Times change, the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, and yet one thing that has remained true for as long as I’ve been alive is that prejudice, bigotry, and explicit displays of racism have always been openly permissible in America — so long as they’ve been targeted at Arabs and/or Muslims. That sad and immutable fact was on full display throughout Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign last year, and the say the quiet part out loud reaction to Abdul El-Sayed’s current senate race has somehow managed to be even worse on both sides of the aisle (Democrats lament that he “doesn’t share our values,” while Republicans straight up just call the guy a jihadist). But anyone old enough to remember 9/11 knows that it didn’t start with the likes of Vicky Paladino, just as I assume that anyone old enough to remember the assassination of Alex Odeh knows that it didn’t start with 9/11.The sole fatality of a bomb that had been planted at the California office where he served as the West Coast Regional Director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), Alexander Michel Odeh was murdered on the morning of October 11, 1985, leaving behind his wife Norma and their three young daughters Helena, Samya, and Susan. To this day, his slaughter remains “unsolved.” And yet, as Jason Osder and William Youmans’ scattered but vital documentary “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” makes clear soon after it begins, there’s little doubt as to who was behind the killing.Indeed, the film establishes that the case was effectively solved within days of the attack, and that all three of the primary suspects — all members of a right-wing terrorist group known as the Jewish Defense League — were only allowed to flee to Israel because powerful forces within the American political system preferred for them to get away with it. And to get away with it. And to get away with it. More than 40 years later, no efforts have been made to prosecute or extradite the presumptive murderers. One of them has even moved back to the United States.And so, despite affecting the aesthetic and tropes of the true-crime format, “Who Killed Alex Odeh?” directly contradicts the expectations of its supposed genre. Instead of establishing a vast mystery for their movie to explore, Osder and Youmans — one of them Jewish, the other a Palestinian-American — give shape to the galling absence of one. Stunted and searching by design, their film unpacks the sociopolitical context of Odeh’s killing in order to illustrate how the easily Google-able question posed by its title could possibly remain “unanswered” for so long, and even partakes in some light subterfuge as part of an effort to pin down the culprits on camera.~this review continues on IndieWire~
