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Demonstrators march on Constitution Avenue near the Dirksen Senate Office Building during a protest against police brutality and racism on June 6, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
When I try to describe how it feels to be alienated--from a country, a group, a partner, an idea, the past, a culture, an identity--lots of emotions surface. Alienation generates anger and sorrow, confusion and loneliness. Yearning and weariness. Despair. Often that which one feels alienated from and the feelings generated are multiple. If my experience and beliefs estrange me from the unrealized values of my country, I feel alienated from the abstract notion of the country, its facade, its citizens, friends who disagree with me, and from the self who felt morally grounded being identified with those values. Each estrangement, like a planet, accumulates a cluster of painful emotions in orbit around it.
What surprises me is how long alienation may persist without resolution. Two people may remain in a marriage for decades while both are alienated from the love, respect, and companionship which brought them together. Or, far more dramatically, think of the many generations of indigenous people and people of color who persist in the United States in spite of brutal personal and systemic racism, genocide. It's one thing to be loyal to a country which seems to support you, far different to be loyal to one that is actively hostile to you, generation after generation, callously exploiting and diminishing, making you the target of white supremacy.
"If we jettison the past, we betray the past... Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us." Of course, it can be hard to cut one's ties--family, habit, home, job and the hope of unrealized dreams hold one in place. Of these, perhaps the most interesting and complex is hope. Frequently, alienated people, because they are excluded, believe more deeply in the values of the country than the majority who take those values for granted, accept the window dressing, and easily ignore that the practice of the rhetoric is not equitably distributed. The hope of the marginalized that those values will one day be theirs may be a more compelling anchor than actually having them. Eyes on the prize.
For people of color--as well as for those white people who are acutely aware and ashamed of America's alienation from its purported values--2020 presents an opportunity to fully integrate this country's values with its behavior--to come in from our own cold, to match talk with walk. If we can say that a country in some sense possesses, or can possess a soul, we can now ask our alienated soul to inhabit our prodigal history. The curious combination of pandemic, recession, racist police violence, and the perseverance of the Black Lives Matter demonstrators is performing the role of neuro- and cardiac surgeons, cutting open the memory and heart of the body politic, bypassing the clotted ideas and myths, false narratives and prejudices, with arteries of truth. What a relief! Will we have the perseverance and courage to complete the operation? Will the patient survive? If this operation is not performed successfully, stroke and heart attack are imminent.
Somewhere in the midst of the protests, an alchemy has taken place. As the protests matured, they were no longer protests; they transformed from lead to gold. At the beginning they shouted, accurately, I'm angry! I demand to be treated with dignity! I'm here to call out the systemic violence and hypocrisy of your racism! This country's long and despicable history has got to change! If the protests had been a one time expression of outrage, that would have been the sum of the message. But because they persisted, because they are inclusive, because they had time to expand and grow into a deeper understanding of their own message--because they were right!--they shapeshifted into affirmations of the people we want to be, from rage into vision, a people who acknowledge together the bloody journey of this country's true history, who share the identity of its crucible, and who together want to embark on a new journey, want to tell a new story, a story of justice, compassion, peace and love. The story we claimed in 1776, but have betrayed again and again ever since.
"The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it."Too often when the streets fill with righteous protest of people alienated and outraged by this culture's violence--which is to say, alienated by its materialism, greed, racism, sexism, domination, and the implicit militarism of capitalism--too often the only message communicated by the media is spectacle and anger of a mob. The protesters, who march to rescue this culture from its habitual injustices, end by being further alienated by a status quo media which describes them en masse as marginal. Nothing pleases power more. American power is inhospitable and antagonistic to people who insist on reminding it of its hypocrisy, its real motives, and its many crimes.
However, if the protests that go on day after day are composed of a genuine cross section of people, the protesters are much harder to brand and dismiss. They are us. We begin to ask, first, What are they saying? And then: What are we saying? What values are we affirming?
That's not lead but gold running in the streets.
