[theme music]

Protesters: Ceasefire now. Ceasefire now. Ceasefire now. Ceasefire now. 

Protester: Brown Corporation is a scam, no others like Hisham. Brown Corporation is a scam, no others like Hisham.

Protesters: Brown divest. Brown divest. Brown divest.

Protester: Are you on the side of a university that is complicit in genocide? Or are you on the side of 19 hunger strikers who are putting their bodies on the line, who are on Day 5 of a [bleep] hunger strike?

[crowd cheers]

[theme music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes From America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show. The voices you just heard are students on the campus of Brown University, which has become a hotspot for protest and debate around Israel's invasion of Gaza. Student organizing around the war has put that school in the spotlight with daily demonstrations and even a week-long hunger strike earlier this month. One name continues to be invoked as protesters call for change; Hisham Awartani. Hisham is an archaeology and mathematics double major at Brown.

He dreams of being an archaeologist, traveling around the world for his research. In November, he and two of his friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmad, were together in Burlington, Vermont. All three men grew up in the West Bank and came to the US for school, and they were in Burlington on Thanksgiving break, just passing time as college kids do.

Hisham Awartani: Yes, it was fun. We walked downtown, we watched TV shows together, we messed around. It was fun, you know young men.

Suzanne Gaber: The same thing you would have done at home in Palestine?

Hisham Awartani: Yes, Palestine has more to do, but we managed to have fun.

Kai Wright: One of the guys wanted to smoke, so they went out for a walk. It was cold, and they were each wearing the traditional Palestinian keffiyeh, which is a black and white scarf that's long been a visible symbol of Palestinian identity.

Hisham Awartani: We were walking along the sidewalk, and a guy comes down from the balcony and pulls out a gun. Before I know what's happening, it's like I'm on the floor. I heard the gunshots, and I didn't quite understand it at the moment, but I didn't know that I had been hit until I saw blood on my phone.

Reporter: Tonight, a gunman remains at large following a shooting of three college students in Burlington, Vermont, all of them of Palestinian descent. It happened last night--

Hisham Awartani: My main priority at that point was just to call 911. I tried to open my phone, and then you know how when there's liquid on your phone, it messes up? I got actually locked out of my phone because I couldn't put in the password right. Then I went to the emergency thing, so I ended up calling 911. I didn't know if I was going to survive. Didn't know if my friends were alive.

The main things I was afraid is, I was like, "How much blood am I losing?" Whatever. I also was thinking, "Oh, this is how it ends." It was never outside of the realm of possibility for me for that to happen to me, but I always expected to be in the West Bank and never in Burlington.

Kai Wright: The shooter was arrested and charged with three counts of second-degree attempted murder. The state is still deciding if hate crime charges will be added before the case goes to court likely in 2025. Hisham and his friends are, unfortunately, just three people on a list of Palestinians who have been attacked on US soil since the war broke out. Just a few weeks ago, a Palestinian American man was stabbed in Austin, Texas, while also wearing the traditional Palestinian scarf. In the fall of 2023, just a week after Hamas's October 7th attack in Israel, a six-year-old named Wadea al-Fayoume was killed near Chicago when his landlord broke into his family's home and stabbed Wadea and his mother.

The attacker allegedly yelled anti-Palestinian rhetoric. Hisham, Tahseen, and Kinnan all survived their injuries. The latter two made full physical recoveries and returned to college, but Hisham, his journey has been more challenging. Even with all the blood, it took a moment for the extent of that to sink in.

Suzanne Gaber: When do you realize that you're also fairly injured?

Hisham Awartani: When the EMT people come, they tell me to move my legs, and I realize that I couldn't.

Suzanne Gaber: What went through your mind when that happened?

Hisham Awartani: I didn't know what to think. I just didn't know why I couldn't.

Kai Wright: Hisham is paralyzed below the abdomen and has spent the last two months at a rehab facility in Boston. This week, we're going to hear his story and think about it in the context of the larger story that's been told and that's been heard around the violence in Gaza over the past five months. Our producer, Suzanne Gaber, has been spending time with Hisham. She was with him on his last day of inpatient therapy as he checked out of rehab and prepared to return to campus at Brown University and face a new reality as a reluctant symbol. Suzanne takes the story from here.

Suzanne Gaber: Hey.

Speaker 5: Hello.

Suzanne Gaber: I was just checking in to see Hisham Awartani.

Automated Voice: Sixth floor.

Elizabeth Price: Is this Suzanne?

Suzanne Gaber: Hi, yeah, nice to see you.

