reminds Shehadeh of his own arrest<\/a> by federal agents in 1987. <\/p>\nShehadeh was among eight arrested on charges relating to their pro-Palestinian activism, and was threatened with deportation, even though he\u2019d immigrated to the U.S. lawfully as a teenager, and was a grocery store employee living in Long Beach.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistory repeats itself,\u201d Shehadeh said.<\/p>\n
Hostile encounters felt almost run-of-the-mill, especially for those who were politically active.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Baki said Odeh was \u201cvery matter-of-fact about it,\u201d telling her to log the calls and report them to police.<\/p>\n
She recalled him saying, \u201cThey call my house all the time too, but don\u2019t worry, they wouldn\u2019t dare do anything in America.\u201d <\/p>\n
When she started getting threatening phone calls at home, she told her parents she was alarmed. But Odeh reassured her that it was just talk.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s when she decided to get another job.<\/p>\n
William Lafi Youmans, co-creator of a documentary investigating Odeh\u2019s death, said he grew up in Detroit hearing about Odeh as a cautionary tale about the dangers of becoming too vocal. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a bit of a warning,\u201d Youmans said. \u201cIt\u2019s sad, because whoever killed Alex was trying to silence the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
To mark the anniversary of Odeh\u2019s death, Youmans and his co-creator held a private screening of the film in Costa Mesa on Friday night, and have renewed the process of submitting it to film festivals. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s help. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d said Akil Davis, assistant director for the FBI\u2019s Los Angeles field office, in a statement. <\/p>\n
Davis said the U.S. Department of Justice\u2019s long-time offer of a reward for up to $1 million for information leading to an arrest and conviction for the crime still stands.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m confident that we will find answers,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
Helena, the eldest of Odeh\u2019s three daughters, said she thinks about her father all the time. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still painful,\u201d she said. \u201cAnother decade has gone by and we\u2019re still waiting for justice. Our lives have grown and blossomed but we haven\u2019t had our father there to see it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Little Arabia District \u2014 for the first time since the Santa Ana bombing. <\/p>\n
Leadership of the organization asked Helena to be its first full-time employee, but the trauma of her father\u2019s assassination gave her pause.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if I go to work one day and I don\u2019t come home?\u201d Helena said.<\/p>\n
After speaking with family, she declined the job offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Odeh looms large in Orange County\u2019s consciousness, decades after he was killed at the age of 41.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[341,342,163,165,164,343,337,179,339,344,345,340,336,335,346,338,347,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-akil-davis","9":"tag-alex-odeh","10":"tag-anaheim","11":"tag-anaheim-headlines","12":"tag-anaheim-news","13":"tag-bombing","14":"tag-call","15":"tag-community","16":"tag-death","17":"tag-fbi-investigation","18":"tag-hind-baki","19":"tag-israel","20":"tag-michel-shehadeh","21":"tag-odeh","22":"tag-office","23":"tag-santa-ana","24":"tag-student-activism","25":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}