Decades after bomb attack, Arab American advocacy group opens new Anaheim office

Helena Odeh still holds fond memories of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's first office in Santa Ana as a young girl before tragedy struck.
Her father, Alex Odeh, served as the nascent civil rights group's West Coast regional director during the early 1980s and took her to work with him a few times.
'He loved Triscuits,' she recalled. 'Those were his favorite crackers. He would always give me Triscuits when we were there.'
But the office on 17th Street became a crime scene on the morning of Oct. 11, 1985.
A rigged pipe bomb exploded when Odeh, a prominent Palestinian American activist, opened the door to the office that fateful day. The blast claimed his life at 41.
The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force descended on the scene by helicopter soon after, discussed the names of known Jewish extremists with Santa Ana police, but the bombing remains unsolved to this day.
Nearly 40 years later, a measure of resolve for the ADC arrived in Anaheim on Wednesday evening when the organization celebrated the opening of its first Southern California office since the attack.
'The objective of the bombing was to keep us out of existence in Orange County and everywhere else,' said Abed Ayoub, ADC's national executive director. 'But the opposite is happening. We're continuing to grow.'
Arab American activists, community leaders and Odeh family members gathered for the ribbon-cutting ceremony, which marked a culmination of a longtime goal for the ADC's trio of chapters in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.
A new office in Anaheim not only serves as a central hub for the organization's regional chapters, but also joins the civic and cultural heart of the city's Little Arabia. The ADC teamed with other community groups in successfully advocating for its official designation.
The ADC, which counts nearly 130,000 members nationwide, has maintained an active presence in Southern California throughout the decades and hosts annual banquet fundraisers in O.C. every October to honor Odeh's legacy.
Its members hope the office opens the door to even more organizing possibilities as a legal clinic and community resource.
Dr. Souhail Toubia, an ADC-OC board member, mentioned the group is continuing its historic mission of correcting stereotypes about Middle Eastern communities while looking toward new issues to tackle.
'We're working on business certification changes where Arab Americans are not considered, at this time, as disadvantaged minorities,' said Dr. Souhail Toubia, an ADC-OC board member. 'They are considered white. We're missing out on a lot of opportunities to benefit from major contracts at the state and federal level.'
A team of part-time paralegals and volunteers power the office for now.
As part of its plans for the future, the ADC hopes to add full-time attorneys and staff members to help carry out economic empowerment opportunities and pro bono legal services for hate crime and discrimination cases.
'The office is going to be an open door to the community to meet its needs,' Ayoub said. 'It's a demand that we've heard. We are working with other groups to provide the services that aren't available yet to the community out here.'
As the 40th anniversary of Odeh's murder nears in October, the ADC continues to push the U.S. Attorney's Office to make the case a priority.
For Helena, who is also an ADC-OC board member, the Santa Ana building that once housed her father's old office is traumatic reminder of the cold case. In Anaheim, though, she imagines new possibilities, ones that ensure her father's legacy of activism on behalf of Arab Americans continues.
'He would be so excited to know that there would be another office,' Helena said. 'This would be a great day for him.'

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Will Tech Tariffs Slow U.S. Growth?

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The United States Bombed Iran. What Comes Next?

