By Jorge Fitz-Gibbon – NY Post
Three top Palestinian college students were shot Saturday while walking to a family dinner in Vermont — the victims of a horrific bias attack, according to Palestinian and Arab-American officials.
All three men, including Harvard and Brown University students, were wearing traditional Keffiyeh scarves when they were wounded, said Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian mission in the United Kingdom, in a post on X on Sunday.
“Three young Palestinian men, Hiham Awartani, Tahseen Ali and Kenan Abdulhamid, students at Yale and other universities, were shot last night on their way to a family dinner in Burlington,” Zomlot wrote.
“Their crime? Wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh,” he said. “They are critically injured.”
The Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee said the victims are all 20 years old and identified Awartani as a student at Brown, Abdalhamid at Harvard, and Ali, whom they identified by the last name Ahmed, at Trinity University.
“All three victims survived the initial shooting, however, two of them are currently in ICU and one of the students has sustained very critical and serious injuries,” the ADC said in a statement.
The three men were walking along North Prospect Street in the state capital around 6:30 p.m. when they were shot, according to KPTZ-TV News.
The victims were rushed to the University of Vermont Medical Center, while the shooter remains on the loose.
KPTZ did not identify the victims as Palestinian, but Zomlot and Arab-American outlets and organizations said they were and denounced the incident as a targeted attack against Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war rages.
“After reviewing the initial information provided we have reason to believe this shooting occurred because the victims are Arab,” the ADC said.
It did not identify any of the victims as Yale students, despite Zomlot’s post on X.
The ADC said the students were speaking Arabic when the gunman yelled at them and opened fire.
“We are praying for a full recovery of the victims and will stand by to support the families in any way that is needed,” said ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub in a statement Sunday.
“The surge in anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian sentiment we are experiencing is unprecedented, and this is another example of that hate turning violent,” Ayoub added.
The Oct. 7 sneak terror attack on Israel by Palestinian Hamas terrorists — and the subsequent Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip — has sparked an outbreak of antisemitic and occasionally anti-Arab violence in the US.
US college campuses in particular have become a hotbed of unrest, including Ivy League schools.
On Saturday, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters swamped Columbus Circle in Manhattan, at one point dragging a burning Israeli flag down the street while denouncing the Jewish state.
Last week, a Queens public school teacher was forced to lock herself in a classroom as a mob of pro-Palestinian students hunted for her over a pro-Israel Facebook post — an incident that New York Mayor Eric Adams called a “vile show of antisemitism.”
Last month, a Brooklyn man also was allegedly beaten by a group of pro-Israeli men after yelling, “Free Palestine!” according to a report by WPIX-TV News.
The Burlington Police Department inn Vermont did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post regarding Saturday’s shooting.