Something deeper is going on, though, and in that deeper nature of alienation is a painful realization. In order for this country and people in this country to perform reprehensible acts, it has to deny its own professed values and laws while pretending to uphold them. It calls on its citizens to also deny those values, turn them inside out, deny basic humanity so majorities can participate willingly in atrocity and call it necessary and good. The inside-out values say police killing unarmed black people enhances security for whites; drones killing civilians protects us from terrorists; mass incarceration is a good use of law; unequal distribution of wealth, health care, quality education, jobs and housing is a fair economy; stealing voting rights from minorities is democracy. If we allow our silence to condone such practices, we alienate ourselves from human decency, from respect for other people's lives, from any hope of participatory democracy. We characterize others as enemies and judge them unfit to live or have the opportunities that make full life possible. We murder our own dream.
Our identities can sometimes be fabricated more easily out of lies than from truths. The mainstream culture prefers to move on, choosing to forget rather than examine, live in myth rather than compassion. The alienated people feel responsible to hold on to the truth. The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it. Sometimes it seems that carrying the truth of history is like pulling a very long freight train as it struggles for miles and miles on an uphill grade. The engine labors, overheats. The engineer is tempted to uncouple 400 years of overloaded boxcars. Who cares? Certainly not the perpetrators of the injustices. They say, Just let it go; dragging all that history is slowing progress. They mean profit.
That's why these ongoing affirmations are so important. If we jettison the past, we betray the past. All those boxcars shunted off to oblivion tell us who we are. Not who we think we'd like to be, but who we really are. Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us.
Stay in the streets.
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When I try to describe how it feels to be alienated--from a country, a group, a partner, an idea, the past, a culture, an identity--lots of emotions surface. Alienation generates anger and sorrow, confusion and loneliness. Yearning and weariness. Despair. Often that which one feels alienated from and the feelings generated are multiple. If my experience and beliefs estrange me from the unrealized values of my country, I feel alienated from the abstract notion of the country, its facade, its citizens, friends who disagree with me, and from the self who felt morally grounded being identified with those values. Each estrangement, like a planet, accumulates a cluster of painful emotions in orbit around it.
What surprises me is how long alienation may persist without resolution. Two people may remain in a marriage for decades while both are alienated from the love, respect, and companionship which brought them together. Or, far more dramatically, think of the many generations of indigenous people and people of color who persist in the United States in spite of brutal personal and systemic racism, genocide. It's one thing to be loyal to a country which seems to support you, far different to be loyal to one that is actively hostile to you, generation after generation, callously exploiting and diminishing, making you the target of white supremacy.
"If we jettison the past, we betray the past... Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us." Of course, it can be hard to cut one's ties--family, habit, home, job and the hope of unrealized dreams hold one in place. Of these, perhaps the most interesting and complex is hope. Frequently, alienated people, because they are excluded, believe more deeply in the values of the country than the majority who take those values for granted, accept the window dressing, and easily ignore that the practice of the rhetoric is not equitably distributed. The hope of the marginalized that those values will one day be theirs may be a more compelling anchor than actually having them. Eyes on the prize.
For people of color--as well as for those white people who are acutely aware and ashamed of America's alienation from its purported values--2020 presents an opportunity to fully integrate this country's values with its behavior--to come in from our own cold, to match talk with walk. If we can say that a country in some sense possesses, or can possess a soul, we can now ask our alienated soul to inhabit our prodigal history. The curious combination of pandemic, recession, racist police violence, and the perseverance of the Black Lives Matter demonstrators is performing the role of neuro- and cardiac surgeons, cutting open the memory and heart of the body politic, bypassing the clotted ideas and myths, false narratives and prejudices, with arteries of truth. What a relief! Will we have the perseverance and courage to complete the operation? Will the patient survive? If this operation is not performed successfully, stroke and heart attack are imminent.
