Reema Dodin will be the first Palestinian-American to serve as a White House staffer

In 2002, Dodin, then a student at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people.”

By JNS with EJP

Reema Dodin, announced on Monday as a deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs for the incoming Biden administration, once praised suicide bombers during the Second Intifada.

In 2002, Dodin, then a student at the University of California, Berkeley, spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with residents of Lodi, Calif., saying that “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people,” according to the Lodi News-Sentinel.

The Biden Transition did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Dodin, who was named to her new position alongside Shuwanza Goff, will be the first Palestinian-American to serve as a White House staffer, according to Palestinian media.She traces her origins to Dura, near  Hebron in the south of the West Bank. Her parents immigrated to the US in the 1960s.

She currently serves as deputy chief of staff and floor director to Senate Minority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

Dodin is affiliated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which she joined as a student at Berkeley, where she was also a member of the Muslim Student Association.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has criticized CAIR, saying its position as the “go to American-Muslim civil rights organization” is “undermined by its anti-Israel agenda,” dating back to its founding by leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a Hamas affiliated anti-Semitic propaganda organization.”

Reema Dodin organized anti-Israel rallies at the University of California at Berkeley as a student. She then called for the university to divest from Israel. She said that a pro-Israel group on campus “say they want peace, but it’s a peace based on their rules.”