For months I had seen Hisham on TV. I'd seen how composed he and his friends were in the face of such a terrible trauma. And like a lot of us, I had created an image in my head of the person he might be. But when I walked in, I realized this was just a college kid, fascinated by history, and excited to learn.

Hisham Awartani: The Museum of Fine Arts.

Nurse 1: Owns all of it?

Hisham Awartani: Yes, they participated in some excavation, 1908 or something. I've always loved history, and archaeology, I feel like is not a more objective take on history, but it's just another way of looking at things. In history, you often get lost in the big picture of like, King X declares war on whatever, like larger political systems, whereas in archaeology, it's more personal. It gives you a better idea of how people lived their lives.

Nurse 2: How are you feeling? Good, okay.

Suzanne Gaber: But instead of being in class, Hisham was in rehab. And for his last day, he asked to use a machine called a Lokomat.

Elizabeth Price: How long is he going to do this for?

Nurse 2: Probably, we'll go 25 minutes. Yes, until five to.

Suzanne Gaber: He's standing upright, being held up by a machine that pushes his body to move as though he's walking all on his own. It really looks like he's walking. Hisham even moves his torso to mimic his normal walking motions. As he walks, Hisham is facing a full-length mirror, watching himself move. It was his favorite activity in rehab and you can see it in the way that he looks at himself, walking in place even while trying to focus on his new life in a wheelchair.

Hisham Awartani: I've gotten used to life like this, or I'm trying to get used to life like this, and what happens will happen.

Elizabeth Price: How long is he going to do this for?

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham's mom, Elizabeth, has been staying with him in Boston. In the two months since he's been here, even she hasn't seen him break down. I've been following Hisham's story for a while. From his very first statement just days after the attack, Hisham and his mom have used their newfound platform to advocate for a focus on Palestinians in Gaza. It was a decision they came to very quickly in part because Hisham has been able to process his own injuries at a speed that seems surprising for someone so young.

Hisham Awartani: It's, I guess, one just growing up in the West Bank and growing up under occupation, just growing up Palestinian in general, it's like you learn fairly quickly that life is absurd, and you'll get screwed over. You just have to suck it up and keep moving forward. Also, at the same time, in relation to that, it's like, I don't know, it feels unfair for me to sit around, and feel bad about myself when much worse things are happening to other people. Honestly, it feels like what I'm going through is not that big of a deal.

Suzanne Gaber: I can imagine, even before this happened, that this was a very intense moment and an inflection point of feeling a lot of grief for other people, but I wonder, have you then had space to process this and feel what comes with--

Hisham Awartani: Yes. I don't know. I've been trying to, but again, it's still not over.

Suzanne Gaber: Yes, that's true. You're still pretty early.

Hisham Awartani: Also, in Gaza, it's not over. I'm getting treatment, but if the same thing had happened to me there, I'd probably be carried around on a stretcher if you didn't--

Suzanne Gaber: Is that a thing you've thought about a lot in this process?

Hisham Awartani: Yes. I'm very lucky. The way I've been trying to deal with it is just do active work both through working on myself in therapy and just, I guess, advocating for others because I don't know, I feel like I had been given a voice, and I feel like I need to use the voice for good.

[theme music]

Suzanne Gaber: As he's walking, his mom starts to take a video of him in action. She's been posting long updates on the GoFundMe the family set up for Hisham after the attack, and people are very invested. As of February 15th, the GoFundMe has received more than $1.6 million in donations, with more than 500 comments from people following Hisham's recovery.

Elizabeth Price: If I share this with Daddy, do you mind it being shared with other people?

Hisham Awartani: Yes.

Elizabeth Price: Yes?

Hisham Awartani: Yes.

Elizabeth Price: Okay. That's why I was asking.

Suzanne Gaber: How does it feel? I think your mom has been doing a lot of sharing updates, and it seems like you're less inclined to do that.

Hisham Awartani: I feel like I'm going on my own journey and it's my life, but at the same time, so many people have become invested metaphorically and literally in the process that I can't quite say, "Just don't share anything."

Suzanne Gaber: Is it weird that people you don't know are invested in you?

Hisham Awartani: Yes. Even beforehand, I was quite a private person.

Suzanne Gaber: What did this do to that, I guess? Do you feel like you can have any sort of privacy at this point?

Hisham Awartani: I don't know. I hope that just in the future, not that people will forget, but that, I don't know, I'll be able to grow out of it and do things on my own and be known by those things.

[theme music]

Suzanne Gaber: What are you anticipating going back to school is like?

Hisham Awartani: Who knows? I'll try to keep a low profile, but it's not that easy in a wheelchair.

