Groups Form Coalition to Combat Terrorism, Violence in Community

Citing “a climate of fear” following the slaying of Arab rights leader Alex Odeh, leaders of human rights, church and political groups vowed Monday night to work against the “menace of terrorism in our community” with the formation of an Orange County Anti-Terrorism Committee.

Organizers of the coalition, meeting at Unitarian Church of Orange County in Anaheim, pointed to the Oct. 11 bomb blast that killed Odeh and to several other bombings, fires and threats in the past two years as indications that Orange County increasingly has become a target for violence.

Dangerous Orange County

“The climate of fear is such that we have to bring to the public’s attention that Orange County is a very dangerous place to be if you’re practicing First Amendment rights,” said Bea Foster, director of the California Peace Academy, a statewide group consisting primarily of university professors studying peace issues.

Foster cited Odeh, who had received death threats since he became the West Coast director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Santa Ana.

The night before he died, the Palestine-born, naturalized U.S. citizen appeared on a television news broadcast and criticized the media for linking the Palestine Liberation Organization with the hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro. He praised PLO leader Yasser Arafat as “a man of peace.” Odeh also condemned terrorism, but that statement was edited from the broadcast, his sister, Ellen Odeh Nassab, said.

Odeh’s death was not the most recent act of terrorism, coalition members said.

Dr. Jack Kent, a member of the same American-Arab group, said he was warned by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington on the day Odeh was buried that his name was among 35 to 40 on a hit list sent anonymously to the committee’s Washington office.

An endocrinologist who practices in Santa Ana and lives with his family in Huntington Beach, Kent said Monday afternoon that the threat to his life put him “on guard.”

“You just never know--is this someone who is just trying to scare you out of some sadistic pleasure or do they have other intentions?” Kent said.

“I’m Jewish. I’m looked upon as a traitor,” said Kent, a member of groups such as the Los Angeles-based Jews United for Peace and Justice.

Some of the approximately 35 people at Monday’s meeting attended only to relay information to their own organizations. They included representatives of the Orange County Committee on Central America, Orange County Human Relations Commission, Gray Panthers, Interfaith Peace Ministry of Orange County and Gay and Lesbian Community Service Center of Orange County.

Some members of the group, meeting for the second time, expressed different concerns.

Participant Tony Russo reiterated his theory that the slaying of Cal State Fullerton professor Edward Lee Cooperman was a political assassination. Russo, a defendant in the 1974 Pentagon Papers case, was one of several friends of Cooperman who criticized the trial that led to the conviction earlier this year of a Vietnamese student.

Cooperman’s widow, Klaaske, deferred to her attorney, Lawrence Teeter, who accused the federal government of a “complete and disgusting lack of responsibility” in the handling of the case.

Shirley Cereseto, a friend of Cooperman and Kent and an organizer of the new group, said: “There is an ominous threat” to freedom of speech. “Some people may withdraw from civic work if they feel threatened.”

‘Heat on the Police’

Cereseto said the new group’s goals are to raise awareness of terrorist activities, “put some heat on the police to find the murderer of Alex Odeh” and “give comfort to people who are being threatened and try to give them solidarity-- because they are very frightened.”

Organizers pointed to other incidents in the county since 1983:

- Feb. 28, 1984: A volunteer arrived at the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign headquarters in Garden Grove to find it slightly damaged from a firebomb hurled at the front door during the weekend.

- March, 1984: The Feminist Women’s Health Center in Santa Ana, site of picketing by anti-abortionists, was the scene of three fires.

-Dec. 23, 1984: A Planned Parenthood clinic in Santa Ana was the target of a firebomb.

Several of the coalition members blamed right-wing extremism in Orange County.

“Orange County is infamous for having the most conservative and right-wing kooks in the whole country,” Foster said.

Brian Jenkens, director of a conflict research program for the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, said 40% of the terrorist incidents in the United States have occurred in New York. Los Angeles, Miami and Washington, D.C., vie for a distant second place,” he said.

The FBI said it does not keep statistics by counties.

Kathy Hodge, former director of the Feminist Women’s Health Center, said that while she was there, the center was picketed and threatened with bombing and she received personal threats.

“We want cooperation and pressure from the community” to encourage police to have “a prompt and ready response to right-wing violence,” Hodge said.