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Alex Odeh looms large in Orange County’s consciousness, decades after he was killed at the age of 41.
One fall morning in 1985 the prominent Palestinian activist arrived to work at the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. When he opened the civil rights group’s door, a rigged pipe bomb went off, mortally wounding him.
“How can I forget that horrible day?” said Michel Shehadeh, whoreplaced Odeh as the West Coast regional director of the organization, which formed in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes in U.S. media. “Fear spread through the community like fire.”
Mourners filed into a church in Orange for Odeh’s funeral, quietly discussing whether attacks would continue, and how they could protect the community, Shehadeh recalled.
Shehadeh described Odeh as a physically slight man, peacefu and soft-spoken—a lover of poetry. He remembers wondering, “why this guy?”
“He did not pose a threat, not in the way looked, and not in the way he behaved, and not in the way he spoke,” Shehadeh said.
Odeh‘s murder remains unsolved 40 years later. To many Palestinians and other Arabs in Southern California, his death serves as a grim reminder of the discrimination the community has faced.
But he is also a symbol of resilience. His memory stands as a call to action that has taken on renewed significance in recent years.
When a wave of student activism against Israel’s war in Gaza unfurled on university campuses across the U.S. last year, students at UC Irvine hoisted a banner onto a campus building declaring the site “Alex Odeh Hall,” amid protest chants and the banging of drums.
“The whole narrative around Palestine has shifted. People went to the streets,” Shehada said. “It’s a different world.”
And yet, he said, the backlash against his community continues.
The detention of recent Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil this year reminds Shehadeh of his own arrest by federal agents in 1987.
Shehadeh was among eight arrested on charges relating to their pro-Palestinian activism, and was threatened with deportation, even though he’d immigrated to the U.S. lawfully as a teenager, and was a grocery store employee living in Long Beach.
“History repeats itself,” Shehadeh said.
Hostile encounters felt almost run-of-the-mill, especially for those who were politically active.
The Santa Ana office where Hind Baki worked alongside Odeh, first as an intern and then as a full-time employee fresh out of college, frequently received threatening phone calls.
Baki said Odeh was, “very matter-of-fact- about it,” telling her to log the calls, and report them to local police.
She recalled him saying, “they call my house all the time, too, but don’t worry, they wouldn’t dare do anything in America.”
When she started getting threatening phone calls at the home she told her parents she was alarmed. But Odeh reassured her that it was just talk.
After the bombing, when Baki took the few boxes of paperwork she could salvage from the office to a temporary office in Los Angeles, the calls continued. That’s when she decided to get another job.
William Lafi Youmans, co-creator of a documentary investigating Odeh’s death, said he grew up in Detroit hearing about Odeh as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming too vocal.
“It was a bit of a warning,” Youmans said. “It’s sad, because whoever killed Alex was trying to silence the community.”
The film was completed two years ago, just before 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack in Israel, which also resulted in 251 Israelis being taken hostage.
Amid a surge of anti-Palestinian sentiment, Youmans gave up his hope of having the documentary accepted into film festivals, even as Israel launched its bombing campaign in Gaza, which has since killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
To mark the anniversary of Odeh’s death, Youmans and his co-creator held a private screening of the film in Costa Mesa Friday night, and have renewed the process of submitting it to film festivals.
An FBI investigation into the bombing remains open, and the names of three suspects have been aired publicly in the media. Authorities said they continue to seek the public’s help.
“The investigation into the murder of Alex Odeh has spanned generations, but the FBI has never given up and will continue to investigate new leads on this case,” said Akil Davis, assistant director for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, in a statement.
Davis said the U.S. Department of Justice’s long-time offer of a reward for up to $1 million for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the crime still stands.
“I’m confident that we will find answers,” Davis said.
Helena , the eldest of Odeh’s three daughters, said she thinks about her father all the time.
“It’s still painful,” she said. “Another decade has gone by and we’re still waiting for justice. Our lives have grown and blossomed but we haven’t had our father there to see it happen.”
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee gathers each year at a Garden Grove hotel for a banquet memorializing Odeh. Earlier this year, it opened an office in Anaheim’s Little Arabia District — for the first time since the Santa Ana bombing.
Leadership of the organization asked Helena to be its first full-time employee, but the trauma of her father’s assassination gave her pause.
“What if I go to work one day and I don’t come home?” Helena said.
After speaking with family, she declined the job offer.
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Suhauna Hussain, Gabriel San Román
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