Relatedly, when Jason J. Eaton shot three Palestinian students—Hisham Awartani, Tahseen Ali Ahmad, and Kinnan Abdalhamid—in Vermont in November 2023, reports explained that they were targeted because they were Palestinians who were wearing kaffiyehs and speaking a mixture of English and Arabic. While some news outlets named the violence as anti-Arab racism, others explained that it occurred in the context of a rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism resulting from the “Israel-Hamas war.” In other words, despite their identities as Palestinians being the primary motive behind Eaton's crime, Islamophobia is the default framework in place in the US mainstream to talk about violence against Palestinians and Arabs.

XREF: Connects to broader debates about how media frames violence against Arabs and Palestinians versus how those targeted describe it. Builds on: "The war on Gaza targets Palestinians across religious faiths, not only Muslims"

Evelyn Alsultany, Antisemitism and Islamophob…, loc. 17