Somewhere in the midst of the protests, an alchemy has taken place. As the protests matured, they were no longer protests; they transformed from lead to gold. At the beginning they shouted, accurately, I'm angry! I demand to be treated with dignity! I'm here to call out the systemic violence and hypocrisy of your racism! This country's long and despicable history has got to change! If the protests had been a one time expression of outrage, that would have been the sum of the message. But because they persisted, because they are inclusive, because they had time to expand and grow into a deeper understanding of their own message--because they were right!--they shapeshifted into affirmations of the people we want to be, from rage into vision, a people who acknowledge together the bloody journey of this country's true history, who share the identity of its crucible, and who together want to embark on a new journey, want to tell a new story, a story of justice, compassion, peace and love. The story we claimed in 1776, but have betrayed again and again ever since.
"The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it."Too often when the streets fill with righteous protest of people alienated and outraged by this culture's violence--which is to say, alienated by its materialism, greed, racism, sexism, domination, and the implicit militarism of capitalism--too often the only message communicated by the media is spectacle and anger of a mob. The protesters, who march to rescue this culture from its habitual injustices, end by being further alienated by a status quo media which describes them en masse as marginal. Nothing pleases power more. American power is inhospitable and antagonistic to people who insist on reminding it of its hypocrisy, its real motives, and its many crimes.
However, if the protests that go on day after day are composed of a genuine cross section of people, the protesters are much harder to brand and dismiss. They are us. We begin to ask, first, What are they saying? And then: What are we saying? What values are we affirming?
That's not lead but gold running in the streets.
Something deeper is going on, though, and in that deeper nature of alienation is a painful realization. In order for this country and people in this country to perform reprehensible acts, it has to deny its own professed values and laws while pretending to uphold them. It calls on its citizens to also deny those values, turn them inside out, deny basic humanity so majorities can participate willingly in atrocity and call it necessary and good. The inside-out values say police killing unarmed black people enhances security for whites; drones killing civilians protects us from terrorists; mass incarceration is a good use of law; unequal distribution of wealth, health care, quality education, jobs and housing is a fair economy; stealing voting rights from minorities is democracy. If we allow our silence to condone such practices, we alienate ourselves from human decency, from respect for other people's lives, from any hope of participatory democracy. We characterize others as enemies and judge them unfit to live or have the opportunities that make full life possible. We murder our own dream.
Our identities can sometimes be fabricated more easily out of lies than from truths. The mainstream culture prefers to move on, choosing to forget rather than examine, live in myth rather than compassion. The alienated people feel responsible to hold on to the truth. The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it. Sometimes it seems that carrying the truth of history is like pulling a very long freight train as it struggles for miles and miles on an uphill grade. The engine labors, overheats. The engineer is tempted to uncouple 400 years of overloaded boxcars. Who cares? Certainly not the perpetrators of the injustices. They say, Just let it go; dragging all that history is slowing progress. They mean profit.
That's why these ongoing affirmations are so important. If we jettison the past, we betray the past. All those boxcars shunted off to oblivion tell us who we are. Not who we think we'd like to be, but who we really are. Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us.
Stay in the streets.
When I try to describe how it feels to be alienated--from a country, a group, a partner, an idea, the past, a culture, an identity--lots of emotions surface. Alienation generates anger and sorrow, confusion and loneliness. Yearning and weariness. Despair. Often that which one feels alienated from and the feelings generated are multiple. If my experience and beliefs estrange me from the unrealized values of my country, I feel alienated from the abstract notion of the country, its facade, its citizens, friends who disagree with me, and from the self who felt morally grounded being identified with those values. Each estrangement, like a planet, accumulates a cluster of painful emotions in orbit around it.
What surprises me is how long alienation may persist without resolution. Two people may remain in a marriage for decades while both are alienated from the love, respect, and companionship which brought them together. Or, far more dramatically, think of the many generations of indigenous people and people of color who persist in the United States in spite of brutal personal and systemic racism, genocide. It's one thing to be loyal to a country which seems to support you, far different to be loyal to one that is actively hostile to you, generation after generation, callously exploiting and diminishing, making you the target of white supremacy.
