Seminar Canceled After Bomb Kills Pro-Arab Panelist

A MiraCosta College seminar on “Peace With Justice in the Middle East,” which had divided the San Diego Jewish community, was canceled Monday because of last Friday’s killing in Santa Ana of a principal pro-Arab panelist.

Alex Odeh was killed by a bomb that exploded at the headquarters of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, where he was West Coast regional director. Officials believe the device was either timed or rigged to explode when Odeh opened the office door.

At the seminar, Odeh was to discuss a videotape called “The Arab and the Israeli.”

Judith Weinberg, who had organized the seminar, said Monday that the Oct. 20 conference was canceled because several Arab-Americans who were scheduled to participate had asked for a postponement of at least 40 days out of respect for Odeh’s death.

But such a delay, compounded by the problem of fitting a new conference date into all the participants’ schedules, proved unwieldy and thus the seminar was canceled, Weinberg said.

“It’s just not logistically possible to redo it,” Weinberg said. Speaking from a prepared statement, she added: “We continue to seek ways of nonviolent resolution . . . (with the hope that) persons with strong differences of opinion can be brought together in constructive dialogue and that these differences can be reconciled.”

The seminar had caused a furor in the Jewish community. Some Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the United Jewish Federation, objected to the conference as being one-sided, pro-Palestinian and a threat to the security of Israel.

They wrote letters to the college president complaining about the seminar and discouraged Jews from attending.

Herb Brin, publisher of The Heritage, a weekly Jewish community newspaper based in Los Angeles, criticized the forum in a front-page article printed 11 days ago. He called the seminar “stacked” against Israel because mainstream Jewish organizations were excluded in favor of more liberal ones, such as the New Jewish Agenda. Brin and others also complained about the involvement of Quakers, through their American Friends Service Committee, in the seminar.

After Odeh’s death on Friday, Brin said that, although he was against the conference, he deplored the slaying.

“I have a sense of outrage . . . that anyone would turn to violence,” Brin said. Hours after the death, Brin said, an anonymous caller phoned his office and left the message: “Thank you for bombing us.”