By Asher Kirchner
(AJNews) – About two weeks ago, on July 28, 2025, a prominent West Bank Palestinian activist-journalist named Awdah Hathaleen was shot to death by an Israeli settler, in the village of Umm al-Khair. I’m a member of the Edmonton Jewish community; I spent three months in that village in 2022, as a volunteer with Center for Jewish Nonviolence (CJNV). I got to know Awdah well. Since my return to Canada, I kept up contact with him through WhatsApp. I want to try to convey the kind of leader he was, so you will understand how devastating his loss will be, to the people of his village and to those working for justice and peace between Israelis and Palestinians.
Umm al-Khair is a village of Bedouins, originally displaced from Arad (inside the Green Line) in 1948. They bought their land, in the Masafer Yatta region of the West Bank, from landowners in Yatta, and optimistically named their new village “Mother of Goodness.” Their livelihood was shepherding. The situation began to change in the 1980’s with the establishment of the Israeli Jewish settlement of Carmel, that seized most of the village’s grazing land. In time, the settlement grew: its perimeter is now metres from the Palestinian’s houses, separated by barbed wire fencing.
To understand Awdah, you have to understand his uncle, Haj Suleiman Hathaleen. People ask, where is the Palestinian Gandhi? Haj Suleiman was just such a Gandhi figure: he championed nonviolent resistance, and inspired generations of Palestinian activists in the region, including the family of Basil Adra, of No Other Land fame, from the neighbouring town of At-Tuwani. Dressed in traditional Bedouin garments, Suleiman showed up for every anti-occupation protest he could get to, not just in his village or his region, but throughout the West Bank. Suleiman and his disciples reached out to Jewish Israeli peace activists and international human rights organizations (Jewish and otherwise), to build a coalition of support for the people of the Masafer Yatta region. In January 2022, Israeli Civil Administration forces entered Umm al-Khair to confiscate a car: the police tow-truck driver ran over Haj Suleiman, killing him, and then fled the scene. This happened just a few weeks before I came to the village, so I never got to meet him. The village was still in deep grief when we arrived.
The leadership of the village’s solidarity-building efforts fell on Suleiman’s nephew Awdah, who was only twenty-eight at the time. Like many of the young men from this poor shepherding village, Awdah had worked hard to earn a university degree. He taught English in the local school. He wrote articles, about his village’s experiences, that appeared in 972mag.com and elsewhere. Once Zoom came into use, he gave webinars that reached international audiences. He hosted and befriended every human rights group that visited his village, explaining the difficulties of life under occupation, as he did for our CJNV cohort. “I go to bed every night not knowing whether I will have a house to sleep in the following night,” he told us, due to Israel’s policy of home demolitions, because the Palestinians are denied building permits. Awdah’s family’s house had been demolished many times, and they rebuilt as best they could. Passing over the heads of the villagers were electric power lines connecting Carmel to a settler-owned chicken farm. “The chickens are connected to the electricity grid,” he wryly observed, “but we Palestinian human beings are not.” Instead, the villagers of Umm al-Khair rely on generators and solar panels, which intermittently get confiscated or destroyed by the army.
When I first met Awdah, I noticed the old burn scars that disfigured one side of his face, but I forgot about that the minute he started talking. The main things I remember are his warmth, generosity, and playful sense of humour. For example, when Awdah learned it was the birthday of Zak, one of the CJNV activists, he insisted on throwing a feast. He got ahold of a picture of Zak, fleeing (or pretending to) in terror from a flock of sheep, and Awdah presented a birthday cake with the picture printed in the icing.
Awdah’s bitter experiences under occupation could have led him to hate Israelis. But he welcomed Israeli Jewish allies as well as diaspora Jews, as though we were part of his family. He joined our Jewish group in celebrating the Pesach Seder during our stay there. In addition to his activism, Awdah was a dedicated father. When I was there, I rarely saw him as he moved about the village without his son Watan in his arms. In subsequent years, two more children were added to his family.
Things changed after October 2023. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, and Israel’s response, the life for Palestinians in the West Bank, and in Masafer Yatta in particular, became exponentially worse, even though there is no Hamas presence in the region. Army checkpoints proliferated, making travel for Palestinians outside their village slow and dangerous, if not impossible. Soon, the Civil Administration told the villagers of Umm al-Kheir that ALL of their grazing land now belonged to the settlers. They couldn’t raise sheep anymore; they were deprived of their livelihood. The distinction between regular army units and settler militias all but vanished. Awdah kept me informed of what was happening through WhatsApp. According to his texts, settlers, in and out of uniform, began invading the village regularly, breaking into people’s houses — stealing, destroying, attacking and arresting Palestinians, with impunity. These incursions have now become a nearly daily occurrence. I woke up every morning praying there wouldn’t be a text from him alerting us to some new settler outrage.
