Three 20-year-old Palestinian students were walking along a street near the University of Vermont in Burlington Saturday evening, November 25, when suddenly a man came off his porch and shot all three of them with a pistol from 10 feet away. The three had been speaking Arabic and English, and two of them were wearing Palestinian scarves, known as keffiyehs, when they were attacked. While none of them were killed, all three were rushed to the hospital, two in intensive care. 

Two of these three young men were born in the U.S., and all three grew up in the occupied West Bank. They have been close friends since they were first grade classmates at a private Quaker Friends school in Ramallah and graduated high school together. They each came to the U.S. to attend college. Hisham Awartani, a math student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, now has a bullet lodged near his spine and may never walk again. Tahseen Ali Ahmed, studying math and IT at Trinity College in Connecticut, was shot in the chest. And Kinnan Abdalhamid, a pre-med student at Haverford College near Philadelphia, was shot in the backside. 

They were in Burlington visiting Hisham’s grandmother over Thanksgiving. The suspect, a 48-year-old white man, has been charged with three counts of attempted murder. 

The families of the three young men issued a statement on Monday, saying in part, “We believe a full investigation is likely to show our sons were targeted and violently attacked simply for being Palestinian.” The mothers of Kinnan Abdalhamid and Hisham Awartani have been speaking out about what happened to their sons, and linking it to the demonization of Palestinian people in the midst of an active slaughter taking place in Gaza.

Statement by Hisham Awartani: “This hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum”

On each of the three campuses—Brown, Trinity, and Haverford—students held vigils for their injured classmates. At a vigil Monday night, November 27, at Brown University, Palestinian Studies professor Beshara Doumani, who had visited the three students over the weekend, read this statement from Hisham Awartani:

I would like to start out by saying that I greatly appreciate all the love and prayers being sent my way. Who knew that all I had to do to become famous was to get shot? On a more serious note, it's important to recognize that this is part of the larger story. This hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum. I said about a month ago that Palestinians cannot afford to hold vigils every time this happens.

And as much as I appreciate the love from every single one of you here today, I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict. Had I been shot in the West Bank where I grew up, the medical services which saved my life here would likely have been withheld by the Israeli Army. The soldier who would've shot me would go home and never be convicted. I understand that the pain is so much more real and immediate because many of you know me, but any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine.

This is why when you send your wishes and light your candles for me today, your mind should not just be focused on me as an individual but rather as a proud member of the people being oppressed.

A coalition of Ivy League students for Palestine called on students across Brown, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth College, Harvard, Penn, Princeton and Yale to “wear keffiyehs all week in solidarity with the Palestinian students shot in Vermont. Show that we will continue to stand with the people of Palestine in the face of racism.”