The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East. His supporters will tie themselves in knots (as Vice President J. D. Vance did last week) trying to jam the square peg of Trump's promises into the round hole of his actions. And many of them may avoid calling this 'war' at all, even though that's what Trump himself called it tonight. They will want to see it as a quick win against an obstinate regime that will eventually declare bygones and come to the table. But whether bombing Iran was a good idea or a bad idea—and it could turn out to be either, or both—it is war by any definition of the term, and something Trump had vowed he would avoid. So what's next? Before considering the range of possibilities, it's important to recognize how much we cannot know at this moment. The president's statement tonight was a farrago of contradictions: He said, for example, that the main Iranian nuclear sites were 'completely and totally obliterated'—but it will take time to assess the damage, and he has no way of knowing this. He claimed that the Iranian program has been destroyed—but added that there are still 'many targets' left. He said that Iran could suffer even more in the coming days—but the White House has reportedly assured Iran through back channels that these strikes were, basically, a one-and-done, and that no further U.S. action is forthcoming. (In a strange moment, Trump added: 'I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military.' Presidents regularly ask God to bless the American nation and its military forces—as Trump did in his next utterance—but it was a bit unnerving to see a commander in chief order a major military action and then declare how much 'we' love the Creator.) Only one outcome is certain: Hypocrisy in the region and around the world will reach galactic levels as nations wring their hands and silently pray that the B-2s carrying the bunker-buster bombs did their job. Beyond that, the most optimistic view is that the introduction of American muscle into this war will produce a humiliating end to Iran's long-standing nuclear ambitions, enable more political disorder in Iran, and finally create the conditions for the fall of the mullahs. This may have been the Israeli plan from the start: Despite Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's warnings about the imminence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons capability and the need to engage in preemption, this was a preventive war. The Israelis could not destroy sites such as Fordow without the Americans. Israeli military actions suggest that Netanyahu was trying to increase the chances of regime change in Tehran while making a side bet on dragging Trump into the fray and outsourcing the tougher nuclear targets to the United States. The very worst outcome is the polar opposite of the optimistic case. In this bleak alternative, the Air Force either didn't find, or couldn't destroy, all of the key parts of the Iranian program; the Iranians then try to sprint across the finish line to a bomb. In the meantime, Tehran lashes out against U.S. targets in the region and closes the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian opposition fades in importance as angry Iranian citizens take their government's part. One dangerous possibility in this pessimistic scenario is that the Iranians do real damage to American assets or kill a number of U.S. servicepeople, and Trump, confused and enraged, tries to widen his war against a country more than twice the size of Iraq. Perhaps the most likely outcome, however, is more mixed. The Iranian program may not be completely destroyed, but if the intelligence was accurate and the bombers hit their targets, Tehran's nuclear clock has likely been set back years. (This in itself is a good thing; whether it is worth the risks Trump has taken is another question.) The Iranian people will likely rally around the flag and the regime, but the real question is whether that effect will last. The Iranian regime will be wounded but will likely survive; the nuclear program will be delayed but will likely continue; the region will become more unstable but is unlikely to erupt into a full-blown war involving the United States. But plenty of wild cards are in the deck. First, as strategists and military planners always warn, the 'enemy gets a vote.' The Iranians may respond in ways the U.S. does not expect. The classic war-gaming mistake is to assume that your opponent will respond in ways that fit nicely with your own plans and capabilities. But the Iranians have had a long time to think about this eventuality; they may have schemes ready that the U.S. has not foreseen. (Why not spread around radiological debris, for example, and then blame the Americans for a near-disaster?) Trump has issued a warning to Iran not to react, but what might count as 'reacting'? Second, we cannot know the subsequent effects of an American attack. For now, other Middle Eastern regimes may be relieved to see Iran's nuclear clock turned back. But if the Iranian regime survives and continues even a limited nuclear program, those same nations may sour on what they will see as an unsuccessful plan hatched in Jerusalem and carried out by Washington. Diplomacy elsewhere will likely suffer. The Russians have been pounding Ukraine with even greater viciousness than usual all week and now may wave away the last of Trump's feckless attempts to end the war. Other nations might see American planes flying over Iran and think that the North Koreans had the right idea all along: assemble a few crude nuclear weapons as fast as you can to deter further attempts to end your regime. Finally, the chances for misperception and accidents are now higher than they were yesterday. In 1965, the United States widened the war in Southeast Asia after two purported attacks from North Vietnam; the Americans were not sure at the time whether both of these attacks had actually happened, and as it turns out, one of them probably had not. The Middle East, moreover, is full of opportunities for screwups and mistakes: If Trump continues action against Iran, he will need excellent intelligence and tight organization at the Pentagon. And this is where the American strikes were really a gamble: They were undertaken by a White House national-security team staffed by unqualified appointees, some of whom—including the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense himself—Trump has reportedly frozen out of his inner circle. (Given that those positions are held by Tulsi Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, respectively, it is both terrifying and a relief to know that they may have little real influence.) The American defense and intelligence communities are excellent, but they can function for only so long without competent leadership. Trump has had preternatural luck as president: He has survived scandals, major policy failures, and even impeachment, events that would have ended other American planes dropped their payloads and returned home safely. So he might skate past this war, even if it will be hard to explain to the MAGA faithful who believed him, as they always do, when he told them that he was the peace candidate. But perhaps the biggest and most unpredictable gamble Trump took in bombing Iran was sending American forces into harm's way in the Middle East with a team that was never supposed to be in charge of an actual war. Article originally published at The Atlantic

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The Daily Money: Will those bombs rattle the US economy?

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