After many years of false denials, the supporters of Rasmea Odeh have essentially admitted her responsibility for the 1969 Jerusalem supermarket bombing that killed two Hebrew University students. Although they call the operation "resistance," per the Angela Davis quote selected to accompany the photo, rather than "terrorism," it is still an acknowledgement that the "Palestinian feminist icon" helped assemble the bomb that took two young lives.
That should not be surprising, given that she and her accomplices were quite open about the bombing, in documentaries and in print, during the years before Odeh came the United States. The Arabic language press also celebrated her as a PFLP guerrilla both before her immigration in 1995 and after her deportation to Jordan in 2017. Of course, she denied involvement in the bombing was when she was on trial in Detroit for immigration fraud. Many of her U.S. supporters no doubt believed her, despite so much evidence of her guilt. Some likely knew that she was lying, but took advantage of an opportunity for Israel bashing.
There was much less need for pretense after Odeh was deported, especially in the Arabic language press. A Jordanian newspaper reported upon her arrival at Amman's Queen Alia International Airport, "She joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in her youth [and] she was active in the popular resistance and then the military resistance." A Palestinian news site got the location of the bombing wrong, but was otherwise accurate, saying she "had conducted an operation in the Mahane Yehuda market, in the heart of Jerusalem, in the year 1969 that resulted in killing of [two] Israelis and inuring nine other Israelis."
There was no reason for Odeh to deny the bombing, which is a mark of honor in the PFLP, other than to fraudulently obtain and keep U.S. citizenship As far as I can tell, however, this is the first implicit acknowledgement of her resistance/terrorism in English.
You can read all about her life -- including her coerced confession following brutalization by Israeli interrogators, and the numerous lies on her U.S. visa and naturalization applications -- in The Trials of Rasmea Odeh: How a Palestinian Guerrilla Gained and Lost U.S. Citizenship.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.