‘US health care worker convicted in 1969 Israel bombings’

WASHINGTON — A Palestinian woman convicted in a 1969 terrorist bombing in Israel, jailed for life and later released in a prisoner exchange was employed by the state of Illinois as a healthcare official, National Review Online reported this week.

The Illinois Department of Insurance in November revoked the certification of Rasmieh Yousef Odeh after her Israeli conviction was revealed subsequent to her arrest on immigration charges, according to the report.

The insurance department had hired Odeh, an activist in Chicago’s Arab American community, as a “navigator,” an official who assists people seeking healthcare options through the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” US President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform. Illinois is one of a number of states that with the federal government launched ACA late last year.

Israel jailed Odeh for life for her involvement in a number of Jerusalem bombings in 1969, including one at a supermarket which killed two Hebrew University students, Leon Kanner and Eddie Joffe.

She was released in a prisoner exchange with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1980, and emigrated to the United States from Jordan in 1995.

She became a naturalized citizen in 2004, and was arrested in October for failing to mention her conviction in her immigration papers.