By Kathryn Blackhurst, LifeZette:
Former Palestinian bomber, immigration fraudster helps plan ‘A Day Without a Woman’
One of the organizers of the upcoming “A Day Without a Woman” strike is a convicted Palestinian terrorist who was once a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a terrorist organization.
The “A Day Without a Woman” worldwide strike, organized by the same planners of the Jan. 21 Women’s March, is set to occur March 8 with the purpose of highlighting “the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system — while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity,” according to its website.
One of the event’s key planners, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, spent 10 years in prison following her 1970 conviction in Israel for taking part in two 1969 bombings, one of which resulted in the deaths of two students. The Palestinian terrorist was also an alleged former member of the PFLP, a group the U.S. considers to be a terrorist organization. Odeh also aided in the bombing of a British consulate in 1969. The PFLP claimed responsibility for the those bombings.
After she served her time in prison, Odeh set her sights on emigrating to the U.S., where she served as the associate director at the Arab American Action Network in Chicago.
Fabricating claims regarding her criminal past, Odeh managed to become a U.S. citizen in 2004 before she was convicted of immigration fraud in 2014, sentenced to 18 months in prison, stripped of her citizenship, and considered for deportation, pending appeal. Odeh maintains she lied to immigration authorities because she had post-traumatic stress disorder. Odeh is scheduled to appear at a hearing in 2017 to be considered for deportation.
Odeh has been busy in the weeks following President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Along with seven co-authors, Odeh penned an article for The Guardian published Feb. 6 titled, “Women of America: we’re going on strike. Join us so Trump will see our power,” to preview the upcoming strike March 8. Reflecting on the success of the Jan. 21 Women’s March, Odeh and her colleagues said they sought to champion the female cause.
“The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle — a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions,” the article read. “Women’s conditions of life, especially those of women of color and of working, unemployed and migrant women, have steadily deteriorated over the last 30 years, thanks to financialization and corporate globalization.”
Apparently, the plight of “migrant women” is exemplified partially in the Palestinian terrorist’s legal plight. She even found herself the subject of a website called justice4rasmea.org, which sports an article titled, “The Case of Rasmea Odeh: A Palestinian Hero.”
The website had this to say about her terrorist stint: “Rasmea is a community icon who overcame vicious torture by Israeli authorities while imprisoned in Palestine in the 1970s, and an example for the millions of Palestinians who have not given up organizing for their rights of liberation, equality, and return.”
Even though she fabricated and omitted details about her history when she applied for her U.S. citizenship, the website states, “Rasmea never set out to hide her past,” adding, “Rasmea, her supporters, and her legal team say that the immigration charge was nothing but a pretext to attack this icon of the Palestine liberation movement.”
“Rasmea’s case is not only about the U.S. carrying out Israel’s agenda, but also connected to racist policies here,” the website alleges. “This is in the context of the long history of attacks against communities that organize for social change in this country, especially Black, Chicano and Mexicano, Puerto Rican, Native, Asian, and other oppressed nationalities.”
