Hisham Awartani didn’t expect to become the focus of international news when he went for a walk before dinner at his grandmother’s house in Burlington on Nov. 25. Awartani was with his friends Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad, who are all of Palestinian descent and attend colleges in the U.S. They were speaking a mix of English and Arabic and two were wearing kufiyahs, the traditional Palestinian scarf, as they often did.

Without provocation, Jason Eaton, a man they did not know, allegedly stepped off his porch and shot the three 20-year old men at point blank range. Eaton was charged with three counts of second degree attempted murder, and the state is still deciding whether to add a hate crime charge. The trial will likely be in 2025.

Awartani, a student at Brown University, was the most gravely wounded of the three friends, who were classmates at the Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker high school in the Israeli Occupied West Bank. A bullet lodged in Hisham’s spine and he is now paralyzed below the abdomen. He has spent the last two months at a rehab hospital in Boston. He recently fulfilled his goal of returning to study at Brown, where he is an archaeology and mathematics double major.

Elizabeth Price, the mother of Hisham Awartani, confessed that she “didn't think that would be possible” that her son would return to college for the second semester.

“He's resolute and he's steadfast,” Price told The Vermont Conversation. An international development consultant, Price said that Hisham exemplifies the Palestinian philosophy of samud, “just getting on with it, just continuing to do what you can do, despite what the world throws at you.”

A gofundme established to raise money to support Hisham's recovery has so far raised $1.7 million.

Price said that her son’s assailant is less important than his motivation. “He chose to shoot because of a larger cultural political mindset that is still endangering Palestinians in America.”

“He was motivated by hateful, dehumanizing speech by elected representatives and media. And since he shot them, it's become much worse. The actions of the U.S. government, both the Biden administration and elected officials in Congress, have shown over and over again, that Palestinian life is not valued.”

The toll of Israel’s war on Gaza has been staggering. Some 30,000 Palestinians have been killed according to the Gaza Health Ministry. “I think Israel is committing genocide. It's committing a domicide, which is a total destruction of a city. It's committing culturicide — they have destroyed the intelligentsia and the professional classes. They have bombed all universities, they devastated schools, all the National Archives, archaeological sites, museums — it's all gone.

“The extermination in Gaza is being done with American weapons with our taxpayers money.”

Hisham returned to Brown as 17 students were participating in a hunger strike to pressure the university to divest from companies “associated with human rights abuses in Palestine.”  

Price said that such protests are “an incredible boost, an incredible gift to the Palestinians. Seeing the Jewish groups who are against the war occupying Grand Central Station, that was incredibly moving. And I think so many Palestinians were touched by that. …[It] means that Palestinians feel like they are not being forgotten.”



Hisham "is going to be an amazing person in this world," said his mother. "I'm just really glad that he still is in this world because ultimately that's the gift that we never stop being thankful for, that he didn't die that night."