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AWDAH HATHALEEN SHOWED ME HOW TO IMAGINE FREEDOM  
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Sam Stein
August 7, 2025
The Progressive
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_ How my recently martyred friend and fellow activist changed the
course of my life and the lives of countless others. _

Awdah Hathaleen speaks to a group of children in Umm al-Kheir,
(Photo: Sam Stein)

 

_AUTHOR__’S NOTE: On July 28, Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen
was __shot and killed_
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by an Israeli settler named Yinon Levi, who is __under sanctions_
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by the United Kingdom, the __European Union_
[[link removed]]_,
France, and Canada for his attacks on Palestinians. He had also been
sanctioned by the Biden Administration before the sanctions were
__lifted_
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by President Donald Trump. Levi was in the West Bank village of Umm
al-Kheir __trespassing on_
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private Palestinian agricultural land at the time of the shooting. He
__shot_
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Awdah in the chest from more than 100 feet away. Levi was arrested by
the Israeli police, but quickly released under house arrest, from
which he has also been released. In the time since he was freed, the
settler __returned_
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to the __Palestinian land_
[[link removed]]_ in Umm
al-Kheir on which he killed Awdah._

Awdah, who co-directed the Oscar-winning documentary
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_No Other Land_, was married with three kids and spent his adult life
working as an English teacher in the local elementary school. He grew
up in Area C [[link removed]] of the West Bank,
which is under full Israeli control according to the Oslo Accords.
Almost every home in Umm al-Kheir has a demolition order
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from the Israeli army and faces constant Israeli settler and military
violence. The Israeli Carmel settlement has been encroaching
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on the village’s land ever since its establishment in 1980. Awdah,
influenced by local nonviolent activists, most notably his uncle Haj
Suleiman Hathaleen
[[link removed]],
engaged in nonviolent resistance. He was fond of saying, “it’s
impossible to be Palestinian and not be an activist.”

My immediate thought when Awdah sat in Umm al-Kheir’s communal tent
and relived his constant oppression was how impressive it was that he
could so patiently and kindly share his lived experience with all
these international Jews, who, upon landing in the region, had more
rights than he did. Many of them, like me, were going through the
process of unlearning Zionism, and there he was, bearing his soul to
people who, to some extent or another, had embraced the ideology that
was oppressing him. Nothing could sum him up better.

Over the next half a decade, as I kept returning to Umm al-Kheir, now
leading tours with All That’s Left
[[link removed]] and Rabbis for Human Rights
[[link removed]], my relationship with Awdah blossomed.
Every time I brought a tour group to the village, I would watch as the
participants played with local children and listened to Awdah speak
about what it was like to live in the West Bank under Israeli
occupation, about life in Umm al-Kheir—the good, the bad, and the
ugly. Almost every one of them would approach me after and marvel at
how eloquently he spoke. The more this happened, the more it filled me
with pride—not only in my friend, but also in our friendship being
so visible that people felt the need to share this with me.

Expand

Awdah Hathaleen and other residents of Umm al-Kheir give Sam Stein a
keffiyeh at the end of his six months living in the village. Photo:
Sam Stein.

Our relationship, and my quickly-growing bond with the community in
Umm al-Kheir, eventually led me to start the Masafer Yatta Wrestling
Club
[[link removed]].
Everyone else saw it as a quirky pet project, but Awdah, who dared to
dream that better things are possible, saw an opportunity to provide
the children of Umm al-Kheir with the outlet for recreation that they
deserved. He was just as passionate as I was about providing them with
a rigorous practice schedule, bringing in guest coaches from other
Palestinian towns, and integrating them into the established
Palestinian wrestling league
[[link removed]].
Even when the latter effort was unsuccessful, he reveled in the
opportunity to provide the children with space for recreation.

In August 2024, I decided I wanted to move from Jerusalem, where I had
been living for five years, and— instead of driving down once or
twice a week to visit—live in Masafer Yatta full time to center
activism in my daily life, improve my Arabic, and deepen my
relationship with the people there. There were other Palestinian
villages in the region I could have moved to, but it never crossed my
mind to go anywhere other than Umm al-Kheir, where Awdah always made
it clear that activists were wanted and needed for “protective
presence,” a community protection strategy in which activists
(usually Jewish activists, often those with Israeli citizenship) are
present in Palestinian communities in the hopes that our presence will
mitigate settler violence and military activity. 

I made the move, and very quickly stopped feeling like “Sam, the
activist” and started feeling like “Sam, the resident of Umm
al-Kheir.” Whatever time wasn’t spent documenting settlers
harassing residents and stealing the village’s water, I spent
hanging out in the community space, smoking hookah, and drinking
coffee.

Living in Umm al-Kheir wasn’t just about activism—it was about
showing the world that Jews and Palestinians could live together
without checkpoints and soldiers, that Israel’s claim that it
maintains its oppressive apartheid regime in the name of safety was a
lie. Nobody proved that better than Awdah, who was ecstatic when I
told him I wanted to move to Umm al-Kheir, and who regularly told
visitors—so many of them Jewish—on their second visit that they
were no longer guests, but friends who were expected to join the
family for dinner and spend the night. 

Awdah was almost as excited as I was when his mom and one of his
nephews began calling me by their family name, “Sam Hathaleen.” He
started quizzing his nieces, nephews, and other children: “What’s
Sam’s name?” And it stuck. I was a Hathaleen. Nobody else in the
world could turn an upper class, suburban, white American Jew into
“just one of the guys” in a tiny Bedouin Palestinian village under
Israeli occupation in the West Bank.

When so many Palestinians are, understandably, just trying to stay
alive and make it to the end of the day, Awdah thought about building
a movement and creating a better future for his own children and his
students. Part of our bond came from this shared ambition, though I
had substantially more privilege to do so. After his murder
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I cannot pretend my hope hasn’t wavered. But, in Awdah’s honor, I
will cling onto the idea that a better future is possible, and that
his children will grow up in that future. May the next generation not
have to work as he did to imagine freedom.

_Sam Stein is a Jewish-American activist based in Jerusalem. For more,
follow him on Instagram and Twitter @sam_avraham._

_Since 1909, The Progressive has aimed to amplify voices of dissent
and those under-represented in the mainstream, with a goal of
championing grassroots progressive politics. Our bedrock values are
nonviolence and freedom of speech._

_Based in Madison, Wisconsin, we publish on national politics,
culture, and events including U.S. foreign policy; we also focus on
issues of particular importance to the heartland. Two flagship
projects of The Progressive include Public School Shakedown
[[link removed]], which covers efforts
to resist the privatization of public education, and The Progressive
Media Project [[link removed]], aiming to diversify our
nation’s op-ed pages. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization._

* Palestine
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* West Bank
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* Awdah Hathaleen
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* No Other Land
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