On Sunday, convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, a key organizer of anti-Trump marches who was responsible for the murder of two Israelis and lied her way into the United States, gave a defiant address to a Chicago conference.
Odeh will soon leave the U.S. after filing a guilty plea to avoid prison under an agreement with the Department of Justice, which she claims is too “racist” under Attorney General Jeff Sessions to bother resisting in open court.
The most shocking aspect of the Odeh saga is not that the mainstream Arab-American community backed her in her bizarre fight. Nor is it the fact that she has been at the center of the anti-Trump protests over the last several weeks, joining other Palestinian radicals such as media darling Linda Sarsour. And it is almost to be expected that Odeh had worked at the Arab American Action Network, with ties to Barack Obama’s Chicago crony, radical Rashid Khalidi.
Notably, the media have been silent in demanding that the anti-Trump movement distance themselves from the rank antisemitism and actual terrorism at the forefront of their activism and events. The hypocrisy is, sadly, now routine.
No — the most stunning aspect is that Odeh’s cause was supported by left-wing Jews.
Odeh gave her valediction — in which she railed against Trump and “Zionists,” as the guest of a group calling itself “Jewish Voices for Peace” (JVP). The group rejected an effort by pro-Israel Jews to hold a memorial for Odeh’s victims, Edward Jaffe and Leon Kanner. (The Washington Times notes that the pro-Israel activists rented a room at the hotel and held a memorial anyway.)
Any group that calls itself “for peace” while celebrating and honoring a terrorist is actually encouraging terror and war.
Odeh was reportedly introduced by “Rabbi” Alissa Wise. The debate over female rabbis is a theological one, not for these pages. Suffice it to say that one of the main arguments against the female rabbinate is that its proponents do not wish to increase or enhance observance of the Jewish faith, but rather to denigrate it. Wise has made herself Exhibit A.
She, and her group, are simply anti-Israel activists — and, in this case, terrorist accomplices — who abuse Judaism as a cover to attack other Jews and the Jewish state.
At best, it could be said that JVP is hypnotized by the supposedly authentic voice of the “other,” and therefore give that voice a privileged status, no matter how warped the moral result.
At worst, Wise, Sarsour, and their anti-Trump comrades are knowingly endorsing the murder of Jews.
Their actions, and the complicit silence of the rest of the so-called “resistance,” should haunt the anti-Trump movement forever.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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