Colonial Loops of Displacement in the United States and Israel: The Case of Rasmea Odeh

This article analyzes the legal journey of Rasmea Odeh, a Palestinian American woman found guilty of immigration fraud in a U.S. federal court in 2014 and eventually deported in 2017. In a previous life, Odeh was embroiled in the bombing of a supermarket in Israel, sexually tortured while under investigation, placed in Israeli prison for ten years, and deported from the West Bank in 1979. Using a comparative analytical approach, I argue that these two legal experiences subjected Odeh to a colonial loop of displacement—a global cycle of removals that implicate the United States and Israel as active and interconnected settler colonies.