In ‘Who Killed Alex Odeh?’ the death of a California activist haunts the present

The pain of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is personalized in Jason Osder and William Lafi Youmans’ straightforward documentary about a murder that remains unsolved 41 years later. “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” chronicles the death of a Palestinian American community leader in Santa Ana from a tripwire bomb, which prompted an FBI investigation that went nowhere. Unspooling in inquisitive, sometimes discursive fashion, the film ultimately becomes a musing on prejudice and thwarted justice, the project’s modesty belying the anguish still felt by those who knew him.

Born in the West Bank village of Jifna in 1944, Alexander Michel Odeh attended Cairo University, then was unable to return to his homeland in 1967 due to Israel’s occupation. In the early 1970s, he moved to America to further his education, becoming a teacher in Orange County. Struck by the negative representations of Arabs in the media, Odeh was appointed regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose East Coast offices had been targeted by extremists in 1985. On the morning of Oct. 11 of that year, Odeh arrived at work, opening the front door and unwittingly setting off the explosive that took his life. He was only 41.

“Who Killed Alex Odeh?” starts in Santa Ana, introducing us to his widow, Norma, and one of his daughters, Helena, as they peruse old family photos. Described as gentle and thoughtful, Odeh sought to find common ground with those who supposedly were his enemy and, as a result, his death was as mourned by the local Jewish community as by his loved ones.

Still, cultural biases informed the news coverage surrounding Odeh’s killing. Some insinuated he had been assassinated for comments regarding the then-recent hijacking of the Achille Lauro by Palestinian terrorists. Archival television interviews feature soundbites of Odeh expressing sympathy for the terrorists’ demands that Israel release Palestinian prisoners — although those broadcasts ignored the fact that Odeh had actually condemned the hijacking.

In short order, U.S. forces rescued the passengers, inspiring the cheesy, propagandist TV movie “Voyage of Terror,” of which we see a short but excruciatingly melodramatic clip. This concise history lesson manages to encapsulate America’s long-standing xenophobia toward Arabs and Palestinians — not to mention’s Hollywood’s infuriating tendency to casts Arabs as villains — while suggesting why Odeh’s murder didn’t receive much national outcry.

Eventually, “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” turns its attention to three possible suspects: Robert Manning, Israel Fuchs and Andy Green were members of the Jewish Defense League, a militant right-wing organization, started by Queens Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1968, that advocated that Jews embrace violence to protect themselves. (Summing up his philosophy in one archival clip, Kahane, who himself was assassinated in 1990, declares blithely, “Every Jew, a .22.”) Working with Israeli journalist David Sheen, the filmmakers seek to track down the suspects, and in one upsetting sequence, Sheen goes undercover in Israel, wearing glasses with a hidden camera to meet Fuchs. Although the FBI never charged anyone, the documentary draws from Sheen’s reporting and other interview subjects — including a former JDL member — to persuasively argue that these three men probably had something to do with Odeh’s death.

Osder previously directed “Let the Fire Burn,” an exceptional 2013 documentary that consisted entirely of archival news footage to re-create the tragic events of May 13, 1985, in which Philadelphia police lay siege to a house occupied by the Black liberation organization MOVE, resulting in 11 deaths. That film’s formal rigor, matched with the horror of the live news reports as the situation stormed out of control, accentuated the incident’s brutality and bigotry.

It is eerie that Osder returns to 1985 to spotlight another injustice, but although “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” also includes archival clips, his and Youmans’ documentary lacks the same tight focus. Still, their emotional connection to the material is clear: Youmans, who is Palestinian American, grew up knowing Odeh’s story, while the Jewish American Osder did not, and their movie works best as a tribute to this slain activist who believed that peaceful coexistence between people could be achieved.

“Who Killed Alex Odeh?” takes on too much for its slim 83-minute runtime. Odeh is more a symbol than a three-dimensional figure. The documentary is more workmanlike than inspired, although Osder and Youmans ensure that its title has a deeper, barbed meaning. The directors aren’t trying to solve a murder so much as they want the world to keep asking the question.

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