His only crime was to be an Arab

By NORMAN SOLOMON

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Leon Klinghoffer has been mourned and eulogized across the United States. But what about Alex Odeh? Three days after Klinghoffer was killed aboard the cruise ship hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, a bomb went off at the Southern California headquarters of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Regional director Alex Odeh died in surgery hours later.

With massive publicity enshrining Klinghoffer as a hero, his family has received outpourings of sympathy, including personal phone calls from the president. But Odeh — another American citizen whose family grieves in the wake of violent hatred — drew sparse media attention and perfunctory condolences from the White House.

Yet the killing of Alex Odeh in Santa Ana is as much a tragedy as anything else that has happened these past weeks. Predictably, the leadership of the fringe Jewish Defense League — every bit as bloodthirsty as any hijacker — has been upbeat about the bombing that killed Odeh.

Lumping all Arabs together, JDL chairman Irv Rubin declared: “The person or persons responsible for the bombing deserves our praise for striking out against the murderers of Americans and Jews.”

The White House said that it “deeply deplores this tragic event and condemns in the strongest possible terms the criminal use of violence and terrorism to achieve political ends.” Officials of the American Jewish Congress and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith issued similar statements. But such regrets have a hollow ring.

Israel routinely uses deadly violence “to achieve political ends.” On Oct. 1, for instance, American-built F-15s bombed an undefended headquarters of the PLO near Tunis — killing more than 60 Palestinians and Tunisians. Reagan immediately expressed support for the Israeli air attack.

For nearly 20 years Israel’s occupation of the West Bank has rendered many thousands of Palestinians homeless, often brutalizing them in the process. Out of desperation and anger, some Palestinians have turned to violence and even terrorism. It is a dynamic that Israeli officials should well understand.

Waging a campaign for a Jewish homeland four decades ago in Palestine, some Zionist groups engaged in bloody actions that were, indeed, terrorism.

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"His only crime was to be an Arab," The Plain Dealer, 18 October 1985. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1985-023. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1985-023

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