A terrorist convicted of the murders of two students in Jerusalem 50 years ago will be allowed into Germany to speak at an event promoting boycotts of Israel, Benjamin Weinthal reported Wednesday for The Jerusalem Post.
News that Rasmea Odeh, a member of the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is classified as a terrorist organization by both the United States and European Union, will speak at an event in Berlin sparked outrage from a German politician.
“Why isn’t a convicted terrorist like Rasmea Odeh’s entry in the Schengen Information System blocked? Why did one name the Residence Act hate preaching as an obstacle to entry if these laws are then not applied,” Volker Beck, a German Green Party politician, wrote on Facebook.
The Schengen Area is comprised of 26 European nations with a single visa that allows visitors to pass freely among them.
Beck added that “in Germany, the PFLP is not prohibited. I jointly demanded the [ban of the PFLP] with Yair Lapid [Yesh Atid Chairman] in 2017.”
According to Alexander Fröhlich, the reporter from the Tagesspiegel newspaper who broke the story, Odeh will be speaking at an event hosted by an alliance of BDS groups on the topic of “Palestinian women in the liberation struggle.”
Odeh was convicted of a 1969 Jerusalem bombing that killed Jewish students Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe. She was convicted in 2017 of immigration fraud and last year deported from the United States to Jordan.
“It is very disturbing to learn that the German authorities are allowing convicted PFLP terrorist and murderer Rasmea Odeh to enter Germany for the express purpose of speaking at an antisemitic rally to support boycott, divestment and sanctions against the State of Israel,” Ephraim Zuroff, head of the Jerusalem Office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post.
“To the best of my knowledge, Odeh never expressed any regret about the murder of innocent persons in Jerusalem that she carried out, and remains a staunch anti-Semite and supporter of the forces determined to try and destroy Israel, facts which should help convince the German Interior Minister to ban her entry to the Federal Republic,” added Zuroff.
In 2017, Italy refused entry to Leila Khaled, who was involved in two hijackings and is a member of the PFLP.
