Bay Area Jews who knew Palestinian activist Awdah Hathaleen personally are reeling from the news that he was shot and killed on Monday in the West Bank, reportedly during a confrontation with Israeli settlers.
Hathaleen, 31, was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land.”
The father of three was also one of two men from the village of Umm al-Khair who in June were detained at San Francisco International Airport and deported after arriving in the U.S. for a speaking tour, including a stop at Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont.
Palo Alto resident Ben Linder has traveled to Umm al-Khair, south of Hebron, every year since 2019. Between visits, he kept in touch with Hathaleen and other villagers through WhatsApp.
At 5 a.m. Monday, Linder woke up to alarming messages from Hathaleen.
“URGENT CALL: the settlers are working behind our houses, they tried to cut the main water pipe for the community,” Hathaleen wrote in a message reviewed by J. “We need everyone who can make something to act, if you can reach people like the congress, please do everything.”
“If they cut the pipe, the community here will literally be without any drop of water,” Hathaleen continued. It was the last message Linder received.
Later that day, Hathaleen was struck by gunfire and transported to an Israeli hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Linder, co-chair of J Street’s Silicon Valley chapter, told J. that he immediately alerted J Street’s staff in Washington, D.C., as well as U.S. Reps. Ro Khanna and Sam Liccardo, both of the Bay Area, about the confrontation happening in Umm al-Khair.
“I feel a mixture of sadness and anger,” Linder said Tuesday. “The sadness is that a revered leader of that community was gunned down. And the anger is at the government of Israel for enabling this. At [far-right Finance Minister] Bezalel Smotrich, for arming these settlers and giving them carte blanche to abuse the Palestinian population.”
Hathaleen had long documented life in Masafer Yatta, a cluster of Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills that face displacement due to Israeli military zoning and settlement expansion, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Footage he filmed was featured in “No Other Land,” the 2024 documentary co-directed by Palestinian and Israeli activists that won Best Documentary Feature at the Academy Awards earlier this year.
Israeli police detained Israeli settler Yinon Levi, 26, as the suspect in Monday’s shooting. He was later released and placed under house arrest, JTA reported. Yinon was among some 20 individuals who had been sanctioned by the Biden administration for alleged acts of violence against Palestinians. President Donald Trump lifted those sanctions shortly after he took office, according to a January announcement from the Treasury Department.
Hathaleen and his cousin landed in the U.S. on June 11 to start a speaking tour across the country. Upon arrival at San Francisco International Airport, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained the two men, revoked their tourist visas and deported them the following day.
Kehilla, one of the organizations that had sponsored their tourist visas, would have been the first stop on the tour. Some synagogue members have been in communication with Hathaleen and other villagers from Umm al-Khair for the past few years, sending food packages and raising funds for a summer camp.
When customs officers contacted Kehilla member and immigration attorney Phillip Weintraub to notify him that the pair had been detained, they refused to disclose the reason, he said.
Since then, Weintraub told J., Hathaleen and his cousin remained determined to return and meet some of the American activists they had been in contact with virtually but had never met in person.
Weintraub, who heads Face-to-Face: A Jewish-Palestinian Reparations Alliance at Kehilla, said he personally had hundreds of communications with Hathaleen and was heartbroken they never had the opportunity to meet.
“It’s kind of inconceivable,” he told J. “All of us at Face-to-Face are all still in shock and grieving and can’t quite believe this happened.”