Convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh co-organized March 8 #DayWithoutAWoman

Convicted terrorist Rasmea Odeh co-organized March 8 #DayWithoutAWoman

On February 12, 2017, we reported on the next phase of the so-called Women’s March, Women’s March calls for General Strike and Day Without A Women.

In that post, we called attention to the fact that Rasmea Odeh was one of the organizers, along with other radicals like Angela Davis, via Algemeiner:

A convicted Palestinian terrorist was among the eight feminist activists who called earlier this week on American women to join a March 8 international strike — which organizers are calling a protest “against male violence and in defense of reproductive rights.” ….

In a Guardian op-ed published on Monday — attention to which was brought on social media by investigative journalist and author Gary Weiss — Odeh, joined by Linda Martín Alcoff, Cinzia Arruzza, Tithi Bhattacharya, Nancy Fraser, Barbara Ransby, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Angela Davis, wrote that the goal of the planned protest 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…Let us use the occasion of this international day of action to be done with lean-in feminism and to build in its place a feminism for the 99%, a grassroots, anti-capitalist feminism — a feminism in solidarity with working women, their families and their allies throughout the world.”

As reported by The Algemeiner on Monday, Odeh will be a featured speaker at the upcoming Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) 2017 National Member Meeting — set to be held in Chicago from March 31 to April 2.

Legal Insurrection readers, of course, are very familiar with Rasmea from our many dozens of posts about her history and trials.

For those of you who have not been following the case, here is a very brief summary:

Rasmea Odeh is the military member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who was convicted in Israeli in 1970 of the 1969 bombing of the SuperSol supermarket in Jerusalem, and the attempted bombing of the British Consulate.

That supermarket bombing killed Israeli students Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner.

[Vigil in memory of Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, DePaul University, outside fundraiser for Rasmea Odeh]

Rasmea claims she was not involved in the supermarket bombing, and was convicted only because she gave a false confession after 25 days of sexual torture.Previously, we have explored the factual conflicts in Rasmea’s story, including that she confessed the day after arrest, not 25 days later; bomb-making material was found in her room; she received an open trial observed by a representative of the International Red Cross who described the trial as fair; and perhaps most important, Rasmea’s co-conspirator, Ayesha Odeh (not related), described in a 2004 interview for a pro-Palestinian filmmaker how Rasmea was the mastermind behind the supermarket bombing.After serving nearly a decade in prison, Rasmea was released in a prisoner release for an Israel soldier captured in Lebanon. While she was imprisoned, the PFLP formed the “Rasmea Odeh Brigade” to try to free her and others by taking hostages, and Rasmea was on the list of prisoners whose release was sought by the Black September terrorists who took Israeli athletes hostage (and killed them) at the 1972 Olympics.Yet Rasmea claims she was not involved in terror organizations and was just an innocent political activist when arrested by the Israelis.Rasmea eventually made her way to the U.S. in the mid-1990s. Rasmea gave false answers on her visa application, and in 2004 on her naturalization application, by denying (among other lies) that she EVER (bold and CAPS in original) was convicted or imprisoned.Rasmieh was convicted of immigration fraud in November 2014.

In December 2016, the trial court ordered a new trial so that Rasmea could testify that she only confessed because of 25 days of torture which caused her to suffer PTSD. That PTSD, Rasmea’s expert will testify, caused Rasmea to “filter” the questions on the immigration forms such that “EVER” was understood by her to mean only since coming to the U.S. in the 1990s. Thus, Rasmea will argue, she did not “knowingly” give false answers, which is an element of the criminal offense.

The expert testimony, which amounts to junk science, never should have been allowed and Rasmea should not have been given a new trial, for reasons we have explained before. But the Judge ruled as he did, and it’s moving forward to a new trial in January 2017.

At that re-trial, unlike the first trial, Rasmea’s guilt or innocence of the bombing will be an issue, though it still isn’t an element of the immigration charge, because Rasmea claims she only confessed due to 25 days of torture. (Whether she did the bombing or not, she still needed to disclose the conviction and imprisonment.) The prosecution has argued in court papers that Rasmea is lying, and that the prosecution will prove so in the next trial.

It’s important to note that while Rasmea professes innocence, her two co-conspirators have stated on film that Rasmea was involved.

Rasmea’s status in the radical community is rising, as we noted in The Sickening Deification of Rasmea Odeh. So it is no surprise that Rasmea has injected herself into the Women’s March movement. But that association is causing a stir.

Rasmea’s role in the March 8 march now is the subject of national debate after the NY Post ran a story about it on February 25, Meet the terrorist behind the next women’s march:

Instead of milling around Washington, organizers have in mind a “general strike” called the Day without a Woman. In a manifesto published in The Guardian on Feb. 6, the brains behind the movement are calling for a “new wave of militant feminist struggle.” That’s right: militant, not peaceful.

The document was co-authored by, among others, Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a convicted terrorist. Odeh, a Palestinian, was convicted in Israel in 1970 for her part in two terrorist bombings, one of which killed two students while they were shopping for groceries. She spent 10 years in prison for her crimes. She then managed to become a US citizen in 2004 by lying about her past (great detective work, INS: Next time, use Google) but was subsequently convicted, in 2014, of immigration fraud for the falsehoods. However, she won the right to a new trial (set for this spring) by claiming she had been suffering from PTSD at the time she lied on her application. Oh, and in her time as a citizen, she worked for a while as an ObamaCare navigator.

The Daily Mail also had a story, since Rasmea also tried to bomb the British Consulate:

The Daily Mail gave us a nice shout out:

Her lawyers claimed that her confession was tortured out of her by Israeli military.

However, according to a 1970 report in The Jerusalem Times – reprinted on conservative site Legal Insurrection – a Red Cross representative – Guy Wintelir – testified that the trial had been fair.

(added) Express also had coverage:

Twitter has lit up after the NY Post  and Daily Mail stories.

But so far, I’ve not seen any public comment from the Women’s March organization.

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.