JVP said it is “honored” and “proud” to feature Odeh, describing her as a “deeply respected Palestinian organizer.”
Convicted Palestinian terrorist and activist Rasmea Odeh was granted a platform to denounce Israel Sunday by the far-left organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
Odeh’s appearance at JVP’s Chicago conference came a week after she accepted a plea bargain revoking her American citizenship and forcing her to leave the country for failing to disclose to US immigration authorities her conviction and imprisonment in Israel over her involvement in a 1969 Jerusalem bombing attack that killed two Hebrew University students.
At the anti-Israel event, Odeh drew parallels between the recent developments in her case and the creation of the state of Israel, stating, “My heart screams against injustice. I thought when I came to [the] US, and made it my second home, it would be the last station in a journey of struggle that I share with my Palestinian people in response to the Nakba (“catastrophe,” an Arab term for Israel’s 1948 War of Independence) and the occupation of 1967.”
“Now I face a similar, unjust nakba—[I am] forced to leave the country and the life that I’ve built over 23 years in the US,” she said.
Odeh, 69, also vowed to continue to fight against Israel.
“I will continue my struggle for the right of return [of Palestinian refugees]…and for the establishment of the democratic state on the entirety of the historic land of Palestine,” she said.
Odeh was sentenced to life in prison in Israel for her involvement in two terrorist bombings in Jerusalem in 1969, one of which took place in a crowded supermarket and killed two people, 21-year-old Leon Kanner and 22-year-old Eddie Joffe, and wounded nine others. A second bomb found at the supermarket was defused.
Four days later, she bombed and damaged the British consulate in Tel Aviv.
A member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror organization, she spent 10 years in an Israeli jail before her release in a prisoner exchange with the PFLP in 1980.
JVP said it is “honored” and “proud” to feature Odeh, describing her as a “deeply respected Palestinian organizer.”
The Anti-Defamation League listed JVP as one of America’s top 10 anti-Israel groups.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Gilad Erdan issued a statement calling the event a “hate conference,” saying its goal was to “plan the next steps in the delegitimization and boycott campaign against Israel.”
“As a Jew, I am ashamed that a conference filled with hatred for Israel, and that is hosting a terrorist as a central speaker, is led by a Jewish organization,” Erdan wrote.
By: JNS.org and United with Israel Staff
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