It’s clear to any Palestinian in the United States organizing for national liberation that they cannot count on the neutrality of the state. Nowhere is this clearer than in the government’s ongoing campaign against Rasmea Odeh.

A Palestinian by birth and a US citizen for over ten years, the sixty-eight-year-old Odeh was widely thought to have been targeted as a “consolation prize” for FBI investigators following the bureau’s inability to indict twenty-three Midwest antiwar activists who were subpoenaed to a grand jury in 2010 for their support for movements in Palestine and Colombia.

Odeh was not among those targeted in the synchronized house raids across Minneapolis, Chicago, and Grand Rapids. But her close colleague, Hatem Abudayyeh, executive director of the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), stood out as one of the more distinguishable names of the coterie sometimes referred to as the “Midwest 23.” The FBI then came after Odeh. A full three years after the raids occurred — and following surveillance and visitations — the FBI arrested and indicted Odeh for falsely answering questions on her 2004 US naturalization application.