Suzanne Gaber: It's also not that easy when you're now a national news story. I feel like even on Brown campus have become quite a point of topic.

Hisham Awartani: Yes, especially on Brown campus.

Suzanne Gaber: Especially on Brown campus. You're right.

[theme music]

[protestors chanting]

Kai Wright: Coming up, we'll continue Hisham's story, and we'll speak with a media analyst about the connection between Hisham's experience and the still developing narratives about Palestine in the US media. That's just ahead.

[pause 00:12:44]

[theme music]

Felice Leone: Hey, it's Felice Leon from the show team at Notes from America with Kai Wright. Something happens to me when I listen to the show. No matter the topic or the guest, I can always think of someone I want to tell about what I just heard, and I do. If you're thinking about who in your life would enjoy this episode or another episode you've heard, please share it with them now. The folks in your life trust your good taste and we would appreciate you spreading the word. Thanks.

[theme music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Today, we're spending some time with a young man named Hisham Awartani. Hisham is a student at Brown University. He's Palestinian, grew up in the West Bank, and moved to the US for school. Last winter, he and three friends were attacked by a gunman. Hisham was left paralyzed below the abdomen. He's just returned to campus, and while recovering, Hisham has also had to reckon with the fact that he's become something of a symbol for his fellow students in their movement to force Brown to divest from companies that they believe profit from violence in Gaza and the West Bank. Producer, Suzanne Gaber was with Hisham on the eve of his first day back on campus.

Nurse 1: Last day. I'm so excited for you.

Hisham Awartani: I'm excited too.

Suzanne Gaber: I'm waiting with Hisham and his family at a rehab clinic in Boston for word that he's been discharged after two months of treatment and therapy.

Hisham Awartani: Finally leaving.

Elizabeth Price: Finally leaving!

Suzanne Gaber: I knew this is a moment he's wanted for a long time. I also knew, on some level, he'd been thinking about what it meant to go back to school.

Reporter 2: Tonight, Brown University students grappling with the shooting of one of their own.

Suzanne Gaber: Almost immediately after Hisham was shot, he'd become a symbol of Palestinian oppression and resistance for many at Brown University, where he goes to school.

Protester: Brown Corporation is a scam, no others like Hisham.

Protesters: Brown Corporation is a scam, no others like Hisham.

[singing]

Students: For Hisham, for Hisham, for us all.

[applause]

Suzanne Gaber: Which, not everyone on the Providence, Rhode Island campus had taken kindly to, including university president, Christina Paxson.

[protesting]

Christina Paxson: This is how you want to honor your friend? I'm sorry.

Protestor: Palestinian students told you not divesting made the mistake, and what are you doing? Not divesting. Hisham was shot because of your complicity.

[shouting]

Hisham Awartani: I don't like seeing my name plastered everywhere, but I condone it in as much as using my name and my experience can elicit more of an emotional reaction in people and can get the point home better. It sucks to say, but people here find it hard to empathize with people in Gaza than they would me.

Suzanne Gaber: Why do you think that empathy is so different?

Hisham Awartani: Many different reasons. I think that Palestinians in Palestine, the way that people excuse it is that they're always assumed to be a terrorist. Here, it's absurd to use the same logic that the Israeli army uses on me because I'm literally in Burlington, Vermont. You can't say, "He was trying to stab someone." You can't say,"He was part of a terrorist organization," even though, in so many of the cases, they shoot people unarmed or walking away or doing nothing. Just because they say, they provide the bare minimum of an excuse, they get away with it.

Marian Price: Will the wheelchair fit?

Nurse 3: Yes.

Suzanne Gaber: We head out from the rehab facility. The plan is for the family to drive straight down to Brown. The car is so packed, his mom has to carry some of his bags on her lap. Hisham's grandma, Marian, is in the driver's seat.

Marian Price: She has to decide what she can have sitting on her lap. The wheelchair, we are hoping will fit in.

Suzanne Gaber: Marian is who he'd been visiting at the time of the attack.

Marian Price: Maybe the big blue bag can go under the wheelchair.

Suzanne Gaber: When we get to Providence, I meet Hisham at a cafe just around the corner from where his new dorm will be. Up until that moment, he had only been allowed to leave the rehab facility on rare occasions and only when accompanied by staff.

Suzanne Gaber: How was the drive for you?

Hisham Awartani: It was good.

Suzanne Gaber: Yeah?

Hisham Awartani: First time being in a seat.

Suzanne Gaber: For the first time, I see a more open version of him. Genuinely, how are you feeling being here? I feel like I would be overwhelmed.

Hisham Awartani: Yeah, but I take it one step at a time.

