Arab Americans indignant over bombing

By Jay Mathews / Washington Post Writer

Send this clipping to somebody

Transcribed from the clipping

SANTA ANA, Calif. — He was the gentlest of men, his friends and relatives said, a poet who spent what free time he had with his wife and three small daughters, enjoying the parks near their Orange County condominium and snapping dozens of pictures of his girls.

He had received threats, to be sure, but he was an American now in a free and mostly peaceful country, and 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, making some stand on one leg for a long time.

So when Alex Odeh, West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), approached the door of his second-floor office Friday on a beautiful, smog-free morning, thoughts of violent death were probably far from his mind.

According to authorities and his relatives, a tripwire attached to the door apparently 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 and slightly injured seven people in adjoining offices on the street.

Two hours later the bald, soft-spoken 41-year-old author and college instructor was dead. Emergency surgery had failed to save him.

In the wake of his death has come a wave of indignation from Arab Americans across the country who are convinced that ignorance and insensitivity within the U.S. government and the American news media had helped inspire Odeh's killers, as yet unidentified.

In the view of both Odeh's closest friends and harshest critics, a key trigger 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 terrorist hijacking of an Italian ocean liner and the murder of an elderly American on board.

In the few seconds of an interview broadcast Thursday night on KABC-TV, Odeh suggested that 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 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 and the FBI said they had no suspects, but a spokesman for the Jewish Defense League, which Arab-American leaders have accused of harassment in the past, denied any involvement and said the organization “has nothing to do with this at all.”

Odeh wrote poetry in Arabic, and a volume of his work, “Whispers in Exile,” was published by The New Circle magazine two years ago. Part of one poem, translated by ADC staffer Wafa Nasr, reads: Lies are like still ashes . When the wind of truth blows, The lies are dispersed like dust and disappear .

At least we all owe thanks To the one who tries to speak, write or paint An honest thought to the world. Former Sen. James G. Abourezk, D-S.D., national chairman of the ADC, said: “Alex Odeh was a peaceful, non-violent man who was a good citizen and who tried to do his best for the United States by peacefully debating the issues of the Middle East.”

He accused President Reagan and American newscasters of exacerbating a threatening atmosphere toward Arabs, and said Odeh left a wife and three daughters with no insurance and “literally nothing to live on.”

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said, “The administration deeply deplores this tragic event and condemns in the strongest possible terms the criminal use of violence and terrorism to achieve political ends.”

Barbara Shahin, ADC deputy executive director in Washington, particularly chastised American newspapers, including the Washington Post, for running short wire-service accounts of Odeh's death while devoting pages to stories on the shipboard hijacking and murder. “This was an American killed on American soil by American terrorists,” she said.

Odeh was born in the West Bank village of Jifna to a Roman Catholic family, came to the United States as a student, returned to Jifna to marry Norma in 1975 and became a U.S. citizen in 1977. He taught Arabic at a community college and leaves three daughters, Helena, 7, Samia, 5, and Susan, 2.

How this transcription was made

Single scan, full page-2 clipping, six columns. Transcribed from 6–8x crops of each column. — Page rule reads “2 • THE JOURNAL HERALD Dayton, Ohio Mon., Oct. 14, 1985.” Agrees with Maria's label.

Cite this clipping

"Arab Americans indignant over bombing," The Journal Herald, 14 October 1985, p. 2. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1985-044. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1985-044