Cafe Honoring Palestinian Terrorist Drops Lawsuit Against Jewish Protesters
Reem’s bakery in Oakland, California features a mural of convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
By Aiden Pink October 11, 2017
A California baker whose bakery features a mural honoring a convicted Palestinian terrorist has dropped a lawsuit targeting Jewish protesters who organized anti-terror vigils outside the establishment.
Reem’s, a bakery in Oakland, opened this summer with decorations including a full-wall mural depicting Rasmeah Odeh, who was convicted in Israel in 1970 for her involvement in a supermarket bombing that killed two Israeli college students. Bakery owner Reem Assil said that the Odeh mural was “an emblem of resilience.”
But after pro-Israel protesters continued to show up outside her bakery, Assil filed for restraining orders against several of the activists, claiming that she was being targeted “because of this mural and my identity as a Palestinian-American.”
The Jewish protesters argued that they had a right to protest the bakery on First Amendment grounds. Represented pro bono by lawyers arranged by the pro-Israel organization StandWithUs, the protesters threatened to file an anti-SLAPP motion—a procedure to fight frivolous lawsuits against constitutionally-protected speech. If the protesters won the SLAPP fight, Assil would have had to pay their legal costs.
In response, Asil dropped the lawsuit.
“This is a prime example of what can be achieved when we partner with pro-bono attorneys to help those in need of legal resources,” the director of StandWithUs’s legal department, Yael Lerman, said in a statement.
Odeh claims that she was tortured into confessing to the supermarket bombing. After being freed in a prisoner swap, she made her way to the United States, where she eventually obtained U.S. citizenship. She was charged with immigration fraud in 2013 after it was revealed that she did not disclose her Israeli conviction, and accepted a plea deal this year that caused her to be stripped of her citizenship and deported to Jordan.
Correction, October 15: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Reem Assil’s name.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we need 500 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Our Goal: 500 gifts during our Passover Pledge Drive!
