News
Jordanian Islamist who justified killing of Israeli schoolgirls attended House of Commons conference
Dima Tahboub said Jordanians saw soldier who shot dead Israeli schoolgirls as a 'hero'
November 18, 2018 13:38
Dima Tahboub said Jordanians saw soldier who shot dead Israeli schoolgirls as a 'hero'
November 18, 2018 13:38A Jordanian Islamist who justified the massacre of Israeli schoolgirls took part in a House of Commons events attended last week by cabinet ministers, the Mail on Sunday reported.
Dima Tahboub, a member of the Jordanian Parliament for the Isalamic Action Front and a Muslim Brotherhood supporter, has also praised the killers of two Israeli policemen in a terrorist attack on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem last year.
Ms Tahboub visited the Women MPs of the World Conference where Leader of the House Andrea Leadsom and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt appeared – although the paper reported that most of the delegates would have been unaware of her views.
In an interview in English last year on Germany’s international service Deutsche Welle, she defended her support for Ahamd Daqamseh, the former Jordanian soldier, who in 1997 opened fire across the border at a group of young Israeli teenagers from Bet Shemesh on a hike, killing seven.
A Jordanian tribunal rejected his claim the girls had had mocked him while he was praying and found him mentally unstable. He was released from prison after 20 years last year.
When DW interviewer Tim Sebastian pressed Ms Tahboub why she had celebrated his release, Ms Tahboub responded that a lot of Jordanians “still see him as a hero. So if you are incriminating my viewpoint, you are also incriminating the viewpoint of the Jordanian people”.
She said the victims were “not only schoolgirls, they were people who mocked our country, they mocked our religion.”
When Mr Sebastian accused her of helping to legitimise the murder of children, she responded, “You have to put it in context. We have an enemy . The enemy is Israel. If we are put in an enemy state with them, it’s our role to retaliate.”
On the killing of the two Israeli soldiers last year, she said, “The El Aqsa Mosque is a holy place for Muslims. They shouldn’t be there in the first place. They are the aggressors.
King Hussein, Jordan's ruler in 1997, who had signed a peace treaty with Israel a few years earlier, was so shocked by the killing of the schoolgirls that he visited the bereaved families.
