By Steve BermanBurlington, Vermont police arrested a man for shooting three Palestinian-Americans near the University of Vermont campus. Jason J. Eaton, 48, was arrested on Sunday for the shootings that took place Saturday around 6:25 p.m., according to the Boston Globe. Two of men were wearing black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarves, Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad said in a statement.
The mayor of Burlington, Miro Weinberger, is a Jewish man. Not that it’s relevant, but I think it is. We, in America, don’t have to solve the Palestinian problem. That’s Israel’s problem. Israel is a sovereign nation, with its own government, military, police, and prison service. While it’s in America’s interests to support the Middle East’s most stable democracy, it’s not an American problem to take sides between American Jews and American Palestinians.
Yet our society is self-organizing into two camps, with Jewish Americans and Palestinian Americans feeling very vulnerable, while the rest of the country is being encouraged to take a position. College campuses, sloppy and slanted media reports, and corporate boardrooms have pretended that American society can somehow make a difference in the outcome when the battle is in an area the size of the city of Atlanta, 6,400 miles to the east.
I am grateful that President Joe Biden has taken concrete steps to keep Israel from facing a widening, multi-front war. I am glad that our government is doing—if not all it can, at least something—to help bring Israeli, American and other nationals home, who are being held hostage by an evil terrorist organization. But I hope that the Burlington shooter is put away, and charged with whatever hate crimes federal prosecutors can hurl at him.
I pray that Tahseen Aliahmad, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Hisham Awartani, all 20-year-olds, all of Palestinian heritage, recover completely from their wounds. I am grateful that none of them was killed outright by Eaton’s act of pure hate.
In Gaza, 20-year-olds fight on both sides of this war, both in the IDF and Hamas. Many who stab Israelis in the streets are no more than children themselves—Israel is releasing many of these in exchange for hostages. Many who committed unspeakable acts of brutality, rape and murder are teenagers, one of whom called his mother to boast of his deeds.
America is a nation of all kinds of people. Our motto is “e pluribus unum,” which means “from many, one.” The college men who were shot in Burlington were Americans, and it doesn’t matter if they supported Hamas; they are not part of the fight. Jews in America are not part of the fight. Even Israelis and Palestinian citizens living in the U.S. are not part of the fight. America is a free land for everyone. As much as I would detest some campus movements for promoting Jew hatred, I do not support attacking them.
This is not the way to #BringThemHomeNow. Police in every city should do what they can to protect Palestinian-Americans. Nobody should be attacked for wearing a keffiyeh or speaking Arabic. I should also mention that nobody should be attacked for wearing a yarmulke, either. Not in America.
The fight in Gaza is not our fight. Our fight is to keep western civilization from fracturing into tribal conflict on our own soil. In that, we need to try much harder, or one day, the kind of fight Israelis have in Gaza will be here also. Didn’t we learn anything from 9/11?
Hamas is an evil death cult. It must be eradicated. Israel is willing to accept Hamas’s existence to get its hostages back. The problem between Palestinians and Israelis will remain when this war ends. In America, we must focus on stamping out our own hatred, and that means protecting all who live here, on college campuses, and in the streets of cities like Burlington.
It matters that the mayor of Burlington is a Jewish man. Let him stand up for freedom and peace for everyone, especially college-age Palestinians.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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