The New York Times · 1 November 1985

CP-1985-027

Terrorism Killed a 2d American During the Achille Lauro Affair

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To the Editor: Most of your front page and several inside pages on Oct. 12 were given over to the aftermath of the Achille Lauro hijacking, in the course of which Leon Klinghoffer was murdered.

On an inner page, it was recorded that the Santa Ana, Calif., offices of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee had been bombed, killing Alex Odeh, the committee’s regional director. Pity and horror are rightly awakened by the cruel murder of Mr. Klinghoffer, an elderly and health-impaired American.

Equal pity and horror should be felt by all of us to the murder of Mr. Odeh, a man in his early prime — and, if it matters, an American, too.

We should note with sharp agonized concern that the Santa Ana bombing and political murder seem to constitute the first spillover onto our own soil of terrorism to grow out of the far-away Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

It is, moreover, surely worthy of remark that (contrary to the stereotyped expectation) this importation of Middle Eastern-style terror bombing was directed not by, but against, an Arab-American group. This action has very properly been condemned by a number of Jewish and other organizations.

It is nevertheless true that in a despicable statement reported in your account, Irv Rubin, identified as chairman of the Jewish Defense League, is quoted as saying of the bombing that killed Mr. Odeh, “No Jew or American should shed one tear.” Well, I am not a Jew, but I am an American. As such, I do not need Mr. Rubin to tell me when to be sorrowful.

I sorrow for the deaths both of Mr. Klinghoffer and of Mr. Odeh. I am sorrowful that in the bombing that killed Mr. Odeh this brand of terrorism has been brought among us, here in America.

I hope that we will soon see in regard to the Odeh murder the kind and degree of horrified public excitement and maximal governmental reaction that have been evoked by the Klinghoffer murder. (If not, why not?) I hope also that a U.S.

Government that presents itself as resolved on destroying terrorism will keep a sharp eye on the Jewish Defense League, one of whose leaders, if your report is right, has uttered what I believe is the first public approval of political terror bombing in modern times in America. CHARLES L. BLACK JR. Sterling Professor of Law, Yale Univ. New Haven, Oct. 15, 1985

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

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