Justice is Served for Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen! Now Justice for Palestine!Statement from the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation

On November 25th, 2023, Jason Eaton committed a horrific hate crime in Burlington, Vermont. Amidst the racist hysteria the US and Israel whipped up to justify their genocidal war on Gaza, he attempted to murder three Palestinian college students—Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad. He heard them speaking a mix of Arabic and English, saw two of them wearing the traditional Palestinian scarf, the keffiyeh, and shot them on the street where they were visiting Hisham’s grandmother for Thanksgiving. 

Luckily, all three survived the shooting, but Hisham was left paralyzed from the waist down. After three years of waiting and worrying that justice delayed would again be justice denied, Eaton stood trial over the last week. His defense and its psychiatric expert claimed he was not guilty by reason of insanity, while the state prosecution and its experts argued he was not and was therefore responsible for his actions. On September 21st, a jury found Eaton guilty on all three counts of attempted murder, finally delivering a modicum of justice for the three students and their families.

The trial became a metaphor of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equal rights, and dignity. So much injustice has been done by the US government to the Palestinian people here in the US and in Palestine. Therefore, many doubted that a court and a jury would rule in favor of Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen. But the movement against Israel’s genocidal war has transformed mass consciousness and won the people of this state, country, and world to solidarity with Palestinians and their struggle for liberation. As a result, the all-white jury did the right thing, convicting Eaton for his terrible crime. 

In doing so, they challenged Burlington’s political establishment, which has stood lock step with the federal government’s assault on Palestinians and Palestine solidarity activists. Both the Biden and Trump administrations have launched a New McCarthyite witch hunt, repressing protests, shutting down encampments, criminalizing speech in support of Palestine, and attempting to deport Palestinians like Mahmoud Khalil and Vermont’s own Mohsen Mahdawi. 

The Democratic Party majority on Burlington’s city council joined their pro-war chorus at the start of the genocide, staged a rally in support of Israel, voted down a ceasefire resolution, and for three years in a row blocked an Apartheid Free Communities resolution from appearing on the ballot. In the statehouse, five legislators went on an all-expenses paid junket to Israel, where they received coaching on how to pass legislation criminalizing speech in favor of Palestine. They even had the gall to plant a Vermont flag on Palestinian land. 

All that underscores the fact that Palestine is a Vermont issue. Like our national political establishment, our local one has economic, political, and ideological stakes in supporting Israel’s settler colonial apartheid state and enforcing US dominance over the Middle East and its strategic energy reserves. It therefore approves our tax dollars funding Israel, our state’s military industrial complex arming Israel, and our legislature defending Israel and its impunity even as it commits genocide. 

The establishment’s prejudices were on full display at the trial. When dozens of Palestine solidarity activists wearing keffiyehs joined the audience to support Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen and their families, the defense objected and demanded that the judge have us remove them, contending they would pressure, intimidate, or influence the jury. The judge agreed and had us take off the scarves but did allow the three students to wear theirs. But why did he order them removed? The only conceivable answer is the establishment’s anti-Palestinian racism.

In the trial itself, the prosecution effectively proved that Eaton was not someone with a serious mental illness or disorder. Eaton’s statements proved he was cogent and capable of rational argument. As a result, the insanity defense had no foundation. What Eaton’s statements did display was the racism he had imbibed from the political establishment and media. He claimed he was defending Jews and a Burlington Kibbutz from Palestinian terrorists wearing keffiyehs. He compared his actions to Anne Frank defending herself against Hitler. Eaton is a bigot who committed a hate crime.

The verdict against him is a blow to all the injustice our government and society has meted out to Palestinians. It offers Hisham, Kinnan, and Tahseen and their families some closure to this horrible episode in their lives and hopefully opens up the possibility for all of them to thrive now and in the future. It also is a blow to the establishment’s ongoing campaign to intimidate and criminalize solidarity with Palestine on campuses and in the community.

The verdict is, however, a drop of justice in the ocean of injustice done to Palestinians. Mahmoud and Mohsen still face the threat of deportation for exercising their first amendment rights to speech, assembly, and protest. State legislatures, including Vermont’s, have passed or are planning to pass legislation criminalizing Palestine solidarity as antisemitic. Israel continues its genocide in Gaza, has escalated its ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and enforces its apartheid system within its border that denies equal rights to Palestinians. 

Even worse, the verdict has only sentenced a retail vigilante to jail. But the wholesale murderers, who poured their hatred and bigotry into Eaton, continue to rule our country and Israel’s with impunity. Biden, Harris, Trump, Vance, Netanyahu, and the whole Israeli political establishment are guilty of genocide. Why are they not put on trial and convicted of that crime against humanity? Only when they are will Palestine have justice.

That’s why the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation emerges from this trial and its verdict with renewed commitment to fight for justice for all Palestinians in the Middle East and here in the US. We will double down on our campaign to make Vermont an Apartheid Free Community that implements Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against the state of Israel. That is our small contribution to the global struggle to free Palestine and its people from colonial rule. Until Palestine is free, none of us are free.