On Monday July 28, 2025, I began to receive texts from other Jewish activists on the ground in Umm al-Khair, as well as from Awdah’s family: this what they reported. Another group of settlers, accompanied by a bulldozer and soldiers, invaded the village, intending to clear space for a settler-owned olive orchard in the middle of the village, and cutting the water lines to the Palestinian’s houses. A villager was struck and seriously injured by the bulldozer. Unsurprisingly, a confrontation ensued. One settler, Yinon Levi, pulled out a pistol and began shooting. Levi has been sanctioned for his extremist violence by Canada, Britain and the European Union (and the US as well under the Biden administration, but Trump lifted the sanctions). One of the bullets hit Awdah in the chest, killing him. Awdah was only 31 years old, leaving a widow and three little children who don’t understand why they can’t see their father anymore.
As word of Awdah’s killing spread, the villagers erected the traditional mourning tent for those coming to pay their respects and comfort Awdah’s family, as well as journalists trying to cover the story. But the army demanded the mourning tent be taken down. They then moved in with stun grenades, violently driving the mourners and journalists out of the village. The army initially refused to return Awdah’s body to his family for burial. It would only be released if the family agreed to a funeral with no more than fifteen mourners, at night, outside of Umm al-Khair. The family indignantly responded, “Awdah was not a thief, and we will not bury him at night like a thief.” Instead, the women of the village launched a hunger strike. On August 7, 2025, Awdah’s body was finally released. The villagers were able to bury him, just outside of the village, near the school where Awdah taught. In violation of the army’s agreement with the family, many mourners were kept from reaching the funeral.
The alleged killer Yinon Levi was briefly detained but released almost immediately. He continues to return to the village, carrying out further demolitions. About 15 young men from the village were also arrested and held in Ofer military prison for several days; but they too have now all been released.
Now, I find myself struggling to imagine going back to Umm al-Khair without having Awdah there to greet me. There is a gaping hole in my heart now. Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9 teaches that whoever destroys, or saves, a single life, it is as if they had destroyed, or saved, the whole world. I now know what it feels like to have a whole world destroyed – the world that had Awdah Hathaleen in it. How many more entire worlds have been destroyed already; and how many more will yet be destroyed in Israel and Palestine, before we demand that the killing stop?
Oy Awdah, oy humanity.
Thank you for sharing this Asher.
Truly a tragedy and a travesty.
I appreciate how much you were able to share your experience with Awdah – his spirit, his leadership, and his humanity, as well as you sharing the deep impact his murder, and the situationn, has had, and continues to have, on you.
I commend the Alberta Jewish news for publishing this story and implore them to continue to publish more news and stories of Israel and Palestine like this that show the real impact of Israel’s occupation and direct support and enabling of settler(and military)violence against, and control over, Palestinians.
Ayal – born in Israel/palestine and grown and raised in Johannesburg and Edmonton
Powerful testament to the role of person-to-person solidarity between Palestinians and Jews in confronting the evils of this occupation. Thank you for your moral clarity, Asher. I hope communal leadership takes notes.
This is a moving tribute, Asher. I’ve never met Awdah but I did attend virtually his symposium sponsored by Reform for Human Rights in February, 2024. His peaceful resistance to illegal settler occupation of lands conquered in 1967 shone through in that discussion. While much about Israeli-Palestinian relations is complicated, the theft of lands by occupiers is not complicated. It’s a violation of international law, and both Jewish and humanist ethics. Those who support continual occupation for alleged security reasons are clearly lying about their real reasons. Military occupation of others’ lands is not justifiable but might be said to be a touch more benign when you are simply exercising surveillance over a people whom you think might otherwise invade you but not interfering in their daily lives. Israel, since 1967, has instead stolen as much land as it can and in recent years has been doing so at a steroidal rate, leaving almost no land in the hands of the Palestinians. Then Israel claims that it has no “partners for peace” in Palestine. The murder of Awdah by criminal settlers–while they may be motivated by their religious extremism, their unprovoked murder of peace-loving people like Awdah makes them first and foremost just murderers–whom the government of Israel refuses to restrain is the key point that we need to understand when we try to understand what otherwise looks so complex in Israel-Palestine relations. The idea that only Jews should have land “from the river to the sea” is at least as heinous as Hamas’s notion that only observant Muslims should live in that region. Israel needs to withdraw from all of the lands that it has occupied since 1967 or be forced to do so by international pressures. Though the current international picture makes it appear impossible, we need international intervention to force a just peace in a region where, thanks to Israeli intransigence, there is starvation in Gaza, which has been reduced to rubble, and continuing theft of land and dashing of hopes for any kind of real livelihood for the Palestinians of the West Bank.
Thank you for sharing this moving tribute with us. I am so sorry for your loss and our collective loss.
Thank you, Asher, and thank you, Alberta Jewish News. Such a disheartening picture! I believe Israel has lost its way, at least under its current government, which enables these terrible events.