6-year-old boy Wadea Al-Fayoume was murdered on SaturdayCAIR (via Portal)
Joseph Czuba, 71, had spent the morning listening to far-right radio stations comment on Hamas’ attack on Israel and the country’s military response to the Gaza Strip. He knocked on the door of his Muslim tenants in the basement of their shared house in Plainfield, Illinois, USA. The mother, Hanaan Shahin, opened the door. He told her that he was angry with her because of what was happening in the Middle East. She tried to calm him down. The landlord pulled out a military knife and began attacking her and her six-year-old son, Wadea Al-Fayoume.
Shahin suffered a dozen stab wounds before he managed to escape to the toilet and call the police, he told his relatives. “Muslims must die!” Czuba shouted from outside. When he was able to come out, he found Wadea on his bed. He had suffered 26 stab wounds. He was pronounced dead shortly afterwards. The landlord was charged with two hate crimes: murder, attempted murder and abuse with a deadly weapon.
Hundreds of people attended the little boy’s funeral this Monday in Plainfield. His mother remains hospitalized in serious condition. “This is a terrible day that we wish had never come. “They say the smallest coffins are the heaviest, and that’s true,” Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for the Chicago region, said in a statement.
Muslim and Jewish communities in the United States have denounced an increase in aggressive language following the attack that killed nearly 1,400 people in Israel and that country’s response, whose Gaza bombings left 2,750 dead and 9,700 injured, to the Palestinian Health Ministry . According to figures released by the White House on Monday, the increase in hate crimes against minorities is a clearly increasing trend. Anti-Semitic incidents increased by 25% between 2021 and 2022 and accounted for half of all religiously motivated crimes. Additionally, “Muslim Americans and African Americans continue to make up a disproportionate number of victims.”
“This atrocious crime did not happen just because,” Oussama Jammal of the Mosque Foundation board said in statements to the Chicago Tribune newspaper just before the funeral. “Our media and some officials are acting irresponsibly.”
Rehab, in turn, has also attributed the boy’s death to the dehumanization of Palestinians resulting from certain narratives since the crisis began in the American media and some politicians that are favorable to Israel and unfavorable to the Palestinians. “We need to think about the conditions that make such an act possible,” the activist said. “We must take collective responsibility for how we, as a democratic and civilized country, can have a complex dialogue on a complex issue and not eliminate Palestinian lives and the suffering of the Palestinian people.”
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The FBI has announced the opening of an investigation into the incident and said it “takes hate crime investigations extremely seriously.” He has not provided any further information, suggesting that the case is classified under summary secrecy.
The dead child’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, 32, came to the United States a decade ago fleeing violence in the Palestinian territories. She and her son had lived in the basement of Czuba’s house for two years without incident. The boy celebrated his sixth birthday on October 6, the day before the Hamas attacks.
“Investigators were able to determine that both victims of this brutal attack were selected by the suspect because they were Muslims and because of the current conflict in the Middle East between Hamas and the Israelis,” a police statement said. Czuba was charged with murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and two counts of hate crime and was scheduled to appear in court Monday to have the charges read to him.
The incident was unanimously condemned by the administration and local authorities of the state of Illinois, where Plainfield is located. “This terrible act of hate has no place in the United States. “It attacks our most fundamental values: the freedom not to be afraid based on how we pray, what we believe and who we are,” said US President Joe Biden.
“There is no human world that can or should tolerate the murder of an innocent child because of his or her identity. The tragic events in the Middle East, beginning with the brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas, have re-emerged hate ideologies around the world, particularly anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. That must have an end. The diversity and inclusion that defines the United States must be a priority,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
A CNN poll released this weekend found that almost the entire American population, 96%, feels some level of “compassion” for Israeli citizens following the Hamas attacks. 71% say they feel a lot of compassion. Another large majority, 84%, also say they have these feelings toward the Palestinians, but only 41% admit they have a lot of compassion. Half of those surveyed, 50%, believe that an Israeli military response against Hamas is completely justified. Another 20% consider this to be partially justified. Only 8% think it is unjustified, 21% don’t know or don’t give an answer.
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