Peace and Justice Committee of Episcopal Diocese of Chicago stands in solidarity with Rasmea Odeh

The Peace and Justice Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago is deeply disturbed by the indictment of Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a Palestinian-American community activist, who is a highly respected leader in the Chicago Arab-American community.  Rasmea is an exemplary citizen who recently finished a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice and has a law degree from Jordan.  She has overcome amazing odds after being convicted by the Israeli military court system in 1969 for her alleged association with a leftist Palestinian nationalist group that the United States in 1997 designated a terrorist organization. Rasmea’s activism against the Israeli occupation in the 1960s resulted in her imprisonment in Israeli prisons for ten years, and it is surely her community activism in the United States that has made her, and by extension, the community that relies on her, the target of this indictment for alleged immigration fraud.

Since September 11, 2001, the Bush and Obama administrations have brought Palestinian, Arab and Muslim activists before Grand Juries, including Dr. Abdelhaleem Ashqar, Dr. Sami al-Arian, and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation. In the fall of 2010, twenty-three anti-war and peace activists, including Columbian and Palestinian solidarity workers, were subpoenaed by a Grand Jury as part of what the United States government is calling an investigation into “material support” for groups the United States Department of State has declared “foreign terrorist organizations.” The 77^th General Convention meeting in Indianapolis in 2012 adopted a resolution on American Civil Liberties (A079), the second resolve of which reads: “That the General Convention express its concern through its Office of Government Relations that use of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the Patriot Act, and the Supreme Court decision in Holder vs. Humanitarian Law Project have a chilling effect on God’s call to peacemaking and unduly impact the Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim communities in the United States.” We believe the indictment of Rasmea Yousef Odeh is one more attempt of the United States government to intimidate the Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim communities in the United States.

The Peace and Justice Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago stands in solidarity with Rasmea Yousef Odeh and calls on our government to treat her with justice and to drop all charges against her.

March 25, 2014