What "Globalize the Intifada" Actually Means, From Someone Who Lived It | With Arnold Roth

Twenty-five years ago, sixteen people were murdered at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem. One was Arnold Roth's fifteen-year-old daughter, Malki. The woman who planned it is free in Jordan, wanted by the FBI with a $5 million reward on her head — and has never once said she's sorry. Arnold Roth on what the intifada actually was, why "suicide bomber" is the wrong phrase, and the thing he built in his daughter's name that is still doing good every single day. On August 9, 2001, a young man walked into a pizzeria in the center of Jerusalem carrying a guitar case. It was a school holiday. The restaurant was full. A few minutes before two o'clock he pressed a button on his chest, and sixteen people were murdered — one of them Malki Roth, fifteen years old, a flautist who spent her holidays volunteering with severely disabled children because her own little sister was one. Her father Arnold spent the next twelve hours not knowing where she was. He has spent the twenty-five years since trying to bring the woman who planned the attack to justice, and he is still trying. Ahlam Tamimi was twenty-one. She was Jordanian, from a comfortable family, and she chose the target. She was sentenced to sixteen life terms, released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange, and returned to Jordan to a hero's welcome — where she has lived openly ever since. She is on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list. The United States has a five-million-dollar reward out for her. She has never expressed regret; she has said publicly that her only disappointment is that she didn't kill more. In this conversation, Ben asks Arnold to do something he says he doesn't get asked to do often: not to make the legal case — he's made that a thousand times, and he makes it here too — but to describe what the Second Intifada actually was, for the benefit of people who chant its name and could not tell you a single thing that happened during it. More than a thousand Israelis were killed between 2000 and 2005 in a country of six million. Also in this episode: the phone call from the BBC on the Sunday after the funeral, offering to pair him with the bomber's father for "contrasting views"; the four and a half years Tamimi spent hosting a weekly television program on Jordanian soil while already under US indictment; the AP crew that interviewed her in her own home; and why Arnold says he would simply walk away from the student at Columbia in a keffiyeh — not because he's given up, but because he thinks the entire problem has been misdiagnosed and the real fix is generational, unglamorous, and hasn't been invented yet. And then the part he saves for the end. Asked what has kept him going, he doesn't talk about extradition. He talks about the seven days of mourning, sitting in his own house with his children, deciding to build something. What they built helps families keep severely disabled children at home instead of surrendering them to an institution. It is now in its twenty-fifth year. It is named after her. Arnold Roth is an Australian-born lawyer in Jerusalem and co-founder of the Malki Foundation, which helps families keep severely disabled children at home rather than in institutions — the work Malki herself was doing the week she was killed. He has spent a quarter of a century campaigning to extradite Ahlam al-Tamimi, who is under US indictment, sits on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists list with a $5 million reward attached, and was released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange alongside Yahya Sinwar. 🎧 Listen and subscribe: https://podcast.honestreporting.com 🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-honest-take/id1896315802 🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1pCnClcM4jiggKP46YZGjG 🌐 https://honestreporting.com From this episode: • The Malki Foundation (Keren Malki) — https://kerenmalki.org • "A Beautiful Life" — the family's own account of who Malki was — https://kerenmalki.org/a-beautiful-life/ • FBI Most Wanted Terrorists: Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi — https://www.fbi.gov/wanted/wanted_terrorists/ahlam-ahmad-al-tamimi • Rewards for Justice: up to $5 million — https://rewardsforjustice.net/rewards/ahlam-ahmad-al-tamimi/ • Times of Israel, June 2025 — the Roths deliver a 30,000-signature petition to the US Embassy in Jerusalem — https://www.timesofisrael.com/parents-of-sbarro-bombing-victim-urge-us-to-demand-hamas-terrorists-extradition/ • Times of Israel, June 2023 — the sixteenth victim, Chana Nachenberg, dies after 22 years — https://www.timesofisrael.com/woman-critically-injured-in-palestinian-terror-attack-22-years-ago-dies-of-wounds/ If this episode gave you something, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify — it genuinely decides who else finds the show. And follow HonestReporting on YouTube, X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.