[Pnews] Justice for Rasmea Odeh

[Prisoner News]

    Justice for Rasmea Odeh

by Nadine Naber <http://www.merip.org/author/nadine-naber> | published 
June 19, 2014
*http://www.merip.org/justice-rasmea-odeh*

This past winter, I was privileged to participate in several events in 
Chicago organized by Rasmea Yousef Odeh, associate director of the Arab 
American Action Network <http://www.aaan.org/> and leader of that 
group's Arab Women's Committee <http://www.aaan.org/?cat=27>. The events 
brought together anywhere from 60-100 disenfranchised women, all recent 
immigrants, from nearly every Arabic-speaking country. The attendees 
were there to learn English, share meals and stories, and discuss 
personal struggles, in everything from marriage and parenting to 
navigating the US educational and medical industries and the US 
immigration system. The women also talked about fending off racism. 
Together, they developed solutions for their own lives.

One event I attended was a celebration of International Women's Day, at 
which immigrant women performed a play that Rasmea Odeh had written. The 
play focused on several generations of women in an extended Arab 
immigrant family who grappled with gender-related struggles both in the 
family and in American society with recourse to their loving but often 
tense connections with one another. The audience was engrossed, laughing 
and commenting throughout the performance, perhaps because they rarely 
see their own life struggles thus affirmed in America. Rarely, in fact, 
do they see humane, nuanced representations of Arab women's lives at all.

After the play, attendees listened to music and celebrated their own 
accomplishments. Several women were from countries like Yemen and Iraq 
and had come to the United States without knowing a word of English. 
They could now read and write. Odeh asked each of her students to bring 
something they had written in English to be read out loud. The first 
woman stood up and read: "I love my teacher."

As the event went on, women spoke over and over about the affection and 
gratitude they felt toward Rasmea Odeh for touching and transforming 
their lives and making such a beautiful space possible. I then 
understood why scores of women were attending each class, workshop or 
event -- even though they were under no obligation to do so and even 
though many had to walk by themselves through a polar vortex snowstorm 
(in Chicago, no less) to get there.

I could not help but recall the scenes at the Arab Women's Committee 
events some months later, in May, at a historic Chicago conference in 
commemoration of the 1964 Freedom Summer, when civil rights icon Angela 
Davis 
<http://feministstudies.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=aydavis> 
insisted that every social justice activist in the US embrace solidarity 
with Palestine and the movement demanding that the US government drop 
its charges against Rasmea Odeh.

Charges? What charges? Why would the US government want to prosecute 
this 67-year old Palestinian-American community activist and teacher?

On October 22, 2013, also in Chicago, Department of Homeland Security 
agents arrested Odeh. She was subsequently indicted on one charge of 
unlawful procurement of naturalization, and released the same day on a 
$15,000 bond. The US government accuses Odeh of failing to answer a 
question truthfully on her naturalization application ten years ago in 
2004. She is scheduled to stand trial 
<http://www.stopfbi.net/2013/10/23/all-out-detroit-defend-rasmea-odeh> 
in a Detroit federal court starting on September 8, 2014. If convicted, 
she could face up to ten years in prison and fines up to $250,000. She 
may also be deported and have her US citizenship revoked after the 
potential prison sentence is served. From national call in-days to 
student protests 
<http://mondoweiss.net/2013/11/cornell-charges-against.html>, petitions 
and mobilizations to pack the courtroom 
<http://www.stopfbi.net/2013/10/23/all-out-detroit-defend-rasmea-odeh>, 
a campaign to support Odeh has gained massive support.

US officials say they are after Odeh for immigration fraud. The 
Department of Justice alleges that Odeh failed to disclose on her 
naturalization application that she had served time in Israeli jail -- 
even though her sentence was based on a confession she made in the midst 
of 45 days of sexual and physical torture while in detention 
<http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obama-administration-prosecuting-sexual-torture-victim-r>. 
In addition, Odeh's 1969 conviction in Israel was determined by a court 
system that systematically abuses Palestinians' due process rights and 
convicts Palestinians at a rate of 99.74 percent 
<http://972mag.com/conviction-rate-for-palestinians-in-israels-military-courts-99-74-percent/28579/>. 
The Israeli military justice system that is applied to occupied 
Palestinians, in fact, has itself been found to be in immense violation 
of international law -- from the lack of protections against torture and 
rape while in custody to the simple fact that virtually no Palestinian 
walks away free from an Israeli trial. The Israeli state also unlawfully 
imprisoned and tortured Odeh's family and destroyed her family home soon 
after her arrest.