Suzanne Gaber: You might not be able to tell from his deadpan delivery, but Hisham loves making walking jokes now that he's in a wheelchair, and it's kind of comforting to know he's still got a sense of humor after all of this.

Hisham Awartani: In the practical sense, like getting over the curb, getting across the street. You can't do everything at once.

Suzanne Gaber: As we sipped our coffee, we talked a lot about what his new life on campus would be. The attack left him with five classes with homework or exams that he needs to take before passing. He finished two classes while in rehab and still has another three to finish in the next few months in addition to his new classes.

Suzanne Gaber: I think you're going to be holed up in that dorm for a lot of studying this semester.

Hisham Awartani: Yeah, that's how it was before. I'm looking forward to more of that.

Suzanne Gaber: But even with all his studying, his connection to Palestine and standing up for his community is central.

Hisham Awartani: At Brown, we have the divest movement, and being involved in that is important for me. The main thing I've been focusing on is this idea of the dehumanization of Palestinians, and how I feel like in my case, it was one of the few cases where I was able to escape that. I was more surprised because it's not consistent. For instance, even before, what happened to me, there was a Palestinian child in Chicago who was stabbed multiple times. It made the headlines, but it went away fairly quick. I feel like that was much more serious than what happened to me.

Suzanne Gaber: He's talking about Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old boy who was killed outside of Chicago just a week after October 7th. A heartbreaking story and one of many Hisham carries with him as he considers his own experience. Another belongs to Tawfiq Abdul Jabbar, who had been killed in the West Bank while visiting family just weeks before. Tawfiq had grown up in Louisiana but was just miles from Hisham's hometown of Ramallah, when an IDF soldier fatally shot him. When I saw the news, I couldn't stop thinking about Hisham, and apparently, he had made that connection too.

Hisham Awartani: No, I remember going and looking up stuff, looking at his name in the first few days after he was killed. It was only Middle East Eye or Al Jazeera reporting on it, and maybe then CNN. I remember once there was an article, I don't know by some newspaper, they go through three-quarters of the article was somebody talking about October 7th, and hostages, and the Israeli army, and their losses, and then as an appendix, small footnote, yes, they killed someone. It confirmed what I'd been thinking beforehand is, if I was shot in the West Bank, no one would care. Here's another American citizen being shot in the West Bank and no one cared.

Suzanne Gaber: Does that bother you?

Hisham Awartani: Yes, it does bother me. It's just annoying that people care about the personal details of my story when it's not about the personal details. It's about why this happened to me, not how it felt that it happened to me, or how I feel now. It's not relevant. It's, why did this happen? Because the reason why this happened is also causing this to happen to so many other people.

[theme music]

Kai Wright: That's Brown University college student, Hisham Awartani, speaking with our producer, Suzanne Gaber. We'll return to Hisham's story later in the show, but I want to pause and try to better understand part of what this young man told us about his experience. He doesn't think he would have received the same outpouring of attention and sympathy that he's had over the past few months if he'd been shot in the West Bank where he grew up, instead of Vermont. Is that true? If so, what does it say about the story that's been told in the US about the violence in Gaza generally? I'm joined by William Youmans, a professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, who has been studying these very questions. William, thanks for coming on the show.

William Youmans: Thank you for having me, and for the incredibly moving audio piece there. I'm just so impressed by how thoughtful Hisham is and his perspective after suffering this tragedy.

Kai Wright: What do you think is the distinction in the way Hisham's story has been told in the US media and someone shot or killed in Gaza? What do you think of that distinction he's making?

William Youmans: I was moved by his bringing up of Tawfiq, the teenager who was killed last month. Another depressing note that I would add, there was another teenager who was also 17 years old, the same age as Tawfiq, who was also not far from Hisham's hometown, a young kid named Mohammad Khdour, who's also a Palestinian American. The thing about Tawfiq is he was a Palestinian American, and both of them were killed in the West Bank. The US actually had to send some investigators to look into their murders because they didn't trust that the Israeli authorities were going to seriously investigate these cases.

It looks like probably both were killed by the settlers, Israeli settlers, and the State Department has been warning about their violence. I looked up news about Mohammad, and I only found an AP piece and a few other marginal newspapers that covered it, but I only got five hits on Google News. When I looked up Hisham's name, I saw that there were hundreds of stories, more than 1,000 stories on Google News, although Mohammad was only killed last week. There is this validity to what he's saying, which is if he was shot in Palestine, it would not be news.

I think part of it has to do with the novelty. We've almost got a normalized view of Palestinians losing lives in Palestine. That's not news because it's always happening. When a Palestinian is shot in the US or murdered in the US like the several cases that we've talked about, it's a bit new, and so it gets a bit more attention. That's unfortunate because we're missing the large part of the story, which is the destruction that the Palestinians are facing.

