receives a huge amount of US foreign aid. And he blames Jewish organizations (though he was reluctant to name names) for not putting this on their priority list and not pushing their own governments to pursue this proud, murderous antisemite.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t understand why there hasn\u2019t been a coming together of fury over this case,\u201d he said. He added later, \u201cIt\u2019s not going to bring her back and it\u2019s not going to improve anything in our lives at all. But the idea that the woman who did it is dancing on Malki\u2019s grave \u2014 and that\u2019s the way I always look at it and always think about it \u2014 is unbearable to me. Unbearable in every sense of those words.\u201d<\/p>\n Roth is aware of why Tamimi hasn\u2019t been extradited, and why people who have devoted themselves to fighting antisemitism and terrorism have shied away from the case: Jordan is an ally of the United States, has diplomatic relations with Israel, and shares a long border with Israel and the West Bank. Although Jordan signed an extradition treaty with the US, officials don\u2019t think it\u2019s worth the risk of antagonizing Jordan\u2019s monarchy to arrest someone who committed a terror attack 25 years ago, and who is regarded by many in that country as a hero.<\/p>\n Roth summarizes those concerns as \u201cDon\u2019t piss off the king.\u201d And he thinks it\u2019s nonsense.<\/p>\n \t \u201cWho says that bringing this woman, as the treaty requires, to the airport to hand her over to the FBI agents is going to cause dissension in the streets?\u201d he asked. \u201cBecause if that\u2019s right, then we\u2019re sitting on a powder keg today, and if we\u2019re sitting on a powder keg today, why are we giving every indication that Jordan is a moderate state?\u201d<\/p>\n Time may also be a factor. Ksenia Svetlova, executive director of the Regional Organization for Peace, Economics and Security, said Tamimi should face justice, but that for Israel, she is just one of many terrorists who have been released in a prisoner exchange, a number that\u2019s only grown after the October 7 attack.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the perpetrator of the terror attack, like perpetrators of every terror attack, should be extradited,\u201d she said. She added later, \u201cSomething to take into account is that so many things happened after that and before it. We are speaking about so many perpetrators, and so many were released.\u201d<\/p>\n Grief and advocacy after October 7<\/p>\n The October 7 attack also unleashed a wave of advocacy that dwarfed anything coming out of the Second Intifada, as hundreds of thousands in Israel and around the world took to the streets and persistently lobbied their governments to bring the hostages, living and dead, back home.<\/p>\n At its core, the demand was not that different from Roth\u2019s: Both are a quest for justice, stemming from the unimaginable loss wrought by a Hamas terror attack. But while the struggle for the hostages was a global movement that engaged the world\u2019s most powerful people, Roth sometimes sounds like a solitary voice crying out in the desert.<\/p>\n To Roth, the difference between the hostage protests and his case is no mystery. The struggle to free the hostages, when it took place, was \u201ccurrent,\u201d with protesters pleading for lives to be saved. When he began fighting for Tamimi\u2019s extradition, a decade had past since his daughter was killed.<\/p>\n \u201cMy story is all about getting justice years after the massacre took place,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a long list of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n \t Instead, October 7 brought only more grief to the Roth family. Naftali Yonah Gordon<\/a>, husband of Roth\u2019s daughter Pesi, showed up for reserve duty after the massacre, and was killed on December 7 in Gaza. He was 32.<\/p>\n Since then, Roth\u2019s wife, Frimet, has taken a step back from the Tamimi case, on which she was once more active. Their widowed daughter and her children have moved two doors down from them. For Roth, it\u2019s brought back memories of the aftermath of Malki\u2019s death.<\/p>\n When Malki was killed, he said, \u201cOur children went through a very hard time. I\u2019m not saying I didn\u2019t, but I\u2019m an adult and I\u2019ve got my tools. The kids didn\u2019t have the tools. And suddenly we found ourselves in the same situation.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cIssues like that become my responsibility. Not only mine \u2014 I\u2019m a part of a family, we all contribute, and I can tell you we do \u2014 but it really sits heavily with me.\u201d<\/p>\n One attack of many?<\/p>\n The passage of time has also impacted how Israelis think about the Sbarro bombing. In the country\u2019s public consciousness, scholars acknowledge, there isn\u2019t really a \u201cSbarro attack\u201d in isolation. There is the Second Intifada, when terrorists killed 1,000 Israelis in what felt like an unending chain of attacks at cafes and buses and shopping malls. Sbarro is remembered as part of a list whose names evoke memories of bloodshed: Dolphinarium, Park Hotel, Hebrew University, the number 32 bus and so many more.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/MFAJ09960-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tBodies of victims are removed from the bombed Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem, August 9, 2001 (GPO)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/malki-e1582118306945-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tMalki Roth (Courtesy of the Roth family)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/AP22191664927695-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tAhlam al-Tamimi, during an interview in her home in Amman, Jordan, on March 21, 2017. (AP Photo\/ Omar Akour)<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/bg211-640x400.jpg\")
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\n\t\tNaftali Gordon, who was killed in Gaza on December 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)<\/p>\n
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