My daughter deserves more than a mention

No one who types the chilling words “Losing a child is” into a search engine is ever surprised by the result. Losing a child to an act of murder takes the eviscerating pain of grief to a still-more agonizing level. Coping is as hard as things get. A nightmare.

But when the murderer becomes a celebrity, that’s uniquely, impossibly dark. When leaders of various kinds get visibly tongue-tied in your presence or play deaf, you don’t merely find yourself wondering how this can possibly happen. It’s happened. And dealing with it inevitably becomes one of those tasks where no one but those personally at the vortex of the emotional storm that follows can understand or help.

Everyone who knew my daughter Malki knows what an angel she was. Then at fifteen she was taken from us. A nightmare set in that continues today, enveloping my wife, our children, me. The latest chapter in that horror is unfolding in Australia right now.

A Jordanian woman, Ahlam Tamimi, lives free in the land where she was born, kept safe there from the authorities in Washington who since 2013 have sought to put her on trial for her key role in an act of savagery that explicitly targeted Jewish children. Jordan keeps her safe though it’s a close ally of the United States, gets more billions of dollars in annual taxpayer-funded US aid than almost any other state, and has a binding, valid treaty with the US that requires it to hand people like Malki’s murderer over to the US justice system. And yet.

Since this is a nightmare, it’s understandable that so far Jordan and the woman are winning. Which brings us to Australia.

Our Malki was born in Melbourne. Starting weeks after the Jordanian savage was bargained away by Israel in the catastrophic Gilad Shalit deal, I have pushed wherever it made sense to push so that justice gets her. There’s progress but it’s glacial. In Australia, which has influence and sway with Jordan as well as a moral, perhaps even ethical, obligation to do something in the face of the trampled justice which the Tamimi case makes concrete, I have focused on DFAT and been rebuffed time and again.

Last week, Jordan’s absolute ruler came to Canberra. In a rational world, Australia’s most senior political figures would have mildly leveraged the opportunity to do something for justice with some measured public words. But it’s not what happened. I can’t say this surprised or embittered me but that’s mainly because of the scars.

What brings to write this now is the shameless way it’s been said (I’m advised not to quote the sources or the actual words) that the Jordan/Tamimi scandal was mentioned in Canberra. Don’t ask by whom, or to whom, or what the mention was about. There appears to be a limited appetite there for the actual issues.

As the father of an Australian child whose glow was extinguished by a Jordanian celebrity, my message to Australia’s leaders is consistent with its stated commitment to counterterrorism and to the protection of its citizens. Raising this matter of justice thwarted need not have disrupted last week’s agenda with the Jordan entourage. It’s a shame the opportunity was not taken. Airing the unfinished business of justice is always morally right and, though terribly late in my daughter’s case, it is a reasonable request from one partner to another.

I hope Australia’s Jewish community leaders will now convey that message to the right people.

Arnold Roth is founder and honorary chair of The Malki Foundation – kerenmalki.org.