Arnold Roth

In memory of Malki

I reached out to Arnold a short time before visiting Israel in 2018, after learning his beautiful 15-year-old daughter, Malka had been murdered in the Sbarro Restaurant bombing in Jerusalem on August 9th, 2001. In the same attack 14 others had lost their lives including Malka’s life long friend, Michal Raziel.  As I read Arnolds description of his daughter’s character, I could not help but be moved by her extraordinary giving nature, her kindness and love for life- a life that was cruelly robbed from her by the barbaric hatred of an Arab terrorist.

Arnold responded kindly to my request for a meeting, highlighting a possible connection. We both share the name Rothenberg and have roots in the Jewish community of pre-WW2 Galicia, Poland; thus, when met in Jerusalem, I already felt as if he was family. Both his parents had survived the Holocaust and he had grown up in Australia in the Jewish community of Melbourne. His heritage provided a deeply poignant backdrop to the death of his own daughter, the grandchild of Holocaust survivors, living in the Jewish homeland yet murdered because she was Jewish.

“I’m crazy passionate about family history, not only about my own family in general, but my history because both my parents, like everybody in Melbourne, (certainly everybody of my generation) everybody is holocaust survivors. No one had grandparents. No one had any knowledge of what was going on in their parents lives before they themselves came along other than what they overheard in nightmares… A big part of the narrative; hearing your parents have their nightmares.”

He explained that despite the nightmares the post Holocaust community was very sociable, spending time together every Saturday or Sunday night, often playing cards. At these events, he would listen in; he understood Yiddish and wanted to learn all he could. “I don’t have a single friend today from that generation, most of whom are still living in Melbourne who doesn’t regret having not challenged his or her parents. “Tell me, what was it like? Tell me how it was, how you got over it?”

“Tell me about Malki, she sounds like a treasure…..”

“She really was… there was always something special about Malki.” 

He remembered that for the first few years of her life the family had been very busy and for some reason very few pictures of her had been taken. They moved to Israel in 1998, and by this time Malki recognised this fact.

“Even now it’s so hard to reconcile myself to the reality, we have very few pictures of Malki- even in the years that went by afterwards. We found a treasure about a year ago- an undeveloped disposable camera which turned out to be hers. Pictures of herself and her friends…very touching pictures especially as we only saw them 15 years after she was no longer alive.”

Explaining events that were to shape Malki as a person, Arnold mentioned her younger sister Haya.

“When Haya was a year old, she became desperately ill. Born perfect, exceptionally beautiful, like all our children. Sweet and lovely”. Arnold and his wife Frimet, realised she had delayed development, but then they received the worst news they’d ever had. She was blind.

“if only the problems were that she was blind, everything would be wonderful.” The reality of her condition was a lot more serious, and when she was a year old, she extremely became ill, and began seizing uncontrollably. The Roth’s took the little girl to hospital, where ‘everything that could go wrong went wrong.’ She came out of hospital profoundly brain damaged, never to recover.

“Malki was only 10 years old a regular little Israeli girl. She adored her little sister, she adored the fragility of her, the neediness of her, she was just bursting to give, to hug, to kiss, to be with her.  

Of the pictures they do have of Malki, many of them are her holding Haya; holding her on her lap, carrying her, just being close with her. . She was very devoted.”

Malki became an agent of change, first at school and then later as a member of the youth group ‘Ezra’. At 14 she became an assistant counsellor, then at 15 she was given her own group.  “Every Shabbat she would be away from home for that last year of her life looking after her little crew of fledgling Ezra girls” Arnold reflected. “We now know a lot about that period, again it’s so unbearably touching the things she was doing, engaging in conversations with kids especially from the former Soviet Union who are all fresh to Israel.

There’s Malki, our Rock of Gibraltar listening, always with a smile on her face and always engaged in fun. Fun that derives from empathy; empathy from wall to wall. She was the most empathetic person I’ve ever met. She was also focused on reaching out to disabled children”

At school also Malki reached out to kids with disabilities and built bridges between them and regular kids. In the summer of 2001, she and one of the girls in the class decided to become professionals. They delivered themselves to the gates of a summer camp on the shores of the Sea of Galilee where there was a major gathering of more than 1000 children with physical and cognitive disabilities.  Malki and her friend Rachelle were told they could not be admitted as aides as they were not professionals, but they stood their ground and were eventually let into the camp.

