Arab-Americans irate over blast that killed teacher in California

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SANTA ANA, Calif. — His friends and relatives say he was the gentlest of men, a poet who spent what free time he had with his wife and three daughters, enjoying the parks near their Orange County condominium. He had received threats, but he was an American now in a free and mostly peaceful country.

He only occasionally took precautions, such as carefully checking his mail. What worried him were his trips back to his village on the Palestinian West Bank, where his 80-year-old father told of Israeli soldiers harassing the men in the cafes.

So when Alex Odeh, West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), approached the door of his second-floor office in Santa Ana Friday, thoughts of a violent death were probably far from his mind. According to local authorities and his relatives, a tripwire attached to the door set off the bomb that tore through the lower part of his body.

The explosion was so great that it showered the palm-lined street below with concrete, torn curtains and glass. Seven people in adjoining offices or on the street were slightly injured. Two hours later the bald, soft-spoken 41-year-old author and college instructor was dead. Emergency surgery had failed to save him.

His death has caused a wave of indignation from Arab Americans who are convinced that ignorance and insensitivity within the U.S. government and news media helped inspire Odeh’s killers.

In the view of Odeh’s closest friends and harshest critics, a key to the attack was an interview he gave a local television station the day before the blast and the way the station edited the interview to match heightened public interest in the Palestinian hijacking of an Italian ocean liner and the murder of an wheelchair-bound, elderly American on board.

In the few seconds of an interview broadcast Thursday night on KABC-TV, Odeh suggested the Palestine Liberation Organization and its chairman, Yasser Arafat, had no role in the hijacking.

“The media ought to give the PLO and Arafat recognition, inform the public about the PLO as a political organization and Arafat in particular as the chairman of the PLO, who is a man of peace,” he said.

In segments of the interview that were not broadcast, according to ADC’s Los Angeles chapter president David Habib, Odeh “condemned the hijacking of the ship, condemned terrorism around the world. . . .” “Yet they decided to broadcast a little part that seemed to show Alex Odeh and the ADC are a pro-Arafat organization.”

A KABC spokeswoman declined to comment. When a relative later expressed fear of reaction to the interview, Odeh reportedly asked, “Why are you worried?” “He was a very quiet, very gentle man,” said Lisa Odeh, his sister-in-law.

“We had some fear that something might happen to him in Israel, but we never thought this would happen in the United States.” Santa Ana police, joined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Los Angeles police anti-terrorist division in the investigation, say that they have no suspects in the bombing.

But the KABC interview clearly made an impression on some people. Leaders of the Jewish Defense League, asked for comment after the bombing, denied involvement but lambasted Odeh for speaking well of the PLO. “I have no tears for Mr. Odeh,” said JDL leader Irv Rubin. “He got exactly what he deserves.”

Cite this clipping

"Arab-Americans irate over blast that killed teacher in California," Courier-Journal, 14 October 1985. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1985-021. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1985-021

This clipping is read closely in the section below

Two Americans killed in one week, and the papers that said so