"If we jettison the past, we betray the past... Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us." Of course, it can be hard to cut one's ties--family, habit, home, job and the hope of unrealized dreams hold one in place. Of these, perhaps the most interesting and complex is hope. Frequently, alienated people, because they are excluded, believe more deeply in the values of the country than the majority who take those values for granted, accept the window dressing, and easily ignore that the practice of the rhetoric is not equitably distributed. The hope of the marginalized that those values will one day be theirs may be a more compelling anchor than actually having them. Eyes on the prize.
For people of color--as well as for those white people who are acutely aware and ashamed of America's alienation from its purported values--2020 presents an opportunity to fully integrate this country's values with its behavior--to come in from our own cold, to match talk with walk. If we can say that a country in some sense possesses, or can possess a soul, we can now ask our alienated soul to inhabit our prodigal history. The curious combination of pandemic, recession, racist police violence, and the perseverance of the Black Lives Matter demonstrators is performing the role of neuro- and cardiac surgeons, cutting open the memory and heart of the body politic, bypassing the clotted ideas and myths, false narratives and prejudices, with arteries of truth. What a relief! Will we have the perseverance and courage to complete the operation? Will the patient survive? If this operation is not performed successfully, stroke and heart attack are imminent.
Somewhere in the midst of the protests, an alchemy has taken place. As the protests matured, they were no longer protests; they transformed from lead to gold. At the beginning they shouted, accurately, I'm angry! I demand to be treated with dignity! I'm here to call out the systemic violence and hypocrisy of your racism! This country's long and despicable history has got to change! If the protests had been a one time expression of outrage, that would have been the sum of the message. But because they persisted, because they are inclusive, because they had time to expand and grow into a deeper understanding of their own message--because they were right!--they shapeshifted into affirmations of the people we want to be, from rage into vision, a people who acknowledge together the bloody journey of this country's true history, who share the identity of its crucible, and who together want to embark on a new journey, want to tell a new story, a story of justice, compassion, peace and love. The story we claimed in 1776, but have betrayed again and again ever since.
"The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it."Too often when the streets fill with righteous protest of people alienated and outraged by this culture's violence--which is to say, alienated by its materialism, greed, racism, sexism, domination, and the implicit militarism of capitalism--too often the only message communicated by the media is spectacle and anger of a mob. The protesters, who march to rescue this culture from its habitual injustices, end by being further alienated by a status quo media which describes them en masse as marginal. Nothing pleases power more. American power is inhospitable and antagonistic to people who insist on reminding it of its hypocrisy, its real motives, and its many crimes.
However, if the protests that go on day after day are composed of a genuine cross section of people, the protesters are much harder to brand and dismiss. They are us. We begin to ask, first, What are they saying? And then: What are we saying? What values are we affirming?
That's not lead but gold running in the streets.
Something deeper is going on, though, and in that deeper nature of alienation is a painful realization. In order for this country and people in this country to perform reprehensible acts, it has to deny its own professed values and laws while pretending to uphold them. It calls on its citizens to also deny those values, turn them inside out, deny basic humanity so majorities can participate willingly in atrocity and call it necessary and good. The inside-out values say police killing unarmed black people enhances security for whites; drones killing civilians protects us from terrorists; mass incarceration is a good use of law; unequal distribution of wealth, health care, quality education, jobs and housing is a fair economy; stealing voting rights from minorities is democracy. If we allow our silence to condone such practices, we alienate ourselves from human decency, from respect for other people's lives, from any hope of participatory democracy. We characterize others as enemies and judge them unfit to live or have the opportunities that make full life possible. We murder our own dream.
Our identities can sometimes be fabricated more easily out of lies than from truths. The mainstream culture prefers to move on, choosing to forget rather than examine, live in myth rather than compassion. The alienated people feel responsible to hold on to the truth. The truth is a heavy, awkward, irritating burden in a society which doesn't acknowledge it. Sometimes it seems that carrying the truth of history is like pulling a very long freight train as it struggles for miles and miles on an uphill grade. The engine labors, overheats. The engineer is tempted to uncouple 400 years of overloaded boxcars. Who cares? Certainly not the perpetrators of the injustices. They say, Just let it go; dragging all that history is slowing progress. They mean profit.
