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A PALESTINIAN AMERICAN WAS STABBED IN ‘BIAS-MOTIVATED’ ATTACK IN
AUSTIN  
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Michelle Pitcher
February 6, 2024
Texas Observer
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_ Police are investigating the assault as a potential hate crime as
advocates call for local leaders to back a ceasefire in Gaza. _

A 23-year-old Palestinian-American man was stabbed in the chest
Sunday night in Austin's West Campus area in what community leaders
allege was a hate crime targeting Muslim and pro-Palestinian
activists. (Photo: Bettie Cross),

 

Around 7 p.m. on Sunday, a group of young men drove through Austin’s
West Campus neighborhood, near the University of Texas. They’d
attended a large pro-Palestine rally that afternoon, where several
thousand people gathered outside the state Capitol, waving Palestinian
flags and hoisting signs with calls for a ceasefire in the Gaza
Strip. 

According to family members and local advocates, a white man on a
bicycle approached the young men’s car Sunday evening and attempted
to remove a _keffiyeh_, a headscarf that signals Palestinian
solidarity, from a flag pole attached to the car. The man then
allegedly attacked the car’s occupants, three of whom are
Palestinian-American. Witnesses told the Council on American Islamic
Relations the man pulled out a knife and stabbed one of the
Palestinian Americans; the victim was later identified by his father
as Zacharia Doar.  

The Austin Police Department (APD) arrested 36-year-old Bert James
Baker Sunday night for felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon
in connection with the incident. In a statement
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Tuesday, APD dubbed the attack “bias-motivated.” Baker is being
held at Travis County Jail as of Tuesday afternoon.

APD officials say the department is currently investigating the case
and has asked its Hate Crimes Review Committee to look into the case
before providing more information to prosecutors. “We strongly
condemn all forms of crime, especially those which are bias-motivated
or showing of discrimination,” reads APD’s public statement.

Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza’s office also released a
statement Tuesday about the attack, saying the office “does not
tolerate acts of hate in our community and is committed to holding
people who commit these crimes accountable.” The DA’s office is
working with APD and will review the investigative report when it’s
ready, according to the statement. 

On Sunday, Doar, the stabbing victim, was taken to a hospital, where
he remained Tuesday morning as local leaders and advocates gathered
outside Austin City Hall to condemn a recent wave of violence against
Palestinian-Americans in the United States.

Zacharia’s father, Nizar Doar, stood in the beating sunlight outside
of Austin’s City Hall, addressing reporters and onlookers from a
podium. His son, he said, was recovering from surgery instead of being
home with a 5-month-old son. 

“I stand here begging and asking for the city councilmen, for the
president, for the mayor, for [Goveror] Greg Abbott to call for a
ceasefire,” Doar said. “If y’all took action three months ago,
nobody would have been hurt. This has come to haunt us in our
homeland. It’s come to haunt us in the U.S. It’s come to haunt us
in Texas. This is not acceptable.”

The Council on American Islamic Relations, one of the largest Muslim
advocacy groups in the United States, called on law enforcement to
investigate Sunday’s attack as a hate crime. CAIR National Deputy
Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said in a statement that the
“apparent act of hate in Austin appears to be the latest incident of
hate motivated by the rise of Anti-Palestinian racism and
Islamophobia.” 

In October, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy was fatally
stabbed 
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his family’s landlord in Illinois. The following month, three
Palestinian college students were shot
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Vermont. For months, academics and advocacy groups have warned
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an uptick in domestic threats of violence against Palestinians,
Muslims, and Jewish people as fighting in Gaza continues. 

In December, three Austin city council members—Vanessa Fuentes, Jose
Velasquez, and Zohaib Qadri—released a call for a ceasefire, but the
larger council has not taken official action.

While local leaders hold back
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tens of thousands of Texans have flooded the capital city’s streets
since October in various rallies in support of Palestine amid
Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas, which has claimed the lives of more
than 27,000 Gazans since October, according to the Gaza Health
Ministry. Late last year, the University of Texas dismissed two
teacher’s assistants after they released a statement about mental
health that supported “the rights and autonomy of Palestinians.”
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students protested the punishment, university officials doubled down
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Austin City Council member Zo Qadri, who represents District 9, spoke
at Tuesday’s event. He said he has long feared that against the
backdrop of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, “If the
violence was to come here to Austin, we would see folks in the Jewish
community or Muslim community touched by this violence. And I think
that became a reality on Sunday night.” 

_MICHELLE PITCHER
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writer at the Texas Observer, covering criminal justice, housing, and
education. She received her master’s in journalism from the
University of California, Berkeley and was part of the team at The
Marshall Project that won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.
Her reporting has been featured on NPR, FiveThirtyEight, The Dallas
Morning News, and more. Michelle was born and raised in Dallas and is
now based in Austin._

_The Texas Observer is a progressive nonprofit news outlet and print
magazine covering the Lone Star State. The Observer strives to make
Texas a more equitable place through investigative reporting,
narrative storytelling, and political and cultural coverage and
commentary. We dig beyond the headlines and contextualize news events.
Our essays, reviews, and criticism seek to create a new cultural canon
and challenge existing mythologies._

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