Odeh's release from Israeli jail was followed by exile to Jordan and 
immigration to the US. Living in Michigan and Chicago since 1994, she 
has worked at the Arab American Action Network since the mid-2000s and 
led the Arab Women's Committee, one of the most successful empowerment 
programs for Arab immigrant women living in poverty. For this service, 
Odeh received the Mosaic Award for Outstanding Community Service 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xxrl8aj8aQ> from the Chicago Cultural 
Alliance. Thanks to her leadership, the Arab Women's Committee now has a 
base of nearly 600 Arab immigrant women and does much more than the 
typical social service program. Women may obtain language training and 
other services, but they also come to find emotional support, genuine 
human interaction, artistic and writing activities, political discussion 
and debate, and a level of solidarity otherwise absent from their lives.

The question remains: Why is Rasmea Odeh being prosecuted, and why now, 
for an alleged infraction that is a full decade old? Analysts connect 
her arrest with many previous US government campaigns against 
Palestinian-American activists and their supporters. Under the Nixon 
administration, there was Operation Boulder 
<http://declassifiedboulder.wordpress.com/>. The case of the Los Angeles 
Eight 
<http://www.merip.org/mer/mer212/do-immigrants-have-first-amendment-rights> 
outlasted three (and almost four) presidents before it was finally set 
aside <http://www.merip.org/mer/mer245/editors>. Since the September 11, 
2001 attacks, there has been increased spying, profiling and 
infiltration of Arab and Muslim communities and there have been 
prosecutions for sending charitable aid to Palestinians, as in the case 
of the Holy Land Five <http://electronicintifada.net/tags/holy-land-5>.

In all of these cases, as in Odeh's, what the US government considers 
suspect is connected to what Palestinian-Americans and their supporters 
are permitted to say about Israel -- and to Israel's own systems of 
militarism, surveillance, repression and incarceration. There may also 
be a connection between Odeh's indictment and the 2010 FBI raids 
targeting 23 anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists in the Midwest 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/27/fbi_raids_homes_of_anti_war>. And 
Palestine Solidarity Legal Support responded to more than 100 more 
incidents in 2013 alone. These incidents involve not only extra 
government scrutiny but also all sorts of intimidation and bullying. The 
Odeh indictment may also be related to the US government's Controlled 
Application Review and Resolution Program, which delays and denies 
naturalization applications of members of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim 
and South Asian communities, solely on the basis of religion, ethnicity 
and/or national origin.

But again, why Rasmea Odeh, and why now? Why now, when so many Arab 
immigrant women in Chicago are celebrating their personal successes in 
America partly due to Odeh's remarkable leadership? Why now, when the 
Palestinian struggle, typified by the boycott, divestment and sanctions 
movement, is growing faster than ever before in Chicago and across the US?

We may never really know why, but this much is clear: The federal 
government is using immigration infractions as a political tool to 
target Rasmea Odeh with criminal charges. The circumstances of her case 
are especially aggravating: 1) Israel tortures and sexually assaults 
Palestinians like Odeh as a means of facilitating the colonization of 
Palestinian land; 2) the US is complicit going back decades in Israeli 
war crimes and violations of international law, and 3) the US is now 
excavating the naturalization papers of a 67-year old survivor of sexual 
torture in order to brand her as a criminal.

These circumstances are why the streets of Detroit will be filled and 
the courtroom packed on September 8. From now until then, the collective 
voice of those whose lives Rasmea has touched, and the growing number of 
others who support her, will continue to demand: Drop the charges now!

For more information on this case and how to support Rasmea Odeh, see 
here <http://www.uspcn.org> and here <http://www.stopfbi.net>.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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