That's why these ongoing affirmations are so important. If we jettison the past, we betray the past. All those boxcars shunted off to oblivion tell us who we are. Not who we think we'd like to be, but who we really are. Only by examining that history together, can we move into the future together. The true story is humbling, but it's the only one that unites us.
Stay in the streets.
"President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice," said the head of one watchdog group.
With preparations to refit a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One "underway," a press freedom group sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Monday for failing to release the DOJ memorandum about the legality of President Donald Trump accepting the $400 million "flying palace."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed the lawsuit seeking the memo, which was reportedly approved by the Office of Legal Counsel and signed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
FPF had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memo on May 15, and the DOJ told the group that fulfilling it would take over 600 days.
"How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
"It shouldn't take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document," said Lauren Harper, FPF's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, in a Monday statement. "How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
The complaint—filed in the District of Columbia—notes that the airplane is set to be donated to Trump's private presidential library foundation after his second term. Harper said that "the government's inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption."
It's not just FPF sounding the alarm about the aircraft. The complaint points out that "a number of stakeholders, including ethics experts and several GOP lawmakers, have questioned the propriety and legality of the move, including whether acceptance of the plane would violate the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause... which prohibits a president from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress."
Some opponents of the "comically corrupt" so-called gift stressed that it came after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Despite some initial GOP criticism of the president taking the aircraft, just hours after the Trump administration formally accepted the jet in May, U.S. Senate Republicans thwarted an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
"Although President Trump characterized the deal as a smart business decision, remarking that it would be 'stupid' not to accept 'a free, very expensive airplane,' experts have noted that it will be costly to retrofit the jet for use as Air Force One, with estimatesranging from less than $400 million to more than $1 billion," the complaint states.
As The New York Times reported Sunday:
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where "black budgets" are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects—the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles...
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel.
Preparations to refit the plane "are underway, and floor plans or schematics have been seen by senior U.S. officials," according to Monday reporting by CBS News. One unnamed budget official who spoke to the outlet also "believes the money to pay for upgrades will come from the Sentinel program."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said Monday that "President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice."
"This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose," Chukwu added. "The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered."
The complaint highlights that "Bondi's decision not to recuse herself from this matter, despite her links to the Qatari government, adds to a growing body of questionable ethical practices that have arisen during her short tenure as attorney general."
It also emphasizes that "the Qatari jet is just one in a list of current and prospective extravagant donations to President Trump's presidential library foundation that has raised significant questions about the use of private foundation donations to improperly influence government policy."
"Notably, ABC News and Paramount each agreed to resolve cases President Trump filed against the media entities by paying multimillion-dollar settlements to the Trump presidential library foundation, with Paramount's $16 million agreed payout coming at the same time it sought government approval for a planned merger with Skydance," the filing details. "On July 24, the Federal Communications Commission announced its approval of the $8 billion merger."
"The Trump regime just handed Christian nationalists a loaded weapon: your federal workplace," said one critic.
The Trump administration issued a memo Monday allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, a move welcomed by many conservatives but denounced by proponents of the separation of church and state.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo "provides clear guidance to ensure federal employees may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation."
"Employees must be allowed to engage in private religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in nonreligious private expression," the memo states.
Federal workers "should be permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of a religiously significant nature, including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages, and other indicia of religion (such as crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs) on their desks, on their person, and in their assigned workspaces," the document continues.
"Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature," OPM said—without elaborating on what constitutes harassment.
"These shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing."
"Employees may also encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage coworkers participate in other personal activities," the memo adds.
OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that "federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career."
"This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths," Kupor added. "Under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined."
The OPM memo was widely applauded by conservative social media users—although some were dismayed that the new rules also apply to Muslims.
Critics, however, blasted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called "a gift to evangelicals and the myth of 'anti-Christian bias.'"
FFRF co-president Laurie Gaylor said that "these shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing, but worse still, allow supervisors to evangelize underlings and federal workers to proselytize the public they serve."
"This is the implementation of Christian nationalism in our federal government," Gaylor added.
