Ayman Odeh

I was an eyewitness to the attack on MK Ayman Odeh. He approached the police, with his hands in the air, and announced that he was an MK. Officers, undoubtedly furious, and even more aggressive than usual because a fellow officer had been struck, said that they didn’t care. They began pushing and striking. Some officers began lashing out with their rifles. I and many others were pepper sprayed. Stumbling after Oudeh in retreat, sponge covered bullets whizzed past my ears. MK Oudeh was shot in the back by one of them, and fell to the ground.

In a documentary released in June 2019 the UK-based Forensic Architecture led by Prof. Eyal Weizman of Goldsmiths, University of London, using also new evidence collected by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel made a collage using various footage sources used by the Israeli police, together with timeline and 3D models, concluded there was a 47 second gap, repeated in multiple live-cam footage, in the videos coinciding with the timespan in which Odeh is thought to have been targeted.

On 18 January 2017, Odeh was injured as he protested against the demolition of the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran; Odeh claimed he was shot in the head with a sponge-tipped bullet. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, who was present at the incident, wrote:

In February 2016, Odeh considered resigning from the Knesset to show his protest against a controversial MK suspension bill.

A right-wing activist was arrested in February 2016 for making death threats against Odeh.

Following the announcement that Hadash leader Mohammed Barakeh was resigning prior to the 2015 elections, Odeh was elected as the party's new leader. In the buildup to the 2015 elections, Hadash joined the Joint List, an alliance of the main Arab parties. Odeh was placed at the head of the Joint List's electoral list, which is expected to put him at the head of a significant parliamentary faction in the new Knesset. Analysts credited the charismatic Odeh for giving the Arab political union a more moderate, pragmatic face. Odeh was elected to the 20th Knesset, along with 12 other candidates from the Joint List.

Odeh's campaign for the March 2015 elections had a "breakthrough moment" when, in a televised debate of candidates, Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, called Odeh a "Palestinian citizen" and said Odeh was not welcome in Israel. Odeh replied, "I am very welcome in my homeland. I am part of the nature, the surroundings, the landscape", contrasting his birth in Israel with Lieberman's immigration from the former Soviet Union. Odeh is now viewed as a potential power broker given that Arab parties appear to be uniting to meet the government's requirement that parties meet a minimum threshold of votes to secure a place in the Knesset. Odeh has a style that contrasts with that of MK Haneen Zoabi, who is more confrontational. Odeh voices his willingness to work with Jewish partners, and he often quotes Martin Luther King Jr.

Odeh has also expressed strong support for increasing recognition of Mizrahi culture and Arab Jewish history in official Israeli and Palestinian discourses; in a widely cited speech to the Knesset plenum in July 2015, MK Odeh argued that the State of Israel has systematically discriminated against and suppressed the culture of Jews who immigrated to Israel from Arab and Muslim lands (who make up the majority of the Israeli population) in order to feed the idea of a natural separation between Jews and Arabs. He also argued that the large role played by Jews in forming historical and modern Arab culture (including famous Jews such as Rabbi David Buzaglo, who wrote Jewish religious poetry primarily in Arabic, and famous Jews who were popular in the Arab world in the mid-20th century, such as Leila Mourad), has been forgotten by Jews and Arabs alike due to the ideological elements of the Arab–Israeli conflict, and the desire by Israel's elite to portray a Western image of Jews and of the country. Odeh called upon Jewish and Arab members of the Knesset alike to support a new Knesset committee (which he had joined as a member) lobbying for the re-emphasizing of the culture of Jews from Arab and Muslim lands. In that speech, Odeh summarized his position thus: "The culture of the Jews of Arab and Islamic countries is a shared Jewish and Arab culture. Because of this, the state has fought [against] it, and yet because of this [same reason], we must fight to strengthen it."

In October 2015, Odeh gave support to the "unarmed Palestinian struggle". However, when asked about "throwing rocks, ... firebombs, and shooting at cars", Odeh responded that regarding throwing rocks, he supported the first intifada.

Israel's internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, has interrogated Odeh many times in the past. He said in an interview to The New Yorker: "I was called three more times by the Shin Bet. They never hit me. But they succeeded in two things. I isolated myself from my friends—I became much more introverted. And I had the sense the Shin Bet was watching me no matter where I went. When I went to the bus station, and I saw some guy in sunglasses, I just assumed he was Shin Bet."

Odeh joined Hadash, and represented it on Haifa City Council between 1998 and 2005, before becoming the party's secretary-general in 2006. He was placed 75th on the party's list for the 2009 elections, in which Hadash won four seats. He won sixth place on the party's list for the 2013 Knesset elections, but failed to enter the Knesset, as the party again won four seats.

Ayman Odeh (Arabic: أيمن عودة ‎, Hebrew: אַיְּימָן עוֹדֶה ; born 1 January 1975) is an Israeli Arab lawyer and politician. The leader of the Hadash party, he is currently a member of the Knesset and head of the Joint List alliance.

Ayman Odeh was born in 1975, and raised in Haifa, within the Kababir neighbourhood. He was the only Muslim student in his Christian school, but now describes himself as having transcended the confines of religion and ethnicity. Odeh is married to Nardine Aseli, a physician, and has three children.