Pro-Arafat TV Interview Blamed in Bomb Murder

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Santa Ana, Calif. — He was a gentle man, his friends and relatives said, a poet who spent what free time he had with his wife and three young daughters, enjoying the parks near their Orange County condominium and snapping dozens of pictures of his girls.

He had received threats, 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.

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

According to authorities here and his relatives, a tripwire attached to the door apparently set off the bomb that tore through the lower part of his body.

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 news media 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.

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 Palestinian terrorist hijacking of an Italian cruise ship and the murder of an elderly American passenger. He characterized Arafat as “a man of peace.”

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.

“He was a very quiet, very gentle man,” said Lisa Odeh, sister-in-law of the bald, soft-spoken 41-year-old author and college instructor. “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 antiterrorist division in the investigation, say that they have no suspects in the bombing. Leaders of the Jewish Defense League, asked for comment after the bombing, denied any 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.”

How this transcription was made

Single clipping, one scan. The credit line above the dateline reads “The Washington Post”; no reporter is named. Page number 13 printed at the foot of the vertical rail. — Vertical rail down the right edge of the clipping reads “NEWSDAY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1985”. 14 October 1985 was a Monday. Matches Maria’s label.

Cite this clipping

"Pro-Arafat TV Interview Blamed in Bomb Murder," Newsday, 14 October 1985, p. 13. Covering Palestine archive, CP-1985-045. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-1985-045