A shooting took place near downtown Burlington, VT yesterday evening, resulting in serious injuries to three young Palestinian students. The quiet progressive town, home of senator and former mayor Bernard Sanders, was the site of an attack targeting three young Palestinian men for the crime of speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyas, which is clear enough motive for someone like me, but perhaps not enough for local cops to officially declare it a hate crime. Police have yet to identify a suspect in the shooting, which I can only imagine upsets and angers the community further. The condition of the three Palestinian men is also currently unknown.
The fact that no shooter has been identified can’t come as too much of a surprise. The truth is this shooting comes after a wave of violent rhetoric, abuse, and hate crimes against Palestinians across the US from people at the highest levels of power. We’ve seen no less than a few dozen articles about how Jewish students feel "unsafe” at American universities because of some pro-Palestinian protests, but ask yourself, what would the coverage of this attack look like if these students in Vermont were Jewish?
As we enter the third day of the ‘genocide timeout’, footage of Israeli hostages being released by Palestinian resistance forces seemed to show people in good spirits. The Al-Qassam Brigades released new video yesterday of the second batch of Israeli hostages handed over to the Red Cross/ICRC, possibly as propaganda material, and likely also to provide evidence that they’re holding up their end of the exchange. It’s interesting that the apartheid state chooses to silence these liberated hostages to avoid further public embarrassment, rather than allow them to speak of their treatment under the care of Hamas, which wouldn’t fit the barbaric description Israel provides.
But a ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza never meant a ceasefire everywhere. In fact, during this pause in hostilities in Gaza, the apartheid state of Israel has attacked the occupied West Bank, Lebanon, and even Syria, launching airstrikes near Damascus. Over in the West Bank, the apartheid state continues to kill without impunity. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, at least 237 Palestinians have been killed and about 2,850 injured by Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank since October 7 alone. The violence was never going to stop, the bombs are just directed elsewhere for a few days, then it’ll be back to business as usual.
Side Items
Goodbye Scamtos: New York representative Georgie Santos said in a speech Friday that he expects to be expelled from congress following the recent damning report by the House Ethics Committee that provided substantial evidence of his lawbreaking and general unfitness to serve. In a defiant speech sprinkled with some taunts and obscenities aimed at his congressional rivals, the republican scam queen insisted that he was “not going anywhere”, but he also acknowledged that his time as a member of congress may soon be coming to a close