Kai Wright: Do you think it has anything to do with just the way we process individualized violence versus violence from authorities, from the state, from the cops, from the army?

William Youmans: Yes, I believe that it's much easier for us to talk critically about violence when it happens on the street and it's random, it seems stochastic. Even then there's a danger, we end up understanding it as this episode that's isolated from larger themes or larger patterns, which could then raise questions about, is media coverage, for example, causing more hate towards a group because it's misrepresenting their stories.

Then you can also look at other kinds of thematic things that are difficult to talk about. That doesn't happen when we just look at, oh, there was this unfortunate murder, and it was an isolated incident, there's no problem there. When we talk about state violence, that's systematic, and that's widespread, and it's much more politically touchy to talk about, which I think is related to why we also see so many human interest stories about Palestinians, or focusing on humanitarian issues in Gaza as opposed to really looking at the underlying political context, the history of military occupation, and also thinking critically about Palestinian aspirations and what the Palestinian political positions have been for decades. I think that we put the safe zone around talking about violence towards Palestinians in ways that make it easier to talk about but are really not telling the whole story.

Kai Wright: That removed the policy and politics that leads to it. The Biden administration has indicated that it will likely vote against the ceasefire resolution in the United Nations, which doomed the resolution. I know you've been specifically studying the coverage of the debate over a ceasefire for the last few months. What have you seen about how it's been depicted in media?

William Youmans: It's almost non-existent in some of the most important media platforms in our public sphere. I did this study of Sunday news talk shows which used to be a staple of political elite chatter and discussion. They're still very important programs, even though they're not as important as they once were. I studied 50 episodes, and I looked at what 140 of the guests were saying, and it was remarkably stark. For one thing, there was only one Palestinian guest in the four months that I studied these shows, one Palestinian guest, talking about what's happening in Palestine. That just strikes me as fundamentally wrong. You'd have, there weren't tons of Israeli guests, but there was a 10 to 1 ratio, there were 10 Israeli guests to the 1 Palestinian guest.

Kai Wright: 10 to 1? That's notable.

William Youmans: Yes, of all the American guests, 120 of the total guests were American, but not one was Arab American or Palestinian American, despite there being so many people who can speak to represent the community. That reflected in the way that things were talked about.

Kai Wright: How does that then shape the conversation?

William Youmans: Exactly, yes, it leads to very different kinds of framing in the conversations, which really reflects the elite in Congress and in the White House, what they're saying. When ceasefire came up, it only came up 94 times in 50 hours of television, only came up 94 times, and most of the time it was to shoot it down or to be negative. They only had maybe two or three guests that were really arguing for a ceasefire, and the vast majority of guests were either not talking about it or shooting it down. There were other problematic framings.

For example, there was a lot more mention of Hamas than Palestinians, twice as much, even though Palestinians are the ones who really bearing the brunt. I think it's more convenient politically to talk about this as a war between Israel and Hamas, but given the scale of destruction and civilian damage, how can you not talk about the Palestinians? One of the more interesting things was the concept of military occupation, which is for Palestinians, the vital context to understanding really what's happening now. It was only mentioned 15 times in 50 hours of television, but if you talk to any Palestinian it's the first point of analysis.

The exclusion of Palestinian guests on these very influential, important TV shows affects what they talk about and how they talk about it. Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of guests were overly sympathetic to Israel at a rate of six times more than being sympathetic to Palestinians. The last thing that I would say is that when they did talk about the Palestinians anyway, that was sympathetic. It was more from a position of pity, looking at the humanitarian crisis, which is better than nothing. It was still —

Kai Wright: Which is real, it is quite a real humanitarian crisis.

William Youmans: Exactly, but it strips it of the political analysis, it strips it of, what do the Palestinians actually want, which is freedom. If you don't have Palestinians on air, who's going to provide that important perspective?

Kai Wright: We're going to have to take a break in a second, but I gather that even for you it's been difficult for you to engage in this conversation because of this, that somehow it loses nuance. I just wanted to prompt you to talk about that a little bit. What is the nuance that's getting lost?

William Youmans: I think that very quickly, we tend to fall into talking points in any kind of media coverage about this, and that happens when your number one guest is a strategic communicator, who's an elected official, whose job is to talk the company line. The people who can provide nuance, the people who are actually experiencing these things on the ground, who aren't running for reelection or seeking campaign donations, the people who study these things, those are the people who can actually bring nuance, but instead, we're hearing from people who live in Washington, DC about what's happening in Gaza, or people who live in Jerusalem who are talking about what's happening in Gaza.

