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Here’s a very simple concept: No one should not be attacked for who they are, or worse, who others think they are.
In an extreme example, three students were shot over the weekend in Burlington, Vermont. The three are of Palestinian descent.
While details of the shooting, including a motive, remain scant, it appears that the young men were targeted because of their ethnicity. The men were speaking Arabic and two of them were wearing keffiyeh, traditional Palestinian headscarves, when they were shot, according to police. The trio were leaving a birthday party for a relative of one of the men.
“In this charged moment, no one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a Sunday statement.
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger called the shooting “one of the most shocking and disturbing events in this city’s history.”
It is shocking and disturbing, but perhaps — and this is a sad indictment of current affairs in America — it is not entirely surprising either.
Reports of bias incidents against Muslims in the U.S. nearly tripled after Hamas, the militant group that governs Gaza, brutally attacked Israelis on Oct. 7, and Israel’s bombardment in response that has killed thousands of Palestinians and displaced more than 1 million.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has received 774 requests for help and reports of bias incidents from Muslims across the U.S. from Oct. 7 to 24. For comparison, during a 16-day period in 2022, it received an average of 274 complaints, NBC News reported last month.
At the same time, there has been a large rise in antisemitic incidents, in the U.S. and around the world. The Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents had risen by about 400 percent in the two weeks following the Oct. 7 attack, compared with the same period last year, according to Reuters.
“This is a dangerous time in America. If you are associated with a group that is involved in these conflicts, there’s too much hate speech, against all sides. In that toxic context, people take action on their own with devastating consequences,” Elizabeth Price, the mother of Hisham Awartani, told a Burlington TV station. Awartani, a student at Brown University, was shot in the back and is expected to be paralyzed.
Kinnan Abdalhamid, a pre-med student at Haverford College in Connecticut, and Tahseen Ahmed, a student at Trinity College in Connecticut, were shot and injured as well.
It is indeed a divisive time in the U.S. and the world, with the Israel-Palestine fighting only one of many conflicts around the globe.
Many Palestinians have spoken out against Hamas’ vicious attacks on Israelis and others on Oct. 7. Likewise, many Jewish people are critical of the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and its harsh response to those attacks.
Neither group, nor anyone, should be targeted for their ethnicity or alliances, whether real or perceived. And, it should go without saying, that no one should be shot just going about their daily lives.
Again, we don’t know many details of the Vermont shooting, and we shouldn’t make assumptions about what motivated the shooter. However, we do know that disagreements or hatred can become violent or even deadly. This is especially true when guns are present.
It is incumbent upon all of us to temper this dangerous combination.
“While we are waiting for more facts, we know this: there is absolutely no place for violence or hate in America. Period,” President Joe Biden said in a Monday statement.
We concur.
