Palestinian activist Rasmea Odeh was found guilty of unlawful procurement of citizenship on Monday. Her trial was a farce orchestrated by a biased judge and the charges against her had nothing to do with the rule of law. Prosecuting Odeh was a slap in the face to the Arab American community and anybody who stands for Palestinian rights.

Judge Gershwin Drain allowed the prosecutors to say that Odeh was convicted of a 1969 bombing in Israel, without allowing her defense to tell the jury that her conviction was the false result of a forced confession in the Israeli military (in)justice system. 

Odeh did not have a lawyer in 1969 when she was convicted in Israel. She was tortured. She was raped. The judge and the government made sure she got punished for being a victim.

What is bewildering is that Drain said he accepts Odeh’s allegations about torture as credible. He even added that the court,  “is not unaffected by the inhumane circumstances of her detention in the West Bank.” Indeed the court was not indifferent to her suffering. By his rulings, Drain showed that he favored and prolonged the pain inflicted on Odeh by the Israelis.

At these times when fears of attacks on U.S. soil are at an all time high, the mention of the bombing in Israel played a major role in Odeh’s conviction, especially when the judge stripped her of the right to deny her involvement in the attacks in Israel. 

The judge also disallowed the testimony of a psychological expert, which Odeh’s lead attorney Michael Deutsch had dubbed as essential to her defense. Odeh suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the torture she endured in Israel. The expert, Dr. Mary Fabri, was going to testify that victims of PTSD develop automatic filters that help them avoid thinking of unsettling past trauma. 

Fabri, a clinical psychologist at the Kovler Center in Chicago, testified in a pretrial hearing that it is possible Odeh could have thought the questions on whether she had ever been convicted referred to her record in the United States, because the PTSD filters prevented her from thinking about the torture and rape she had gone through in Israel.

By excluding critical evidence to the defense, Judge Drain decided the outcome of the case before the trial started; he, not the jury, convicted Odeh.  

The charges against Odeh were problematic. She applied for citizenship 10 years ago. She has been vocal about what happened to her in Israel. She never tried to hide her wrongful conviction and vicious torture. 

Why and how the Department of Homeland Security brought up her case almost a decade after she became a U.S. citizen are questions that raise eyebrows. Hatem Abudayyeh, Odeh’s colleague at the Arab American Action Network, was unconstitutionally investigated and subpoenaed two years earlier by the FBI for political activities protected by the First Amendment. We believe Odeh’s indictment was the result of that illegal investigation.

Odeh was doing good for her community. She was empowering women and helping immigrants. She was making Chicago a better place. She was not a threat to anybody. The Department of Justice pressed charges against her on technicalities to send a clear message to Arab Americans and everybody who advocates for the end of Israeli oppression— “We are watching you.” This is very same DOJ that let the Bush Administration get away with authorizing torture and turned a blind eye to the Wall Street white-collar criminals who nearly bankrupted this country. 

Whether intentionally or not, people are prone to filling out incorrect information on all sorts of applications. But the federal government went after Odeh because of who she is— a resilient Palestinian woman standing for the Arab American community.

Odeh’s conviction is a direct attack on Arabs in this country. In the face of this injustice, selective prosecution and federal scrutiny on our community, we cannot but feel like second-class citizens. If Odeh had not been active with the Arab American community in Chicago, nobody would have come after her.

To survive and thrive in this nation, we must learn from Odeh’s example and continue the struggle for our civil rights. 

After the judge illogically decided that Odeh is a flight risk, he revoked her bond so she’d be locked up immediately. As federal marshals approached her to handcuff her, many of her supporters in the courtroom broke down in tears. But Odeh kept her head up. She smiled. She looked beyond the injustice. 

“I am very strong,” she said. 

We commend her unbreakable spirit.