On this edi­tion of From The Vault, we look back on the 1985 mur­der of Arab Amer­i­can polit­i­cal activist Alex Odeh in San­ta Ana, Cal­i­for­nia on Octo­ber 11, 1985. Paci­fi­ca Radio Guest pro­duc­er Gabriel San Roman will host this week s episode.

Born in Jif­na, Pales­tine in 1944, Alex Odeh became a poet, lec­tur­er and Arab-Amer­i­can peace activist. He orig­i­nal­ly stud­ied to become an engi­neer at Cairo Uni­ver­si­ty in Egypt. When the Six Day War end­ed in 1967, Israeli author­i­ties pre­vent­ed Odeh from return­ing to his home­town in the West Bank. Liv­ing a life of exile changed him, start­ing off a life in politics.

Alex Odeh immi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States in 1972 even­tu­al­ly con­tin­u­ing his stud­ies with a Mas­ter s degree in polit­i­cal sci­ence from Cal State Fuller­ton. In 1982, the Pales­tin­ian activist joined the Amer­i­can-Arab Anti-Dis­crim­i­na­tion Com­mit­tee, a new­ly formed group aimed at com­bat­ing grotesque Arab stereo­types in the media and bias in Mid­dle East report­ing. A year lat­er, Odeh became the West Coast Region­al Coor­di­na­tor, set­ting up an office in San­ta Ana, California.

Death threats haunt­ed Odeh on near­ly a dai­ly basis. On Octo­ber 10, 1985, a local tele­vi­sion sta­tion inter­viewed him about the Achilles Lau­ro hijack­ing and mur­der of Leon Kling­hof­fer. Odeh spoke con­demn­ing ter­ror­ism across the board but argued that the media was too quick to link the attack to the PLO. As fate would have it, the activist opened the door to his offi­cer the next morn­ing for what was to be anoth­er rou­tine day at work. When the door swung open, a pow­er­ful pipe bomb explod­ed killing Odeh.

For thir­ty years, the mur­der case of Alex Odeh remains unsolved by the FBI.