“ Malki came back with a smile from ear to ear but never really managed to tell us anything and she was killed two days later, so  we never heard anything from her about how rewarding in both directions the interaction with those children was..”

On the day of the bombing, Malki was on her way to a planning meeting for a summer camp with her friend Michal when the girls decided to stop off for a drink and a slice of Pizza in a crowded restaurant in the centre of Jerusalem. According to one report the terrorist placed himself and the guitar case containing the bomb right next to the two girls. Malki was typing a text message when the bomb went off. 15 people died in the blast including 8 children. One lady remains in a coma to this day.

During the days of mourning after the funeral (the Shiva), the family decided how they would remember the beautiful girl.

“So here we were in the wake of her murder sitting on the floor in our home.  During the day our home was filled with strangers; Jerusalem was very affected. There were 15 funerals that Friday. Malki’s was the last. She was the last body to be found; her body had been taken to the mortuary in Tel Aviv and no one knew. It was 12 hours before we found her. So, the funeral took place and now we are sitting at home, engaging in the whole process of dealing with mourners around us and people come to comfort us.  I called the kids together and said when everyone leaves tonight, we are going to sit down, and we are going to commemorate Malki. We had a short discussion and decided to put together an organisation that would have her name and would help people like us,”

The Roth’s were determined to keep Haya within the family unit despite the severity of her disabilities because they felt no one could give her more than they could. Arnold explained, they did not want to fight in Malki’s name, instead, they wanted to share the ability to care for a disabled child within the family just as they had done. And so, the Malki Foundation was born.

https://kerenmalki.org/

“The Malki Foundation doesn’t exist to solve the problems of kids in Metulla (Northern Israel) or Eilat (Southern Israel) and it doesn’t exist in order to provide equipment to tens of thousands of families around the country. It exists so that I can stand up and say, there was a child called Malka, I want you to know about her life. This is our living memorial to our child.”

Arnold described the mastermind behind the bombings, an Arab woman named Ahlam Tamimi.

“On the day she carried out the massacre, she brought the bomb, she planted the bomb. The bomb was a human being and she brought him there. She was the news reader at a Palestinian TV Station. She rushed from the scene because she had no intention of being killed there, she got into a taxi, and then a bus and went back to Ramallah and read the news. And of course, the news kicked off with ‘in a Resistance operation in Jerusalem, many Zionists were killed’ and so on. She was arrested and sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment, one for each of the murders and another one for the woman who is in a vegetative state.  And then she was freed in the Gilad Shalit deal” (a hostage deal carried out by Israel in which 1,027 prisoners were exchanged for a young Israeli soldier who had been held hostage for 5 years). Arnold describes this as ‘a very bitter period in our lives.’

Tamimi was sent back to Jordan where she remains to this day; she had left there about a year before the massacre to come to Israel. After the bombing the Jordanians allowed her to broadcast her own TV programme for 5 years in which she encouraged the murder of Jews.  She is on the FBI most wanted list and Arnold is still fighting for her extradition to be tried in America. Malki was an American citizen and according to the American criminal code, the government is obliged to find the terrorist and bring them to justice on U.S soil.

 “We have done our level best to not make this Israel vs the Arabs or bereaved insane parents trying to get revenge because those statements are both not true.  The issue of a woman who actually smiles into the camera when asked how many children you think you killed and she says- ‘three?’, no, eight, ‘Oh! Eight!!’ That’s literally what happened …its soul destroying. Having to get up there and argue in the name of a murdered child who in her pinkie had more goodness than this woman has in 100 years of activity is very difficult. There are lots of times when I don’t speak as confidently as I speak now, I’m gasping, and I can’t speak”

As Arnold left after two and a half hours of dialogue and I watched him walk away, I felt enormous respect for him and for Frimet… and a deep compassion. They had been cruelly robbed of Malki’s future, her friendship, her vibrant presence in their lives and Malki had been robbed of absolutely everything by one calculated act of hatred, designed to destroy as many Jewish lives as possible.  That she is commemorated in the lives of thousands of disabled children is testament to her parent’s great love and Malki’s outstanding character.

As a result of my meeting with Arnold and with other’s I determined I would do all in my power to raise awareness of the horror of terrorism, and to draw attention to the brightness of the lives it seeks to snuff out. Malki Roth is one of those bright lights, and her beautiful legacy shines on.

For Further information Please contact me: jenniemilne67@gmail.com

Follow Arnold and Frimet Roth: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.com/