We weren't hearing from the voices of people in Gaza, and so we're not able to achieve any kind of sophistication, understanding, and get past the propaganda and the talking points if we only are listening to the elected officials and other members of the elite.

[theme music]

Kai Wright: I'm talking with William Youmans, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, about how the story of October 7th and Israel's subsequent invasion of Gaza has been told in the US. It's Notes from America. More with William Youmans coming up, stay with us.

[pause 00:31:48]

[theme music]

Kai Wright: It's Notes from America, I'm Kai Wright. I'm talking with William Youmans, George Washington University Professor of Media and Public Affairs, about how the US media has told the story of October 7th and Israel's invasion of Gaza thereafter. William, before the break, we were talking about nuance and the absence of nuance in the coverage. I gather one nuanced point that you see missing is-- The conversation has been framed around religion, that this is, on one hand, you're saying something anti-Semitic, on the other hand, you're saying something Islamophobic, and you feel like that's missing a deeper conversation. Explain that to me.

William Youmans: Yes. I have to say that it's not very constructive when the lines don't break down clearly around religion. I know that sounds like a crazy thing to say because everyone sees it as a religious conflict. In reality, it's a political conflict. It's about an ideological movement that founded Israel that saw the land as belonging to one people, but there's other people who are living on the land. We can complicate that view by looking at that not everyone who called themself a Zionist, for example, believed that the Palestinians should be removed from their land.

There was a nuance there, there was a debate there. Of course, the side that one was the side that ultimately usurped the Palestinians and took their land, but even in debates today, there are Jews on both sides of the equation. There are Jews that are hardcore supporters of Israel, of course. There are Jews that want to see a two-state solution and want Palestinian human rights recognized, and there are Jews who are against Zionism. By the same token, one of my good friends here in DC, her sister was trapped in a church in Gaza that fell under fire by a sniper, and two of the people who were taking sanctuary in the church were killed.

To talk about Christians in Gaza and that 10% of Palestinians are Christian, defies the idea that being anti-Palestinian is, therefore, necessarily Islamophobic. I think we should be pushing ourselves to understand the larger political history here, to understand why are there so many Palestinian refugees, why is Gaza 70% made up of refugees. We have this whole debate about UNRA and whether it should be funded or not, but no one is asking why are there still Palestinian refugees today. Maybe we can get to the point of realizing that that's part of the reason for the conflict.

I think that we need to push people to be a little more empathetic in both sides of the story, but to focus on the Palestinian side, there's a lack of empathy for thinking about, okay, what would I do if my home was taken from me, if I was kicked out from my historic, ancestral homeland, and if I was forced to live somewhere else. Americans, when they speak without empathy towards Palestinians, I think, "Oh, yes, you would just take that peacefully." If another group of people came and said, "This is our land," you would just say, "Fine, you're right," and you would move on. That's why I can't understand so much of the discourse in this country because it just shows a basic lack of understanding of just the basic issues. If we don't have Palestinians telling stories on media, we're never going to hear those.

Kai Wright: You've been researching media coverage of Palestinians, not just in this conflict, but in previous ones as well. Going back to the '80s, US coverage of the first intifada in 1987. How was that coverage different from what we're seeing today? Has there been an evolution or a change?

William Youmans: The intifada and the news media coverage of it in the late '80s was actually a bit of a turning point in US and Western public opinion towards Israel because, at that point, Israel had met these largely nonviolent Palestinian protests with very direct overt violence. Yitzhak Rabin, at the time, who would go on to be known as a peacemaker,

I think he was defense minister at the time, but he had a broken bones policy, which was basically literally breaking the bones of anyone caught protesting violently or nonviolently. When I say violently, really at that time, they were throwing rocks, but there were these massive movements of tax boycotts, of strikes, of all different kinds of means of nonviolent resistance.

In fact, in the first year during the intifada, not a single Israeli civilian was killed. There might have been a soldier or two, but it was very small scale in terms of violent resistance, and instead of the world rushing to defend the Palestinians, the Western world at least, and the United States, tried to consult Israel on how to do better PR and how to manage the violence.

It's a moment when it's very important for world sympathy towards the Palestinians. It was also done at this time where there was no social media, so there was a strong power of gatekeepers and traditional media to tell the stories, but the images got out. Alternative media was important at that time. The international press wires were important for getting the story out at that time, but it was leaking out slowly, so it took time for public opinion to become informed. This day and age, the gap between social media and mainstream media coverage is immediately visible to the public, and so we've gotten this whole debate about social media and some senators are fear-mongering about TikTok brainwashing children.

