Chicago, IL – Convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh vowed on Sunday to continue the struggle for “the right of return, for self determination, and for the establishment of a democratic state on the historic land of Palestine”, after she will be leaving the United States in the next few months, as part of the plea deal she accepted last week for failing to disclose her terrorism conviction on her US visa application.
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Odeh, who was imprisoned in Israel for her involvement in 1969 terror attacks in Jerusalem, made the comments at the closing session of the controversial Jewish Voice for Peace summit held over the weekend in Chicago.
After being released in a prisoner exchange in the 1980s, she moved to the United States, but has been facing the country’s justice system since 2014, for immigration fraud as she concealed her arrest, conviction, and imprisonment for the 1969 bombings.
Last week, she agreed to leaving the country in exchange for no jail time. Odeh said she didn’t disclose her past because of post-traumatic stress disorder from being tortured in prison.
“A revolution of anger sweeps over me these days and my heart screams against injustice,” she said in broken English, crying at the podium.
“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 shared with my Palestinian people in response to the nakba [catastrophe] and the occupation of 1967.”
“I was an infant during the nakba but I heard many stories of pain and bitterness from my family who were forced along with 750,000 other Palestinians to leave their homes, lands, lives and memories they had built for generations,” she continued. “Now I face a similar nakba, forced to leave the country and the life that I built for myself over 23 years in the US, but i will continue my struggle for justice for my people wherever I land.”
The organization Jewish Voice for Peace, which vocally supports BDS, came under fire over the past weeks, after announcing Rasmea Odeh’s participation and saying it was “proud” and “honored” to host her.
JVP was strongly condemned by American Jewish organizations as well as Israeli officials, for giving Odeh a platform.
The Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, despite opposition from JVP, held a memorial service adjacent to the conference, for the two victims who died in the attack Odeh was involved in: Leon Kanner and Edward Joffe. Letters from their families criticizing JVP were read during the side event.
In the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, where the summit was being held, Odeh received a standing ovation. “Zionists aren’t going to stop their land grab in Palestine. The Palestinians there and the Palestinians and our supporters here have to stop them with our resistance and our organizing,” Odeh told the crowd of some 1,000 people, vowing to “expose Israel for the criminal apartheid state that it is.”
“We have to understand that we are targets but also that we have the support of millions of others around the world who share our vision of historical Palestine liberation from Zionists, where all Palestinian refugees can return to their original homes and where everyone there can live with dignity and equal rights,” she added, urging JVP members to continue their activism despite attacks.
This lying machshefah is delusional. There is no democratic Arab state in the Middle East nor will there be. Democratic flies in the face of shariah law.
Standwithus did the right thing and held a memorial for her victims.
She is in a fantasy world,when she thinks of a democratic state of palestine .There is no arab country that is a democracy and probably will never be one. All they can accommodate is a dictatorship and theocracy.