Rasmea Odeh

Odeh was born in Lifta, near Jerusalem.[7] In 1970, an Israeli military court convicted her of two bombing attacks carried out on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and sentenced her to life imprisonment.[1][3] Her convictions included membership in an illegal organization and planting explosives used in two Jerusalem bombings in 1969.[1] The PFLP is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department.[1]

On February 21, 1969, a bomb exploded in the crowded Supersol supermarket on Agron Street in Jerusalem, killing Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner and injuring nine people.[7][1] Odeh set the bomb.[7] Joffe and Kanner were Hebrew University students and roommates who had gone to the supermarket to buy supplies for a botany-department excursion.[2] Kanner was born and raised in Uruguay, and Joffe was born in Cape Town.[2]

The supermarket bomb contained five kilograms of dynamite and detonated as the students approached the meat counter.[2] A second bombing targeted the British Consulate four days later.[1] The consulate bomb caused structural damage; reporting on the attack records no injuries there.[8][9]

Odeh served approximately ten years in prison before her release in a prisoner exchange involving Israel and the PFLP.[1] The exchange freed 78 prisoners in return for one Israeli soldier.[1] She subsequently immigrated to the United States in 1995 and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2004.[3]

In Chicago, Odeh joined the Arab American Action Network in 2004 and became its associate director.[1] The organization provided social services and education, and her work focused on immigrants, particularly Arab women.[10] She managed the day-to-day operations of its Arab Women’s Committee, which had nearly 600 members.[1] Her community activities included projects concerning civil and human rights, social justice, and community economic development.[1] In 2013, she received the Chicago Cultural Alliance’s Outstanding Community Leader Award for her work with Arab immigrant women.[1]

Odeh also participated in feminist organizing and helped organize the March 8 “Day Without Women.”[7] She was described as a leader of the grassroots International Women’s Strike and became a public figure in Chicago’s Arab community.[10][11]

Her U.S. immigration case concerned her failure to disclose her Israeli arrest, conviction, and imprisonment on immigration and naturalization documents.[3] The paperwork also omitted four years she had lived in Lebanon and listed only Amman as a place of residence since she was 16.[3] At her 2014 trial, Odeh testified that she had misunderstood the questions; prosecutors presented testimony that the criminal-history questions applied to events anywhere in the world.[3]

On November 10, 2014, a federal jury in Detroit convicted Odeh of unlawfully procuring U.S. citizenship following a five-day trial.[8][3] The jury deliberated for approximately two hours.[3] In March 2015, she received an 18-month prison sentence; the court also revoked her citizenship and ordered her removal to Jordan, while staying those orders during her appeal.[8][7]

On April 19, 2016, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the conviction because the trial court had categorically excluded her proposed expert evidence concerning post-traumatic stress disorder.[4] A federal judge subsequently ordered a new trial.[7][4] In December 2016, a superseding indictment added allegations that she had falsely answered questions about association with the PFLP and had been inadmissible when she entered the United States in 1995.[12] These were additional charges, not findings of guilt.[12]

In April 2017, Odeh pleaded guilty to unlawfully obtaining U.S. citizenship.[13] Her plea agreement recorded that she knowingly omitted her Israeli arrest, charge, conviction, and imprisonment from her naturalization application despite understanding that disclosure was required.[13] She admitted that the false statements were made “intentionally and not as a result of any mistake, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder or any other psychological issue or condition.”[5]

The agreement called for no additional imprisonment, loss of citizenship, and a judicial removal order to Jordan, with no reentry to the United States.[13] She was also fined $1,000.[5] The plea admitted knowing falsehoods about her criminal history, but did not concede the accuracy of the government’s additional allegations about her earlier conduct or eligibility for immigration status on terrorism-related grounds.[14]

During the proceedings, Odeh continued to receive speaking invitations from activist organizations.[1][15] Jewish Voice for Peace confirmed her as a keynote speaker for its national conference in Chicago, scheduled for March 31–April 2, 2017, while she was free on bail during her appeal.[1] In May 2017, a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter invited her to speak at Northwestern University, with a spokesperson explaining that the event would “honor the amazing work [Rasmea Odeh] has done.”[15] A Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs report describes her as a keynote speaker at National Students for Justice in Palestine’s 2015 conference and says that the organization supported her and encouraged protests against her deportation.[6]

Odeh was deported to Jordan in September 2017 after losing her U.S. citizenship.[16] Before boarding a Royal Jordanian flight to Amman, she told supporters: “What happened is unjust, it’s inhuman. They tried to destroy my life, but they will not destroy me.”[16]

The deaths of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner remained central to public discussion of Odeh’s speaking engagements and prominence in activist circles.[1][2] Shortly before her death in 2009, Joffe’s mother recorded a farewell video for her family, wishing them happiness and health while explaining that the loss of her son had overshadowed the happiness she experienced afterward.[2]

Odeh’s community work included assistance to Arab immigrant women, feminist organizing, and projects concerning social justice and economic development.[7][1] Her supporters continued to celebrate that work during the immigration proceedings and after her guilty plea.[15][6] At a conference, Noura Erakat called Odeh “our dear sister, freedom fighter Rasmieh Odeh,” reflecting Erakat’s political characterization.[17]

Odeh also became the subject of the documentary project Unbowed, directed by Palestinian-American journalist Nihad Haidar.[11] The project was one of ten selected for promotion at the Palestinian pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival.[11] Its announced subject matter included her work for women’s equality in Chicago, her allegations of sexual abuse in Israeli custody, and her deportation.[11]

Odeh denied involvement in the supermarket bombing and alleged that Israeli authorities obtained her confession through torture, including sexual assault; Israeli officials disputed her account.[7][18] Her defense linked the alleged trauma to her later answers on U.S. immigration forms.[4] The appellate decision allowing reconsideration of PTSD testimony addressed the exclusion of evidence in the U.S. case, rather than establishing that torture had occurred.[4]

The proposed psychological evidence was itself disputed: psychologist Mary Fabri supported a PTSD explanation, while a government-appointed psychologist found some symptoms but concluded that Odeh did not meet the full diagnostic criteria.[19] Two other psychologists submitted affidavits supporting Fabri’s diagnosis and opinion.[19] Odeh’s eventual plea expressly admitted that her false statements were intentional and not caused by PTSD or another psychological condition.[5] That admission resolved the naturalization charge without resolving every government assertion about her earlier conduct.[14]