Kai Wright: There's a debate about what you see on social media as it relates to this particular story and what is and isn't true, and a whole industry of people conducting media analysis. One of the things that's come up that was driven by a lot of social media conversation was a reaction to, I believe it was the associated press, but maybe others that used minors to describe children in Palestine who had been killed, instead of calling them children.

William Youmans: Yes, I remember that. It reminded me of this argument about adultification, which we also see with the African American community, especially in the context of police violence and police brutality, where a teenager is rendered into an adult for certain communities, and for other communities, a teenager is a child. I think that that's one of the many things that makes the Palestinian experience something very relatable to the African American experience. The other thing we see is this passive voice. It's never the police kill or Israel kills, it's always, "We're killed by, the victim was killed by," or sometimes we see even headlines without agents.

There was a horrendous headline on CNN about the little girl who was stuck in a car, and all her family members were killed, and it was like, "Little girl dies in car with relatives." It completely left out who did the killing, and I think this is all because it feels very controversial to say who did what when it comes to this, especially when the commission of violence is done by Israel. There's so much flack that media companies get when they use that direct language, and so they try to softball it by, at least in the headlines, being circumspect.

It's not doing a service to the public, and it gets called out so much now on social media, it's almost creating this powerful feedback loop that documents it, names it, and lets people say that this is wrong.

Kai Wright: We're about to hear more of Hisham's story and his experience in particularly returning to the campus of Brown University. Schools, campuses have been a real site of debate about this. I wonder if you could speak to what you've seen on your own campus on George Washington, which is there near the White House.

William Youmans: Yes, it's something that's really riveted the campus in many ways. We've had a very active student body here and the university found procedural grounds for suspending them. It's turned into a debate about free speech on campus. It's quite clear to me that nobody wants to just have open discussions about what's happening in Gaza because of the political sensitivities around it, and I feel that's a real loss. I think it's a disservice. I think that we have to do what a university does and confront the difficult issues of the day, knowing that these are not going to be easy conversations.

I will listen to people I disagree with and that was part of my college experience, and I would expect that universities do the same. I just want to applause what I saw at Dartmouth University, which actively organized forums around Gaza and said, "Let's come together as a campus and model the kind of dialogue and discourse that we want to have."

Kai Wright: William Youmans is a Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. He studies how stories of Arab Americans are told in US media. Thanks, Will. Before we return to Hisham's story, a question for all of you. If the Biden administration policy on Gaza has upset you, how's that going to affect your voting? Call 844-745-TALK and just leave us a message. Okay, we're going to go back now to Brown University student, Hisham Awartani. Our producer, Suzanne Gaber, joins him as he returns to campus and moves into his new dorm after months of rehab in Boston.

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Suzanne Gaber: There are a lot of things Hisham is looking forward to at school, going back to classes, for one, but his dorm having AC, that's huge. Last year he'd been stuck on campus without air conditioning all summer. Let me tell you if you don't live on the East Coast, summers without air conditioning are painful. The humidity will really get to you.

Marian Price: When he transferred from the wheelchair to the bed, it was very bouncy.

Suzanne Gaber: When we make it to his dorm, we join his mom Elizabeth, and grandmother, Marian, in unpacking his room.

Marian Price: You feel it, just sort of sit down on it.

Suzanne Gaber: Yes.

Suzanne Gaber: It's only been a few hours, and there are already difficulties with the setup.

Marian Price: That's not safe for him.

Suzanne Gaber: No, that would be really hard to transfer. He'd keep falling.

Marian Price: Yes, he needs something sturdy.

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham leaves the room for a bit as we unpack, and different perspectives of the night start to come up. The image I had of the day of the attack continues to change.

Marian Price: Now what he's doing with a pack of cigarettes in his bags?

Elizabeth Price: Well, you can ask him, Mom.

Marian Price: You know, when they were shot, they were coming back from a walk down to the UVM campus five blocks maybe from my house. As I understood it, Tahseen needed a smoke, but maybe Hisham was also smoking.

Suzanne Gaber: His grandma's house was just a few blocks away from the shooting, and she was one of the first people to meet Hisham at the hospital. She knows all the details of the day, even though you can hear there are pieces of it she's still processing. The same is true for his mom, who was back in Palestine at the time. Elizabeth, who's Irish American, moved to Palestine right out of college. She met her husband there while on study abroad her junior year. She's an international development worker who's worked with refugees. She's lived in the West Bank for 25 years, and she's raising three kids there.

