At the Peacock Network, facts got in the way of a compelling story and an even better narrative.
So they just omitted those pesky facts altogether.
TOM LLAMAS: For the first time Hisham Awartani, the Palestinian-American college student who was shot and paralyzed, is telling his story. How he and his two friends were ambushed on a November night in Burlington, Vermont. He says, because of racism.
HISHAM AWARTANI: Growing up in Palestine, this is something that I already -- I’d always thought was possible.
LLAMAS: But did you think it’d happen here?
AWARTANI: Not really, no. I definitely expected it would happen to me in, like, in the West Bank, in Palestine. But not in Vermont.
It was racism, you see. The other shooting victim featured in the report, Kinnan Abdalhamid, went right up to the edge of attributing the shooting to systemic racism, saying:
Systematic dehumanization and people would like to focus on him as an individual- “oh, he’s just this one evil guy.” But the truth is, he's a symptom of a larger issue.
Oh there's a larger issue, alright- but isn’t systemic racism.
As our friend Daniel Greenfield (also known by his nom de plume Sultan Knish) reports, the shooter, James Eaton, is AKYCHUALLY a Biden-supporting Hamas sympathizer. As Greenfield writes:
Media outlets, anti-Israel activists and politicians attributed the shootings to the Hamas war. Everyone from Biden and Kamala on down emphasized the “Palestinian” identities of those shot and implied that Eaton had attacked them because he was opposed to the ‘Palestinian’ cause.
In reality, Eaton supported Hamas.
On December 6, Seven Days, a local news outlet known for breaking stories about local politics, revealed that Eaton had tweeted, “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd. They are owed a state. Pay up.”
Responding to an article about a proposed ceasefire, he wrote, “What if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?”
Needless to say, these are NOT the words of an Islamophobe. That didn’t stop anyone from using this shooting in order to further the “Islamophobia” narrative that flowed from the White House and leftwing media subsequent to Hamas’ barbaric attack in southern Israel.
You just know that if this shooter were in fact an Islamophobe, his writings would be all over the news for all to see. But both the shooter and his writings have vanished from public view, in a manner not unlike the Nashville school shooter, whose trannifesto is still unavailable to the public after nearly 10 months.
The media broadly, and NBC specifically, WANT you to think Vermont was about Islamophobia, just as they wanted you to think that the Pulse shooting by an ISIS adherent was about homophobia despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Beware active disinformation disguised as news.
Click “expand” to view the full transcript of the aforementioned report as aired on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, January 17th, 2024:
LESTER HOLT: That brings us to our exclusive with two Palestinian college students who were shot and wounded in November while walking down the street. Our Tom Llamas talked to them about why they believe it happened.
HISHAM AWARTANI: Just… remember gunshots, and falling down.
TOM LLAMAS: For the first time Hisham Awartani, the Palestinian-American college student who was shot and paralyzed, is telling his story. How he and his two friends were ambushed on a November night in Burlington, Vermont. He says, because of racism.
AWARTANI: Growing up in Palestine, this is something that I already -- I’d always thought was possible.
LLAMAS: But did you think it’d happen here?
AWARTANI: Not really, no. I definitely expected it would happen to me, like, in the West Bank, in Palestine. But not in Vermont.
LLAMAS: Hisham (Awartani) and his two best friends, Kinnan Abdalhamid and Tahseen Ali Ahmed, all grew up together in the West Bank- doing everything together, including going to college in the U.S. With the war raging, the friends decided to stay with Hisham's family in Burlington during the Thanksgiving break.
KINNAN ABDALHAMID: Hisham's uncle is driving us from the bowling alley and before we went into the house we decided to walk around the block, which is what we usually do.
AWARTANI: Tahseen and I were both wearing the keffiyeh, like, the traditional Palestinian headscarf, for a variety of reasons. Practically, because it was really cold. But on a more, you know, like, meaningful sense it’s because that we felt, as Palestinians during this time period, it's important for us to show our identity and to show that we exist and that we're human. Just walking along the street, you know, this man comes down the porch, approaches us, pulls out a pistol.
ABDALHAMID: Tahseen was screaming when he was shot first. Hisham didn’t make a sound, was run- as soon as Tahseen started screaming I was running.
LLAMAS: Did you know you were shot?
AWARTANI: I didn't quite process the fact until I, like, looked at my phone and I saw my phone had blood on it. It was, like, yeah. I’d been shot.
911 DISPATCHER: All units be advised. The shooter is unaccounted for.
LLAMAS: The next day, federal agents arrested 48-year-old Jason Eaton, who lives steps from the shooting and had an arsenal of weapons in his apartment. He allegedly told the authorities who arrested him, “I've been waiting for you”. Eaton has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges.
Why do you think he shot at you?
ABDALHAMID: Systematic dehumanization and people would like to focus on him as an individual- “oh, he’s just this one evil guy.” But the truth is, he's a symptom of a larger issue.
LLAMAS: The bullet that hit Hisham struck his spine. Now paralyzed, he's learning how to navigate his new life.
When they told you what your future may look like or at least what the immediate future would look like, what was that moment like?
AWARTANI: I mean, yeah, it's definitely, like, something that's hard but I take solace in the fact that I'm able to receive this care. It makes me think of, like, other people in Gaza who, you know, have been disabled by, like, bombings and, like, they are not able to receive that. I know that my life will continue but I don't know about theirs.
LLAMAS: Tom Llamas, NBC News, Boston.
