On November 10, 2014, Chicago resident, Palestinian-born activist Rasmea Odeh was convicted of failing to disclose to immigration authorities that she had been convicted and imprisoned by the Israelis in 1969 for alleged terrorism. Odeh was a victim of torture by the Israelis and was ultimately freed in a prisoner exchange. There have been no suggestions that she has been involved in military, let alone terrorist activity since entering the United States. She is to be sentenced in a US court in March 2015.
The Electronic Intifada, among other sites, has a significant amount of information about the case, to which I will refer the reader, e.g., http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/why-obama-administration-prosecuting-sexual-torture-victim-rasmea-odeh. The Odeh case, among other things forces us to consider the disingenuous manner in which the concept of “terrorism” is used in the USA.
Ms. Odeh was imprisoned and tortured by the Israeli authorities after a series of bombings allegedly carried out by Palestinians. She and her supporters have argued that a confession was extracted from her and her family as a result of the torture. Further, her lawyer has argued that her failure to reveal information about this case, at the time of her application, reflected both a misunderstanding as well as post-traumatic stress syndrome with which she has been suffering since her imprisonment. The judge in the case ruled that this matter of PTSD could not be introduced in the trial, a significant decision since it eliminates any notion of context in order to understand what actually transpired.
Despite the fact that Ms. Odeh does not fit any “terrorist profile”, she was not only convicted in court on November 10th, but she has been more broadly demonized.
In researching for this essay I stumbled across a strange website called Legal Insurrection. Their article on the Odeh case was not particularly noteworthy except for the Comment section: http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/11/rasmea-odeh-seeks-release-from-jail-pending-sentencing-justice4rasmea/. If you scroll to that section, the comments are striking in their assumption that Odeh is a terrorist, despite no evidence to support such a conclusion. The comments ignore the documented record of her torture entirely. The mean-spiritedness of the comments certainly come through.
I found myself wondering how those who offered their comments responded or would have responded to the visit to the USA of the late Menachem Begin, the former Prime Minister of Israel, or any of his former compatriots from the Zionist military organization known as the Irgun. Consider, for a moment, that the Irgun was directly implicated in two actions that completely and totally fit the description of terrorism: the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem in 1946 and the Deir Yassin massacre (of Palestinians) in 1948. In neither case was a military target the objective of these operations. There was no plausible argument that these were “hard target” attacks in which there was, so-called collateral damage. These were cold, calculated military operations in which civilians were the targets.
If such actions fit the popular description of terrorism, i.e., military operations aimed at civilians in order to advance a political objective, why are those who were associated with such actions not banned from the USA? Why would they be treated as respectable leaders when they were directly implicated in criminal activity?
Contrary to the common assumption, there is actually no internationally accepted definition of “terrorism.” The definition/description that I cited above is what one could, perhaps, call an operative definition. Nation-states have refused to codify an internationally accepted definition in large part because the allegation of terrorism is frequently an instrument of repression rather than aimed at the prosecution of an accepted criminal activity.
The Nazis, for example, considered the French maquis (the Resistance) to be terrorists when the maquis assassinated Nazi political and military officials. The French considered the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) to be terrorists when the FLN carried out bombings against establishments utilized by European settlers during Algeria’s Revolution. The British considered the Irgun terrorists in light of their operations against civilians. And in the history of the USA, though the British did not use the term “terrorist” during the US War of Independence, they were absolutely beside themselves that the American forces used guerrilla warfare and other unorthodox approaches in taking on the British or the Tories.
Israel was successfully established in 1948—in part through the use of terror and terrorism—and Menachem Begin, a known terrorist, ultimately became the country’s Prime Minister. He achieved respectability and has been treated as a hero by many people, both in Israel, but also in some quarters in the USA.
Rasmea Odeh, on the other hand, was jailed due to allegations of terrorism; was demonstrably tortured by Israeli authorities; and, in moving to the USA apparently did not believe or did not want to believe that the USA recognized such false and inhumane imprisonment as in any way legitimate enough for her to note.
Whether one believes that her mistake was a serious breaking of the law, one must actually ask whether the circumstances of her imprisonment by the Israelis serves as mitigating factors. One must also ask whether we should be as quick to judge alleged terrorists as are, apparently, those on the Legal Insurrection site.
In practical terms, the “Commenters” on the Legal Insurrection site, as with most of the mainstream US media, actually have a definition of terrorism. It is simple: If we say that you are a terrorist, you are; if you engage in military struggle against any ally of the USA, regardless of tactics, you are a terrorist; and, if you happen to win, regardless of the tactics that you have employed, and we have to deal with you, well, under those circumstances, welcome to the club.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of The Global African on Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice activist and writer. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
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