Elizabeth Price: My children are from-- We're from a background where we have resources in Palestine. We have a home, we have jobs. They go to a good school, they have education, they have opportunity to travel. I didn't think that they would be on the front lines. I didn't think that they would be going to protest. Obviously, I was wrong. I didn't think that they would be targeted because I thought that they would be somewhere safe. I had not realized that to be Palestinian is to be unsafe. I understand that now, that you can't, as a Palestinian, if you are proud and open as a Palestinian, protect yourself.

Suzanne Gaber: When she landed in Vermont to see her son for the first time, another image was shattered.

Elizabeth Price: I think one of the things that Hisham has found and that boys have found is that they're less traumatized. No, they have a different type of trauma, obviously, but existentially, they're not shaken as they would have been if they had been someone who didn't grow up with this. He got shot in his knee with a rubber bullet and came home that night, and we never knew anything had happened.

Suzanne Gaber: When did he get shot in the knee with a rubber bullet?

Elizabeth Price: About two years ago and we just found out.

Suzanne Gaber: You just found out?

Elizabeth Price: Yes. I don't know how this came up, but his friend said, "Oh, yes, and of course, when he got shot in the knee." I'm like, "What?" He'd gone out to a protest against what's happening in Palestine, and an Israeli military sniper had aimed his knee. I think at that protest, one of his friends was also shot in the leg with a live bullet.

Suzanne Gaber: Wow.

Elizabeth Price: We were very lucky. I had no idea.

Suzanne Gaber: Did you intentionally keep that from her?

Hisham Awartani: Yes, she didn't have to know about that. I was fine in the end. It was a rubber bullet.

Suzanne Gaber: Those still hurt.

Hisham Awartani: Yes, it did hurt, but I was fine, so she didn't have to worry.

Elizabeth Price: Yes, he just came home and just dealt with it and didn't talk to us about it. There we were thinking, "Oh, yes, Hisham just didn't go to protest."

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Suzanne Gaber: It's funny to hear her say this. The Hisham I've been talking to is very politically engaged. Seeing him at a protest would not surprise me at all, but I guess we all keep secrets from our parents. Over the last few years, Hisham has become involved with the Brown University Divestment Movement, the same one that has been using his name on campus in recent protests. They are calling for the school to divest from all companies linked to the Israeli military. They say the investments are supporting the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, where Hisham grew up.

Hisham Awartani: I think it's ridiculous that universities are invested in arms companies and that universities are invested in military systems that put their own students at risk. I was in a meeting with the president of the university about divestment, another student told an experience she was doing research for the university in the West Bank and Israeli soldiers came and started pointing their guns at her. That's, the university is invested in an apparatus that oppresses its own students is a bit ludicrous.

Suzanne Gaber: Now that he's back at Brown, his activism is going to look a little different. It sounds like you want a lower profile, you don't want to plan on being involved in that as much when you get back.

Hisham Awartani: More so behind the scenes and such.

Suzanne Gaber: Hisham says just the act of returning to school is part of that.

Hisham Awartani: Palestinians love education. There's very little mobility. I feel like people go to education to alleviate that. Yes, it's our way of resisting, in a sense. I'm not going to let this break my stride, I'm going to keep walking forward.

Suzanne Gaber: For Hisham, the way forward is attending classes in person again. Before the attack, he was eagerly planning for an upcoming trip to Italy with his university's archaeology program.

Hisham Awartani: Hopefully, I'll be able to go to Sardinia. That's an area that I've been interested in since my first semester because I took a class on that on the Western Mediterranean and the trade routes there in Iron Age, Bronze Age. I think Sardinia is fascinating for me because it's an island. It's very insular, even to this day. It's like it preserves lots of old things that are elsewhere, lost.

Suzanne Gaber: It's a goal he's not willing to let go of. He's actually been taking Italian for the last few years to help him on this trip. The one problem is it's an archaeology dig on rough and rugged terrain, and in his wheelchair, Hisham's movement is limited, but he tells me that near the site there's a museum where he's already dreaming of working.

Kai Wright: That was Brown University student, Hisham Awartani, talking with our producer, Suzanne Gaber. Suzanne will continue to check in with Hisham throughout the semester and bring us updates on the show. Notes From America is a production of WNYC Studios. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and on Instagram @noteswithkai. This episode was produced by Suzanne Gaber, mixing and theme music by Jared Paul. Milton Ruiz was our live engineer this week and special thanks to Jason Isaac for engineering help. Our team also includes Katerina Barton, Regina de Heer, Mike Kutchman, Felice León, Matthew Marando, Fiona Petros, and Lindsay Foster Thomas. I'm Kai Wright, thanks for spending time with us.

 

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