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The Israel-Gaza was is also affecting community relations in other countries.

Human rights groups in the US say there has been a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian bias.

The US Department of Education has launched more than 60 investigations into educational establishments. This includes Harvard University which is being investigated for alleged failure to protect both its Jewish and its pro-Palestinian students.

Just this past weekend, a Palestinian-American man was stabbed in Austin, Texas, in what's been described as a "bias-motivated incident".

In November last year, the month after Hamas killed hundreds in southern Israel, three Palestinian students were shot in Burlington at the University of Vermont.

So just what effect are such attacks having on individuals and Palestinian communities?

Newsday spoke to the mother of one of the students shot in Vermont. Elizabeth Price's son, Hisham Awartani, is now a paraplegic.

"I think of what happened in Burlington as being a lightening strike from a national weather storm. Burlington itself is a safe, kind place. But the man who shot those three boys was acting because the nation as a whole had spent weeks dehumanising Palestinians."

(Pic: Hisham Awartani (centre) and his father, Ali Awartani, and mother, Elizabeth Price; Credit: Elizabeth Price)

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