Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Palestinian American man stabbed leaving protest: ‘Joe Biden, I blame you’

The man was stabbed leaving a pro-Palestinian protest Sunday

A Palestinian American man was stabbed Sunday while leaving a cease-fire protest in Austin, authorities say, the latest in a spate of violent attacks against Muslims in the U.S. during the Israel-Hamas war.

The 23-year-old man, Zacharia Doar, underwent surgery Monday and is expected to recover, according to the Council of American Islamic Relations.

According to CAIR spokesperson Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a group of four demonstrators were leaving the protest in a car when the assailant, who was also driving a car, allegedly spotted a keffiyeh hanging from their window. He then got out of his car and approached the group, uttering racial epithets, including the n-word.

Mitchell said the attacker tried to rip the keffiyeh off of the protesters’ car before pulling one of them out of the vehicle. The group managed to subdue him, but he returned with a knife and stabbed one of them. The protesters again fought him off and police arrived at the scene shortly after.

The Austin Police Department apprehended a suspect at the scene, Bert James Baker, and said the attack appeared to be “bias motivated.” 

Baker was booked for assault with a deadly weapon.

“We’ve seen this story again and again,” Mitchell said, recalling the October killing of six-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume in Chicago and the November shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont. “It is clearly a pattern, and it is clearly, in our view, caused by the rise in anti-Palestinian and anti Muslim rhetoric that has been used to justify the ongoing war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza.

 “It is very difficult to dehumanize Palestinians in Gaza without creating a blowback here on Palestinians and others associated with Palestinians in America,” he added.

A committee will review the facts of the case for possible hate crime charges before making a recommendation to the Travis County District Attorney’s office, which will make a final decision.

At a news conference Tuesday, the victim’s father, Nizar Doar, called on President Biden, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and local officials to call for a cease-fire.

And he shared a message from his son: “Mr. President, Mr. Joe Biden, I blame you. I blame you for what happened to me. If you would have called for a cease-fire three months ago, this would have never happened.”

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.