Friends,
My friend Awdah was shot and killed by an extremist settler last week. I’m asking for your help to make some meaning of it.
Awdah was raising three young kids in the South Hebron Hills. Since he was a teenager, he’d been committed to nonviolent advocacy against Israeli military occupation and extremist settlers who have spent decades trying to push his community from their land.
He taught English to his neighbors. Organized his community. Filmed and shared videos of settler attacks. He proudly worked on the Oscar-winning documentary, No Other Land.
I met him on a J Street trip six years ago to Umm al-Khair, where many of you reading this might’ve met Awdah as well. We organized a WhatsApp group of Palestinians and American Jews so we could work together to expose settler violence and press for action.
It was through that group that I got the message – and video – I’d long been dreading: “Awdah was shot by a settler. Please pray for him.”
We’re used to pretty grim videos through the group chat, but this was the hardest yet. It shows an extremist settler – Yinon Levi – shooting Awdah in cold blood. You can hear the anguished screams from his friends.
This settler is infamous. He was sanctioned by President Biden for his role in numerous violent attacks. And one of President Trump’s first acts in office was to lift those sanctions.
The week before Awdah’s shooting, our group had been lobbying Members of Congress to codify those sanctions into law by co-sponsoring the West Bank Violence Prevention Act.
My ask of you today is to stand with Awdah Hathaleen’s family and community and make two phone calls: One to the Israeli Embassy and another to your Member of Congress.
Message guide for the Israeli Embassy (202-364-5500, Press ‘9’ for the military attaché). Please note that the Embassy reopens tomorrow, and you will only be able to share your message during operating hours.
- I’m a Jewish / pro-Israel American outraged by the killing of Awdah Hathaleen;
- His body must be returned to his family so that he may be buried in his community;
- Members of his community must be released from arbitrary detention;
- Yinon Levi and other violent settlers must be held to account in criminal trials;
- Israel must end unlawful demolitions and settlements in the West Bank.
Message guide for Representative Holmes Norton's Office: 202-225-8050. If your Member of Congress has already co-sponsored, please call to say thank you.
- I’m a Jewish / pro-Israel constituent in [town/city];
- I want Representative Holmes Norton to co-sponsor the West Bank Violence Prevention Act;
- I support more efforts to provide deterrence and justice in the West Bank;
- I want to see strong leadership to end the war in Gaza, get hostages home and surge humanitarian aid.
If you called and left a message, confirm your call here >>
Friends – Please don’t doubt that your stories and your relationships with your Members of Congress can make a difference. I know that they can.
Just a few weeks ago, Awdah flew to the United States at the invitation of the Palestinian solidarity committee at Kehilla Community Synagogue. Despite a valid visa, Awdah was detained and deported – and never made it to his meetings with Members of Congress.
When I told one of those members what had happened – that Awdah had been shot and killed by one of the very settlers he had tried to come to Capitol Hill to talk about – they co-signed the West Bank Violence Prevention Act that same day.
We can’t stay silent. We have to speak out. Please take two minutes to call Representative Holmes Norton and the Israeli Embassy.
Almost a year before his death, Awdah wrote an article titled In Umm al-Khair, the occupation is damning us to multigenerational trauma. In it, he described the demolitions that leveled his village and how, after Israeli forces destroyed 11 homes, his young son began to stutter.
A doctor told him the best treatment was a safe environment, but Awdah knew he couldn’t give that to his children. In Umm al-Khair, no one can.
Now Awdah’s children – who loved him so, so dearly – will have to brave this place without him. They’ll grow up under military occupation, settler mobs trying to steal their land, bulldozers flattening homes, farms and water tanks. And they’ll have to do it without their father, a man who stood for nonviolence, justice and hope.
His memory truly is a blessing, and let’s honor it by recommitting ourselves to the cause of peace, humanity, courage and action.
Yours in grief,
Ben Linder
J Street Board Member
