Nov 27 2024 52 mins 7
One year ago, Elizabeth Price was awoken by a phone call with news that every mother dreads: Her son, Hisham Awartani, had been shot, along with his two best friends. It was Thanksgiving 2023, and the three 20-year old college students — all of them Palestinian or Palestinian-American — were taking a walk while visiting Awartani's grandmother in Burlington. The shocking, unprovoked attack against Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Aliahmad made international news.
A year later, the families are still dealing with the fallout. Hisham Awartani was the most seriously injured. A bullet lodged in his spine, paralyzing him from the chest down. Yet, he has shown remarkable determination and resilience, returning to attend Brown University earlier this year even while undergoing grueling rehab at a Boston hospital. He is now back on campus at Brown, where he is a junior majoring in archaeology and math.
I spoke with Price on Monday, Nov. 25, the one-year anniversary of the attack. That morning, Price mentioned to her sister-in-law that it was “the anniversary of Hisham’s shooting.” She replied, "'No, today is the anniversary of his being alive.' That really is what I have been thinking about."
“Hisham is alive, and that is what we're going to be eternally grateful for ... (He) has demonstrated an incredible strength.”
Awartani now uses a wheelchair and continues to work on his recovery. This fall, he began driving a car outfitted with hand controls. He has finished over 400 hours of rehabilitation. He has moved into a fully accessible dorm room with roommates. He has acquired two cats. And he has returned to Vermont several times to his grandmother’s house, which is now wheelchair-accessible. A GoFundMe established to support his care has raised over $1.7 million from more than 22,000 donors, and it continues to receive donations.
As Hisham Awartani has regained his life, some 45,000 of his fellow Palestinians have lost theirs in a relentless, year-long Israeli assault. Awartani is keenly aware of this dissonance. In May, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he observed that thousands of young Palestinians like him are shot in Gaza and the West Bank but are treated as statistics. Being shot in Vermont was different.
“Instead of being maimed in Arab streets, we were shot in small-town America,” he wrote. “Instead of being seen as Palestinians, for once, we were seen as people.”
Price echoed Awartani's concerns. She insisted that people consider her son’s experience in the larger context of Israel’s ongoing war against Palestinians. “There are still bombs being dropped in Gaza that are being paid for by U.S. tax money,” she said.
“I don't know why the war is still going on. My son is so lucky in everything he has, and I don't understand why Hisham — or anyone else like him — has lost so much.”
The man charged with shooting Awartani and his friends, Jason Eaton, has been held without bail since the attack. Eaton pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted second-degree murder and has been deemed competent to stand trial. Earlier this month, Chittenden County State's Attorney Sarah George announced that she did not have sufficient evidence to add a hate crime charge. The trial will likely be in 2025.
Elizabeth Price has been at her son’s side since last Thanksgiving. I last interviewed her on The Vermont Conversation in February, when she was with Awartani in the hospital in Boston. As Awartani has regained independence and moved back into a dorm at Brown this fall, she was finally able to return to her home in Ramallah, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, which is where I reached her on Monday.
“When I look back on this last year, I am just immensely grateful and immensely proud of who (Awartani) is, and immensely moved by all the kindness and compassion and support that we've received. It was a terrible moment. But we've all come out of it healthy, happy and positive about the world.”
Price beamed with pride about Awartani. “I think people will look to him as a thought leader,” she told The Vermont Conversation. “He's so passionate about so many things that he ... will show others that anything is possible.”
“He's a thinker (who) will change the way people see the world and see what people like him can do.”
