Shooter of Palestinian College Students Convicted After 3 Years
Por Shireen Akram-Boshar — Truthout
On Monday, a jury convicted a Vermont man of shooting three Palestinian college students in November 2023.
Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news — make a quick donation to Truthout today!
On Monday, a jury convicted Jason Eaton of attempted murder for shooting three Palestinian college students in November 2023, concluding a case that highlights an increase in anti-Palestinian racism since October 7.
On November 25, 2023, Eaton shot Kinnan Abdalhamid, Tahseen Ali Ahmad, and Hisham Awartani in Burlington, Vermont, after seeing them walk by his apartment. The three students, who were 20 years old at the time, were wearing keffiyehs and speaking in both English and Arabic as they visited the town during the weekend of Thanksgiving.
Eaton walked towards the students and shot them at close range, injuring the three young men and leaving Awartani paralyzed from the waist down.
During the trial, which began on September 14 – nearly three years after the shooting – Eaton’s defense argued that he was legally insane, and that he was suffering from delusions and believed he was instructed to shoot the three students.
But the students and their families have insisted that anti-Palestinian racism was the reason for Eaton’s attack.
In the two months after October 7, 2023, civil rights organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) documented a “staggering” spike in violence, hate speech, and discrimination against Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians across the U.S. In one incident, a landlord in Illinois stabbed and killed 6-year-old Palestinian American Wadea Al Fayoume on October 14, one week after October 7.
The prosecution in Eaton’s trial also quoted the shooter using racial slurs, such as that the students had been “dressed up like terrorists” and that they should have been told not to “wear the thing on their head,” referring to their keffiyehs.
The verdict, therefore, is significant for not excusing the shooter’s actions or explaining away his racism.
“The verdict cannot undo what happened or erase the trauma our families still carry,” the families said in a statement, which Awartani’s mother, Elizabeth Price, read after the verdict. “But it affirms something fundamental: Jason Eaton is responsible for what he did.”
“During the trial, we had to listen to him use hateful words to describe our sons over and over again. They were not the words of a man confused about who he shot or why. We do not need a jury to tell us why our sons were targeted. We heard it in his own words: this was a hate crime,” Price said.
The Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation, which has organized solidarity with the victims and their families and has sent daily delegations to attend the hearings in support, also issued a statement, calling Eaton’s act “a horrific hate crime.”
“Amidst the racist hysteria the US and Israel whipped up to justify their genocidal war on Gaza, [Eaton] attempted to murder three Palestinian college students,” the statement says.
But the group also pinpoints the movement in solidarity with Palestine as key in transforming consciousness across the country and, in this case, in getting the all-white jury to convict Eaton. This conviction, they write, is in defiance of the “political establishment” and its anti-Palestinian racism, which was on display during the trial.
During the trial, the defense argued that the dozens of supporters in the courthouse must remove their keffiyehs as it would influence the jury – and the judge granted this request.
This is just one example of the struggle over Palestine solidarity, and the state’s anti-Palestinian policies in Vermont. In December 2023, Burlington’s City Council voted down a ceasefire resolution following extensive public testimony in favor, before rejecting a resolution to make Burlington an apartheid-free community multiple times in 2024 and 2026. Burlington has also been the site of the trials of Mohsen Mahdawi and Rümeysa Öztürk, with the local activist community rallying in defense of the Palestine solidarity activists threatened with deportation.
The families of Awartani, Abdalhamid, and Ali Ahmad thanked the local Vermont community for its solidarity in their statement, writing, “That solidarity has mattered even more with each passing year, because our sons’ recovery unfolded alongside the genocide and destruction of Gaza and the escalating ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. While our children fought to heal from being shot in Burlington, they watched Palestinian children lose their lives, their homes, their land, their families. We are grateful our sons’ suffering commanded attention and support. We grieve that so much Palestinian suffering never does.”
The Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation also pointed out that while Eaton has been convicted in this case, the politicians who are guilty of genocide – including Benjamin Netanyahu, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden – have not faced trial. The group committed to continuing to organize for Apartheid-Free Communities and for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) of Israel within Vermont and beyond.
This September, Truthout is celebrating 25 years of publication. For over two decades, we have been a trusted source for fiercely independent journalism thanks to readers like you.
As we look to the next 25 years, we have launched a special fundraising campaign. At this moment, we have a goal to raise $31,000 in the next 24 hours.
We are asking for your support at this juncture because we face greater threats than ever before in our organizational history. Trump and his MAGA allies are determined to control the information ecosystem, and movement-based organizations are subject to dangerous censorship and scrutiny.
If you can support Truthout with a one-time or monthly donation, you will make a significant impact on our work and our legacy. Anything you can do makes a difference!
This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the following terms:
Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist writer, editor and Middle East/North Africa solidarity activist.
Get the news you want, delivered to your inbox every day.
Please make a donation to Truthout during our special 25th anniversary fundraiser. We have 24 hours to raise $31,000!
Fonte: Truthout
