Who in the world wishes for a hate crime in their community? Apparently, Vermont elected officials do.

With no hate crime charge, no law enforcement or judicial finding of deliberate targeting, and no evidence establishing motive, Vermont U.S Senators Bernie Sanders and Peter Welch, and Representative Becca Balint used the two-year anniversary of the tragic shooting of three Palestinian students to tell Vermonters a divisive fiction – a story crafted to satisfy sectarian political appetites rather than to reflect the truth.

It is not a new pattern. In another era, during the Dreyfus Affair, French elites clung to a narrative too emotionally gratifying to question. The parallel is not the substance of the case but the psychology: when a story feels right, it becomes a story that must be true, no matter what the evidence says.

The Shootings and the Race to Interpretation

On November 25, 2023, three college students were shot on a residential street in Burlington, VT – the largest city in America’s second-smallest state. The three, Hisham Awartani (Brown University), Kinnan Abdalhamid (Haverford College) and Tahseen Ali Ahmad (Trinity College) were visiting during their Thanksgiving breaks.

Two are U.S citizens and one a legal resident. All three are of Palestinian heritage. Two of the victims were wearing keffiyeh (the headdress associated with Arab Palestinian nationalism since it was adopted during the Arab Revolt in the 1930s). All three were wounded; Awartani was the worst-injured – according to his family, a bullet lodged in his spine left him paralyzed from the chest down.

Local CBS affiliate WCAX-TV was the first to report that the victims of this tragic shooting were Palestinian – a detail initially unsupported and unattributed, but later confirmed by police.

The anti-Israel movement weaponised the tragedy instantly. Neighbours targeted local Jews online, joking that their whereabouts at the time of the shooting should be investigated.

The next evening, at a Burlington rally, Wafic Faour of Vermonters for Justice in Palestine led chants insisting it was a “hate crime.” A masked speaker from UVM’s Students for Justice in Palestine went further, blaming campus Jewish groups and calling them “shameless monsters who enabled this”.

And as fake news escalated without a moderating force, and before Vermont authorities had even taken a suspect into custody, there were demands to punish those falsely accused of carrying out the crime. This example calls for the streets to be made ‘unsafe’ for ‘Zionist lynchers’:

In the vacuum before all the facts emerged, the story exploded internationally. Activist networks declared it a “targeted hate crime” – labelling it a “clear act of anti-Palestinian racism”:

This was a national, rather than just a state-wide strategy. The Palestinian Youth Movement – affiliated with the  PFLP (which is a designated terrorist organisation) – posted about the “targeted hate crime”:

Chittenden County State’s Attorney Sarah Fair George and law enforcement’s public statements did little to dissuade the unsubstantiated assumptions.

The Arrest that Complicated the Story

The police soon arrested Jason Eaton, a then-48-year-old who lived in the apartment building outside which the shooting took place. He pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder and remains detained at Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport, VT pending trial.

Despite significant political and public pressure to charge Eaton with a hate crime, prosecutors declined. This was not an oversight by attorneys or law enforcement; it was the inevitable result of evidence that simply did not support the charge.

Without political restraint or moderation, the airwaves filled with false and dangerous narratives: Claims the trio were shot “because they were wearing the keffiyeh”, or for their “support of Palestine”, or simply for “being Palestinian“, came to dominate the social media narrative.

In Vermont, where the judicial system in Burlington tends to embrace progressive frameworks, a hate-crime enhancement would have been close to automatic if investigators had found even a trace of discriminatory motive. None was found.

Why the Evidence Did Not Stack Up

This act, while violent and tragic, shows no evidence of a hate-driven motive. Several key facts make that clear:

1. Location:
The shooting appeared spontaneous – Eaton left his residence, stumbled down the steps, and fired. Nothing indicated that he sought out Palestinians or anyone else.

2. Personal history:
As Seven Days reported on December 6, 2023, Eaton had a troubled personal life, mental-health struggles, restraining orders from a former partner, job loss, and an apparent emotional spiral. He did not match the profile of a man executing a premeditated political vendetta.

3. Political footprint:
Eaton’s online activity (now private), revealed initially by Seven Days, showed no evidence of anti-Palestinian sentiment. Quite the opposite:

He ‘liked’ and ‘reposted’ Bernie Sanders’ posts.

He expressed pro-Palestinian views in the weeks after October 7.

On October 17 he wrote on X:
“The notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up.”

On November 16, replying to VT Digger’s post about Rep. Balint calling for a ceasefire, Eaton reportedly wrote:
“What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”

This timeline alone torpedoes their hate-crime theory. It is the single most devastating contradiction to the hate-crime narrative.

According to Sanders, Welch, and Balint, Vermonters are meant to believe that a man who defended Hamas ten days earlier suddenly transformed into a militant anti-Palestinian racist intent on hunting students in the street.

It is a narrative so incoherent that its political function becomes obvious: it persists not because it is plausible, but because it is useful.

When Eaton’s posts became public, any rational actor would have understood that whatever the motive was, there is no evidence that it was hostility toward Palestinians. Yet most Vermont news outlets did not report this contradiction. A source who asked to remain unnamed told me the pushback they’d receive for reporting it “wasn’t worth it.”

The Politicians Who Chose the Story Over the Facts

Immediately after the shooting, Sanders called for a full investigation. Balint did the same, and rightfully so.

But when the investigation concluded and no hate-crime evidence was found, the delegation did not adjust their claims to match reality. Instead, on the second anniversary of the shooting, Vermont’s congressional delegation issued statements – and introduced a Senate resolution – that again asserted a definitive hate motive.

Representative Balint declared that the students were shot “for no other reason than that they are Palestinian.” Senators Sanders and Welch went further, actually submitting a Senate resolution that states as fact that the three were “attacked simply for wearing a scarf… and speaking in Arabic” – a claim flatly contradicted by the investigative record.

This is not a misunderstanding.

It is not supported by prosecutors, police, or evidence.

It is a false claim – and an intentional one.

The same delegation has a recent track record of elevating deeply misleading narratives. Sanders, Welch, and Balint all celebrated Mohsen Mahdawi – a man with a documented history of glorifying terrorism – as a local hero. They have mainstreamed the baseless accusation of ‘genocide’ against Israel, pushing an inflammatory and false charge with enormous polarising force into Vermont’s civic bloodstream.

In each case, the moral stakes were enormous, the evidence inconvenient, and the rhetoric irresistible.

Why This Matters – and Why It Is Dangerous

When elected officials tell 645,000 Vermonters that the judicial system got it wrong – not because of new evidence but because the truth is politically unsatisfying – they erode the foundations of democratic trust.

Their message is unmistakable:

You may disregard the findings of prosecutors.

You may override due process.

You may declare guilt without evidence.

You may substitute emotion for fact.

And if the facts undermine the preferred narrative – ignore them.

This is not leadership. It is opportunism masquerading as moral clarity. And in a climate where Jewish Vermonters already face growing hostility, the consequences are not abstract. False hate-crime narratives feed grievance, legitimise fury, and sharpen communal suspicion.

The question Vermonters must now ask is simple:

Why are three federal legislators still choosing to inflame their state with a story they know is unproven?

There is only one answer:

Because the truth could not give them what they wanted – and the lie could.

 

Research assistance for this piece was provided by Rachel Feldman, a leading voice in the fight against antisemitism in Vermont.

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