Alex Odeh

Odeh was later killed by a bomb as he opened the door of his office at 1905 East 17th Street in Santa Ana, California.

The Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee both condemned the murder.

United States President Ronald Reagan sent a message of condolence.

Irv Rubin, who had become chairman of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) the same year, immediately made several public statements in reaction to the incident.

"I have no tears for Mr. Odeh", Rubin said.

"He got exactly what he deserved."

He also said: "My tears were used up crying for Leon Klinghoffer."

Alexander Michel Odeh (اسكندر ميكل عودة; April 4, 1944 – October 11, 1985) was a Palestinian activist who was assassinated in a bombing in 1985.

Odeh was the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Born into a Palestinian Catholic family in Jifna, Mandatory Palestine, Odeh immigrated to the United States in 1972 at the age of 28.

He was a lecturer and poet who had published a volume of his poetry, Whispers in Exile.

Manning had previously been convicted of a 1972 bombing of the home of an Arab activist in Hollywood, and was a suspect in three other bombings in 1985, one of which killed Tscherim Soobzokov.

Both Rochelle and Robert Manning were members of the JDL.

Rochelle's jury deadlocked, and after the mistrial she left for Israel to join her husband.

The Boston office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee suffered a bombing on August 16, 1985, injuring two officers.

The Santa Ana bombing came the day after the ending of the Palestine Liberation Front–sponsored Achille Lauro hijacking in which Jewish American Leon Klinghoffer was killed.

The night before his death Odeh denied to the media that the PLO was involved in the hijacking and portrayed Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat as being ready to make peace.

The day of his murder, October 11, he had been scheduled to speak at Friday prayer services at a synagogue in Fountain Valley, California.

Shortly before his killing, Odeh appeared on the television show Nightline.

The program featured a back-and-forth between Odeh and a representative from the Jewish Defense League.

Immediately after the 1985 assassination the FBI identified three suspects, Robert Manning, Keith Fuchs and Andy Green, all of them believed to be affiliated with the JDL, who fled to Israel soon after the incident.

Floyd Clarke, then assistant director of the FBI, claimed in an internal memo that key suspects had fled to Israel and were living in Kiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

In February 1986, the FBI classified the bombing that killed Alex Odeh as a terrorist act.

In July, they eased away from their original position, saying the JDL was "probably" responsible for this attack and four others, but that final attribution to the JDL or any other group "must await further investigation."

Rubin again denied the JDL's involvement.

"What the FBI is doing is simple", he stated, "Some character calls up a news agency or whatever and uses the phrase Never Again, ... and on that assumption they can go and slander a whole group. That's tragic."

The JDL denied any involvement in Odeh's killing.

Helen Hatab Samhan, deputy director of the Arab American Institute in 1987, wrote that the murder of Odeh "shocked the Arab American community nation-side and demonstrated how political intolerance had crossed the line into anti-Arab terrorism on American soil."

She labeled the crime an example of "political racism," meaning racism that targeted pro-Palestine Arab viewpoints and individuals and groups associated with espousing those particular views.

Samhan also notes that FBI Director William Webster warned following Odeh's murder that "Arab individuals or those supporting Arab points of view have come within the zone of danger, targeted by a group as of yet to be fully identified and brought to justice."

Four weeks after Odeh's death, FBI spokesperson Lane Bonner stated the FBI attributed the bombing and two others to the JDL.

Rubin criticized the FBI for implying his organization's guilt without evidence, saying the FBI "could take their possible link and shove it."

In 1988, the FBI arrested Rochelle Manning, Robert Manning's wife, as a suspect in a mail bombing which killed a computer company secretary, Patricia Wilkerson, in Manhattan Beach, California, in July 1980.

Rochelle Manning was also considered a possible suspect in Odeh's murder.

It also charged her husband, Robert Manning, who was considered a prime suspect in the Odeh bombing.

In 1989, American journalist Chris Hedges discovered Robert Manning's residency in Kiryat Arba due to his use of a compromised alias.

The US government requested Robert Manning's extradition in 1991.

It also requested Rochelle Manning be extradited for a retrial.

After an unsuccessful two-year legal battle in the Israeli courts to prevent his extradition, Robert Manning was extradited in 1993.

Robert Manning was charged with the bombing attack that killed Wilkerson and convicted; in February 1994, Judge Dickran Tevrizian sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum of 30 years before parole.