The Secular Coalition for America denounced the memo as "another effort to grant privileges to certain religions while ignoring nonreligious people's rights."
Monday's memo follows another issued by Kupor on July 16 that encouraged federal agencies to take a "generous approach" to evaluating government employees who request telework and other flexibilities due to their religious beliefs.
The OPM directives follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Groff v. DeJoy ruling, in which the court's right-wing majority declared that Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "requires an employer that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The new memo also comes on the heels of three religion-based executive orders issued by Trump during his second term. One order established a White House Faith Office tasked with ensuring religious organizations have a voice in the federal government. Another seeks to "eradicate" what Trump claims is the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." Yet another created a Religious Liberty Commission meant to promote and protect religious freedom.
Awda Hathaleen was described as "a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people."
A Palestinian peace activist has been fatally shot by a notorious Israeli settler who was once the subject of sanctions that were lifted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, Awda Hathaleen—an English teacher, activist, and former soccer player from the occupied West Bank—was detained alongside his cousin Eid at the airport in San Francisco, where they were about to embark on an interfaith speaking tour organized by the California-based Kehilla Community Synagogue.
Ben Linder, co-chair of the Silicon Valley chapter of J Street and the organizer of Eid and Awda's first scheduled speaking engagement told Middle East Eye that he'd known the two cousins for 10 years, describing them as "true nonviolent peace activists" who "came here on an interfaith peace-promoting mission."
Without explanation from U.S. authorities, they were deported and returned to their village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.
On Monday afternoon, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) reported on social media that Awda Hathaleen had been killed after Israeli settlers attacked his village and that a relative of his was also severely injured:
Activists working with Awda report that Israeli settlers invaded Umm al-Kheir with a bulldozer to destroy what little remains of the Palestinian village. As Awda and his family tried to defend their homes and land, a settler opened fire—both aiming directly and shooting indiscriminately. Awda was shot in the chest and later died from his injuries after being taken by an Israeli ambulance. His death was the result of brutal settler violence.
Later, when Awda's relative Ahmad al-Hathaleen tried to block the bulldozer, the settler driving it ran him over. Ahmad is now being treated in a nearby hospital.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz later confirmed these events, adding:
An eyewitness reported that the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian private lands, riding an excavator, caused a commotion, and the vehicle subsequently struck a resident named Ahmad Hathaleen. "People lost their minds, and the children threw stones," he said.
A friend and fellow activist, Mohammad Hureini, posted the video of the attack online. The settler who fired the gun has been identified by Haaretz as Yinon Levi, who has previously been hit—along with other settlers—with sanctions by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration and other governments over his past harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the Biden State Department wrote at the time:
Levi consistently leads a group of settlers who attack Palestinians, set fire to their fields, destroy their property, and threaten them with further harm if they do not leave their homes.
The sanctions were later lifted by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, they'd already been rendered virtually ineffective after the intervention of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements.
Brooklyn-based journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has covered other cases of settler violence for Zeteo described Levi as "a known terrorist who's been protected by the Israeli government for years," adding that, "One of the only good things Biden did for Palestine was sanction him."
Violence by Israeli settlers in the illegally-occupied West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent 21-month military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers during that time. More than 6,400 have been forcibly displaced following the demolition of their homes by Israel, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The killing of Awda Hathaleen—who had a wife and three young children—has been met with outpourings of grief and anger from his fellow peace activists in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.
Issa Amro, the Hebron-based co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements, described Awda as a "beloved hero."
"Awda stood with dignity and courage against oppression," Amro said. "His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice."
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who last year directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, described Awda Hathaleen as "a remarkable activist," and thanked him for helping his team shoot the film in Masafer Yatta.
"To know Awda Hathaleen is to love him," said the post from JVP announcing his death. "Awda has always been a pillar amongst his family, his village and the wider international community of activists who had the pleasure to meet Awda."
Israeli-American peace activist Mattan Berner-Kadish wrote: "May his memory be a revolution. I will remember him smiling, laughing, dreaming of a better future for his children. We must make it so."