[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 87 (Monday, May 20, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3776-S3777]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            VERMONT SHOOTING

  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, on November 25, 2023, three Palestinian 
American students--Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ali 
Ahmad--were shot by a local resident while they were walking along a 
quiet street in Burlington, VT. The three friends had gone to 
Burlington to celebrate Thanksgiving with Hisham's uncle and 
grandmother, who lives there. Instead, shots rang out, and they fell to 
the ground bleeding, for no apparent reason other than that they were 
speaking a mix of Arabic and English and wearing Palestinian kaffiyehs. 
Hisham was paralyzed from the chest down and now uses a wheelchair.
  This despicable crime shocked and outraged Vermont. This despicable 
act of violence is a tragic reminder that even relatively tranquil and 
tolerant communities like Burlington cannot escape the curse of 
Islamophobia, racism, and other forms of hate, such as anti-Semitism 
and homophobia. We all have a responsibility to speak out against 
hatred, extremism, intolerance, and stereotypes that divide our 
communities and can lead to violence.
  The alleged perpetrator of this senseless attack was quickly arrested 
and is in jail awaiting trial. We can be reasonably confident that 
justice will be done. But the lives of Hisham, Kinnan and Tahseen have 
been changed forever.
  One of the things that is especially insidious about this crime is 
that if these three young Palestinians had been shot and wounded or 
killed back home in the West Bank, the chances that anyone would be 
arrested or appropriately punished is next to zero, nor would they have 
access to anything remotely resembling the quality of medical care 
Hisham is receiving in this country.
  Hisham wrote about his experience and what daily life is like for 
Palestinians in the West Bank in a moving guest essay published in the 
New York Times on May 16, 2024. I ask unanimous consent that the 
article be printed in the Record. I encourage all Senators read it.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                             [May 16, 2024]

      I Was Shot in Vermont. What if It Had Been in the West Bank?

                          (By Hisham Awartani)

       That frigid autumn night in Burlington, Vt., was not the 
     first time I had stared down the barrel of a gun. It was not 
     even the first time I had been fired at. Half a world away, 
     in the West Bank, it had happened before.
       On a hot day in May 2021, a classmate and I, both of us 17 
     at the time, were protesting near a checkpoint in Ramallah. 
     Bullets, both rubber and metal, were flying into the crowd, 
     even though we were unarmed. I was

[[Page S3777]]

