Reema Dodin to be first Palestinian-American White House staffer
During the Second Intifada in 2002, Dodin stated that "suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people."
By TZVI JOFFREThen US Vice-President Joe Biden (L) meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah March 9, 2016(photo credit: REUTERS/DEBBIE HILL/POOL)
Reema Dodin, a Palestinian-American, will serve alongside Shuwanza Goff as a deputy director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, President-elect Joe Biden announced.Dodin will be the first Palestinian-American to serve as a White House staffer, according to Palestinian media.The new White House staffer was born to Jordanian-Palestinian immigrants in the US. Dodin’s family is originally from Dura, near Hebron, according to Palestinian media.Dodin served as deputy chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin and has also served on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, among other positions.She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is also a Truman National Security Fellow, a New Leaders Council Fellow, an Aspen Socrates alum, a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the Jenkins Hill Society – a consortium of women in politics supporting female politicians.During the Second Intifada, in 2002, Dodin spoke about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with residents of Lodi, California, saying “suicide bombers were the last resort of a desperate people,” according to the Lodi News-Sentinel.In 2001, Dodin took part in a demonstration at UC Berkeley calling for the university to divest from Israel, according to the Berkeley Daily Planet. The demonstrators compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.“Reema is the first to tell you she has grown from her youth in her approach to pushing for change, but her core values of fighting to expand opportunity to building a stronger middle class remain her driving force,” the Biden-Harris transition team told The Jerusalem Post.“She harnessed her activism into action, becoming a well-respected and trusted leader in the US Senate. Her years of Senate experience and perspective will help President-elect Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris respond to our nation’s most urgent challenges.”Dodin is also the granddaughter of Mustafa Dodin, a Jordanian social affairs minister who helped establish the Village Leagues in the West Bank in the 1970s, according to Al-Arabiya. The Village Leagues were established to lead to peace negotiations with Israel, according to MEMRI. Mustafa Dodin was described as a moderate alternative to the PLO.In an interview with the Christian Science Monitor in 1981, Dodin insisted on self-determination for Palestinians, but added that Jews and Arabs “must live together, and no political solution can cancel this.”
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