This is the fourth and final installment in a series of posts about the Trial of Rasmea Odeh. Part One is here; Part Two is here; Part Three is here. This post addresses the responses of Odeh’s supporters to her guilty plea.
It was understandable that Odeh would be treated as a hero among pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel groups in the United States. Having spent ten years in an Israeli prison, she was naturally hailed as a symbol of resistance, and her many years as a well-known community activist in Chicago provided her with an additional base of support. Her indictment and arrest for naturalization fraud added a further element to the story, making her, in the words of her defense committee, “an example of government repression waged against oppressed nationalities, anti-war, social justice, and international solidarity activists.”
Odeh’s claims of innocence, torture, and PTSD were predictably taken at face value by her supporters, who rejected even the possibility that she had actually participated in the Jerusalem supermarket bombing that took the lives of two Hebrew University students. The substantial evidence of her guilt – including statements of two of her collaborators in an Arabic language television documentary – was simply disregarded in favor of a narrative of victimization.
Among many others, the feminist leader and Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour has expressed her support for Odeh, who was included among the organizers of the post-inauguration Women’s March in Washington, D.C. According to the noted academic and journalist Marc Lamont Hill, “every black activist should stand with Rasmea Odeh.” She had been “railroaded for her commitment to justice,” said Hill, because she had not been allowed to present her trauma-based defense to naturalization fraud.
Odeh’s plea agreement should have caused her supporters to think twice. Contrary to her earlier claim -- as explained by her attorney to the appellate court – that “she didn’t actually recall the crime,” Odeh now admitted that she had knowingly made false and illegal statements during her naturalization interview. There had been no PTSD, and no railroad.
There are two ways to respond to a crisis in faith. One is to reevaluate your earlier beliefs; the other is to construct an elaborate system of denial. Odeh’s supporters chose the latter approach. Rather than accept the fact that she had all along been guilty of lying in her naturalization interview, Odeh’s defense committee blamed the conviction on “zionist Assistant U.S. Attorney Jonathan Tukel,” who represented the government at the plea hearing (non-capitalization in original), as did the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network. Speaking at a post-plea rally, Brant Rosen of Jewish Voice for Peace reassured Odeh that “you are not guilty. Your strength and your courage and your kindness and your compassion really teaches all of us how to be in this world.”
As explained by The Electronic Intifada, Odeh was coerced into pleading guilty due to the “current, racist political climate” in the U.S., which made her “prospects for a fair trial . . . slimmer than ever.” Here is how Rebecca Wilkomerson, of Jewish Voice for Peace, put it, when explaining why JVP invited Odeh to speak at its biennial convention, even following her guilty plea:
It may give readers who were horrified by the appointment of Jeff Sessions, who has a long history of being accused of racism, as Attorney General pause to consider that Odeh is giving up her fight to retain her United States citizenship because she does not believe she can receive a fair trial under the current administration.
You cannot get much deeper into denial than that. Odeh’s trial dilemma was not caused by the new Department of Justice leadership, but rather by her own disingenuous testimony at her first trial, which stood in contradiction to her claim of PTSD induced memory failure. It is true that the government had filed a superseding indictment that added several counts based on her terrorism conviction in Israel, but that was done in December, 2016, when the DOJ was still being run by Loretta Lynch and Barack Obama.
In fact, the trial landscape was basically unchanged. The venire would still be drawn from the Eastern District of Michigan, which is certainly one of the most liberal jury pools in the United States, and the trial judge was still Gershwin Drain, a former federal defender who was appointed by President Obama. The Sixth Circuit panel that unanimously reversed Odeh’s first conviction included one Democrat and two Republicans, with one of the latter writing the strongest opinion in her favor.
It is convenient, of course, for Odeh to say “Sessions made me do it,” and it is even more convenient for her enablers to believe her. But the truth is that she pled guilty because she is guilty, all rationalizations aside.
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