Rasmea Odeh And Linda Sarsour Slam ‘Zionists’ At Jewish Voice For Peace Summit

(JTA) — A Palestinian woman who is being forced to leave the United States for not telling immigration authorities that she was imprisoned in Israel for two terror attacks told a U.S. Jewish group that they must stop the “Zionists” from their “land grab.”
Rasmea Odeh was the keynote speaker on Sunday in Chicago at a summit of the Jewish Voice for Peace, a group that backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Odeh, 69, accepted a plea bargain last month that forces her to leave the country and strips her U.S. citizenship. She had been fighting in the courts for years.
Also speaking at the conference was the Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour, who raised hackles among liberal American Jews recently by saying that those who identify as Zionist cannot be feminist because they are ignoring the rights of Palestinian women.
Meanwhile, during Odeh’s address, the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs held a memorial ceremony at the same hotel for Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner, the two men killed in the 1969 bombing in Jerusalem for which Odeh was convicted by an Israeli military court. The group had been denied a request to rent a conference room at the insistence of Jewish Voice for Peace.
Odeh spoke about having to leave the United States.
“I thought when I came to the U.S., and made it my second home, it would be the last station in a journey of struggle that I shared with my Palestinian people in response to the Nakba [catastrophe] and the occupation of 1967,” she told the audience of about 1,000, referring to the Palestinians’ perception of Israel’s founding, including their forced and voluntary displacement to neighboring countries.
She added: “Now I face a similar Nakba, forced to leave the country and the life that I built for myself over 23 years in the U.S., but I will continue my struggle for justice for my people wherever I land.”
Odeh, a leader of the grassroots International Women’s Strike, reminded the audience that Americans are “in the streets” resisting President Donald Trump every day.
She continued: “Of course, Zionists aren’t going to stop their land grab in Palestine either. The Palestinians there and the Palestinians and our supporters here have to stop them with our resistance and our organization.”
Rasmea: I will still be organizing wherever I end up & we need you to continue resisting Trump & fighting for liberation #Palestine #JVP2017
— JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) April 2, 2017
In 1970, Odeh was sentenced to life in prison for two bombing attacks on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and spent 10 years in prison before being released in a prisoner exchange in 1980.
In 2015, she was sentenced in the U.S. to 18 months in prison for covering up her conviction and imprisonment in Israel when she entered the country in 1995 and applied for citizenship in 2004, but the conviction was later vacated to allow Odeh to show that she suffered from post traumatic stress disorder over her alleged mistreatment while in prison.
Sarsour, an organizer of the Women’s March on Washington who recently raised thousands of dollars to repair anti-Semitic vandalism at three U.S. Jewish cemeteries, told the crowd: “If what is being asked of me by those who pronounce themselves and call themselves Zionist is that I, as a Palestinian American, have to somehow leave out a part of my identity so you can be welcomed in a space to work on justice, then that’s not going to be the right space for you.”
“We, as Palestinian Americans, as Arab Americans, as Muslim Americans, we will not change who we are to make anybody feel comfortable. If you ain’t all in, then this ain’t the movement for you,” she said.
.@lsarsour: if you ain’t #AllIn for ALL people then this isn’t the movement for you #JVPALLIN #JVP2017 pic.twitter.com/aWPDN8J2p1
— JewishVoiceForPeace (@jvplive) April 2, 2017
StandWithUs rented a regular hotel room and held its memorial there.
In a statement, the Joffe family described Jewish Voice for Peace as “another deeply misguided so-called ‘Jewish’ organization.”
“She will soon be forgotten by her supporters who have so misguidedly championed her,” the statement said, “but the memory of Edward and Leon will live on forever.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Cardinals are Catholic, not Jewish — so why do they all wear yarmulkes?
- 2
News School Israel trip turns ‘terrifying’ for LA students attacked by Israeli teens
- 3
Fast Forward Ye debuts ‘Heil Hitler’ music video that includes a sample of a Hitler speech
- 4
Fast Forward Student suspended for ‘F— the Jews’ video defends himself on antisemitic podcast
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish קאָנצערט לכּבֿוד דעם ייִדישן שרײַבער און רעדאַקטאָר באָריס סאַנדלערConcert honoring Yiddish writer and editor Boris Sandler
דער בעל־שׂימחה האָט יאָרן לאַנג געדינט ווי דער רעדאַקטאָר פֿונעם ייִדישן פֿאָרווערטס.
-
Fast Forward Trump’s new pick for surgeon general blames the Nazis for pesticides on our food
-
Fast Forward Jewish feud over Trump escalates with open letter in The New York Times
-
Fast Forward First American pope, Leo XIV, studied under a leader in Jewish-Catholic relations
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.