Raised in the West Bank, recorded in Vermont

An ocean away, Elizabeth Price, Hisham’s mother, woke up to a phone call from her brother in Burlington. He was in a hospital, he told her. Hisham and his friends had been shot. Elizabeth struggled to process what he said. The shock came first, then the guilt: the children had come to visit her mother’s house. She immediately called Tamara. ‘Where shot, how shot?’ Tamara screamed into the phone. Her mind raced. “Is Kinnan okay? Is he dead? Is he dead?”

The families rushed to reach Vermont. Elizabeth, her husband and Tamara set out first; Tahseen’s mother, who had to arrange visa logistics, would join them a week later. Although Ben Gurion Airport, near Tel Aviv, is an hour’s drive from Ramallah, Hisham’s father was unable to access it with his Palestinian ID. The parents followed the route most Palestinians take: They drove through roads where settlers had thrown stones at passing cars, crossed a bridge on the Jordanian border that Israel controlled and eventually passed through multiple security checkpoints at the international airport near Amman. They could only cross the border within the narrow window that Israel allowed, which happened to be long before their scheduled flight, so they waited in Amman for twelve hours, in fear and disbelief.

In the ICU, the three friends compared their wounds. Kinnan was hit in the buttocks, but hospital staff allowed him to stay in the ward with his friends, who suffered more serious injuries. A bullet tore Tahseen’s chest above his right lung, and his fall broke his ribs. Hisham could no longer feel his legs. “Hey guys, did we just get shot?” Tahseen asked.

Dizzy from shock and painkillers, they laughed and started joking: “Brilliant, that this happened in Vermont.” “It was probably the only crime Burlington saw all year.” They didn’t say much about the shooter. They could guess why they were being targeted. For the past two months, they had watched Palestinians being murdered en masse, with the support of the United States – and no one seemed to care. Someone doesn’t randomly decide to shoot someone, the friends agreed.

Within hours the police came to talk to them. Hate crimes, which are based on the aggressor’s state of mind, are difficult to prove in court. This case was even trickier: the shooter said nothing out loud before, during, or after the shooting, and the man police charged in the attack, Jason Eaton, was a somewhat complicated character. He had returned to Vermont the summer before after spending several years in upstate New York. Things had taken a turn for the worse: a series of problematic relationships and jobs that didn’t work out. He spent Thanksgiving with his mother, who later told a reporter that he had been experiencing mental health issues but was “completely normal” that day. Eaton appeared to have engaged in a political discussion online. According to a local Vermont newspaper, he had left a comment on X about an op-ed about Gaza – “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them? – and described himself as a “radical citizen who guards democracy and crapitalism from oath crawlers.” According to a police affidavit, Eaton had a pistol, a rifle and two shotguns in his apartment, along with ammunition that matched shell casings found at the crime scene. (Eaton has pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted manslaughter.)