Sunday, August 20, 2017
Elder of ZiyonOdeh did not get very far before Judge Drain interrupted her the first time. “This case is about you making false statements in immigration applications.”
Odeh interjected saying “This is my first and last chance to speak. Palestinians are not terrorists” and then continued with her prepared statement.
Odeh continued to tell the history of the UN conventions that say Palestinians have the right to resist occupation, questioning why like the early Americans, Palestinians are not given the right to fight for their independence, and that the US government has supported the Israeli occupation of Palestine by selling arms illegally to the Israeli government to use against the Palestinians. Judge Drain interrupted two more times saying “This is not important. This is not the place to talk about that.”
After Odeh said “This government must be held responsible for the Palestine occupation and the colonization of our country. Israel has no right to exist as an apartheid state,” Judge Drain interrupted the last time with a threat. “If you continue, I fill find you in contempt and you will find yourself locked up.”
Undeterred by this direct threat by the judge, Odeh concluded, “It was unjust they locked me in jail, tortured me, raped me and destroyed my house. I will raise my voice to say we have the right to struggle for our country.”
Like many terrorists, Odeh has intended to use the US court system as a platform to push propaganda. The judge pointed out that this all has nothing to do with her lying on her immigration application and stopped her. (Odeh still got her full statement published in anti-Israel media.)
What I hadn't noticed until now (although of course Legal Insurrection noticed this in 2014) was that Odeh had directly admitted to a role in British Consulate bombing in 1969 that her supporters claim she was tortured into confessing. I have already shown that her friend admitted on video Rasmea's involvement specifically in the supermarket bombing, but Rasmea herself admitted that she was involved in the attempted British Consulate bombing a few days later in a long interview published in the Journal for Palestine Studies in 1980:
I returned to the West Bank in early 1969 and was arrested on FebruaryLater, she claims that Israeli prison authorities showed her other people being tortured, and she says:
28 and accused of involvement in the supermarket explosion in West
Jerusalem and another in the British Consulate. We had placed a bomb there
to protest Britain's decision to furnish arms to Israel. Actually we placed two
bombs, the first was found before it went off so we placed another.
They showed me all these things so that I would confess to things I didn't know of, but I didn't confess what I did know.This is besides her detailed confession, which can be seen in Arabic (Odeh falsely claims that she was forced to sign a Hebrew confession that she did not understand,) where she describes her roles in both the Supersol bombing and the failed British Consulate bombing.
