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Alex Odeh looms large in Orange County’s consciousness, decades after he was killed at the age of 41.

One fall morning in 1985 the prominent Palestinian activist arrived to work at the Santa Ana office of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. When he opened the civil rights group’s door, a rigged pipe bomb went off, mortally wounding him.

“How can I forget that horrible day?” said Michel Shehadeh, whoreplaced Odeh as the West Coast regional director of the organization, which formed in 1980 to combat anti-Arab stereotypes in U.S. media. “Fear spread through the community like fire.”

Mourners filed into a church in Orange for Odeh’s funeral, quietly discussing whether at

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