     hit with one of the former; my classmate, the latter. Before, 
     we had been students cramming for our chemistry final; then, 
     on the other side of Israeli rifles, we were a mass of 
     terrorists, disqualified from humanity.
       So that night in November, when my two friends and I were 
     shot while we were walking on North Prospect Street, I was 
     not particularly surprised to find myself lying on the lawn 
     of a white house and blood splattered across the screen of my 
     phone. Back home in Ramallah, I knew that I was one wrong 
     move away from bleeding out; Israeli soldiers have been known 
     to prevent or hinder paramedics from tending to injured 
     Palestinians. But I had never expected to feel this on a 
     quiet street in Vermont, on a stroll before Thanksgiving 
     dinner.
       The shooting of three Palestinian Americans in Burlington 
     has received more sustained coverage than any single act of 
     violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 
     Oct. 7. Why did reporters and news channels interview our 
     mothers and take our portraits when young men my age have 
     been shot at by snipers, detained indefinitely without trial 
     and treated as a statistic? It's a question that has eaten 
     away at me these past months. Was it the shock of such a 
     violent crime in peaceful Vermont? Was it that my friends and 
     I went to well-known American colleges? Did the timing of our 
     shooting during a holiday weekend play a role? I'm sure it 
     did, but to me, the determining factor is the renaming of the 
     crime: Instead of settlements, the Oslo Accords or the 
     intifada, the conversation around our shooting involved terms 
     such as ``gun violence,'' ``hate crimes'' and ``right-wing 
     extremism.'' Instead of being maimed in Arab streets, we were 
     shot in small-town America. Instead of being seen as 
     Palestinians, for once, we were seen as people.
       Death and dehumanization are status quo for Palestinians. 
     We grow used to being funneled through checkpoints and strip-
     searched, assault rifles trained on us all the while. The 
     result is a constant existential calculus: If an unarmed 
     autistic man, an 8-year-old boy and a journalist wearing a 
     vest emblazoned ``Press'' could be perceived to be such a 
     threat that they were shot dead, then I must accept that by 
     existing as a Palestinian, I am a legitimate target.
       This dynamic was so ubiquitous to me that I could not quite 
     put it into words until I left the West Bank to attend 
     college in the United States. My classes gave me the 
     vocabulary to understand dehumanization, the portrayal of the 
     colonized as a violent primitive. I realized that the 
     infrastructure of the occupation--the checkpoints, the 
     detentions, the armed settlers encroaching--is built around 
     the violence I am assumed to be capable of, not who I am.
       This system of othering--Israeli-only roads, fenced-off 
     settlements, the ``security'' wall--is an inherent part of 
     the Israeli state psyche. Yet far from ensuring Israelis' 
     safety, it instead inflicts mass humiliation on Palestinians. 
     Close to half of the Palestinians alive today were born after 
     the violence of the second intifada, and have interacted with 
     Israelis only in the confines of the security apparatus built 
     in its wake. The military apparatus in my home in the West 
     Bark is a judge, jury and executioner. While settlers in the 
     West Bank are subject to Israeli civilian law, Palestinians 
     are subject to military law. It is as if we are all already 
     combatants.
       The dehumanization we face is twofold: Beyond the day-to-
     day aspects of our lives, it permeates the media coverage of 
     what we experience. In the news, our militancy is presumed, 
     our killers unnamed, and our deaths repackaged into 
     statistics. Somehow, we die without being killed. The very 
     veracity of our deaths is called into question. The extent of 
     the civilian death toll in Gaza should not come as a surprise 
     when Israel's defense minister, Yoav Gallant, can speak 
     unchecked of ``human animals.''
       My story is one drop in the ocean of suffering faced by 
     Palestinians, and compared to the immense and indescribable 
     suffering of the people of Gaza, frankly trivial. As I 
     wheeled myself down the smooth corridors of the hospital 
     where I received care after the shooting, I thought of those 
     in wheelchairs in Gaza, struggling to navigate the rubble-
     strewn streets as they fled their homes. I thought of the 
     reports about a woman being shot dead as she held her 
     grandson's hand while he clutched a white flag. I thought of 
     a 17-year-old shot in the back by settlers in the West Bank. 
     The pain of knowing their fates is fathomless, and it has yet 
     to cease.
       I think back to the circumstances in which I was shot with 
     my two friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad, and 
     imagine them instead in the context of the West Bank. A 
     Hisham, Kinnan and Tahseen shot there could have been left to 
     die. Our names would circulate for a day or two in pro-
     Palestinian circles, but in the end, we would be commemorated 
     only on a poster in the streets of Ramallah, our faces 
     eventually worn down with time like the countless others I've 
     walked past in the streets of my home. If that scenario does 
     not stir the same feelings in you as my shooting, if your 
     first instinct when a Palestinian is shot, maimed or left 
     handicapped is to find excuses, then I do not want your 
     support.
       When I was still in the hospital, my family and I were 
     visited by a friend who had just recently made it out of 
     Gaza. He recounted how he saw the beginning of the Israeli 
     bombing from his balcony, and soon after showered and left 
     his house with a prepacked bag. He told me of tents, of 
     hunger, of explosions, but there is one thing that really 
     stood out for me as he recounted his ordeal.
       He explained how the only way for him to survive in Gaza 
     was to accept that he had already died. Only after he had 
     come to terms with the realization that his life as he knew 
     it was over could he enjoy a puff of a cigarette and a sip of 
     coffee in the morning. This acceptance is the goal of the 
     Israeli dehumanization complex. To be Palestinian today is to 
     accept this fate.
       I have been back on campus since February, and the 
     adjustment has been tough. The man who is accused of shooting 
     me has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted 
     second-degree murder. But my mind is elsewhere. Every morning 
     when I wake up, I check for one number. It has exceeded 
     35,000. It's difficult for me to come to terms with the 
     reality of so much loss.
       In class, between Mesopotamian myths and commutative 
     algebra, a few thoughts play on a loop in my mind: How can we 
     come back from so much grief? How could we let this happen? 
     What are we supposed to make of the world when Palestinian 
     deaths are excused by talking points, repeated again and 
     again on the news? I yearn to return to my home, to my olive 
     trees, my cats and my family.
       I realize, though, that when I cross the King Hussein 
     Bridge from Jordan into the West Bank, I will return to my 
     designation as a potential terrorist. I cease to be a junior 
     at Brown University, a student of archaeology and 
     mathematics, a San Francisco Giants fan, a Balkan history 
     nerd. My entire identity will be reduced to my capacity for 
     violence, not as a human being, but as a Palestinian.

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