Over the weekend, as reported by outlets including the Washington Post, a Palestinian American six-year-old, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was killed in a stabbing rampage by his family’s landlord, who apparently had grown more and more radicalized into Islamophobia while watching coverage of the ongoing warring in Israel and Palestine. The boy's mother, Hanaan Shahin, was also stabbed and remains hospitalized in critical condition.
According to relatives who spoke to WaPo, for the previous two years, the family has lived in a suburban Chicago home rented to them by 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, who had previously been kind to Al-Fayoume, building him a tree house and buying him toys. The boy had just celebrated his sixth birthday a few weeks ago.
On the morning of October 14, Czuba knocked on the family's door. When Shahin answered, Czuba proceeded to attack her with a “serrated military-style knife while yelling anti-Muslim statements.” In text messages Shahin sent to her family during the attack, she said that Czuba had attempted to choke her and yelled, “You Muslims must die!” Shahin, 32, hid in the bathroom of the home to call 911; when she emerged, Czuba was stabbing Al-Fayoume, who later died of 26 stab wounds.
In a statement, the local sheriff’s office said that Czuba has been charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery, and two counts of hate crimes, determining that “both victims in this brutal attack were targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslims and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.”
On Sunday night, the Department of Justice announced it will investigate these events as a federal-level hate crime. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement, “This incident cannot help but further raise the fears of Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian communities in our country with regard to hate-fueled violence.”
As of this writing on October 16, 2,750 Palestinians civilians and 1,300 Israeli civilians have been killed since October 7. According to Al-Jazeera, there are over 1,000 Palestinians currently believed to be missing under the rubble from buildings felled by airstrikes from Israel’s military.
Al-Fayoume and Shahin’s family members told the media they had already been fearful over the attacks on Gaza, but they hadn’t realized it might impact them closer to home. But law enforcement in cities across the country — and now, the Illinois State Police — have been on alert for days, anticipating Islamophobic and antisemitic attacks in the wake of the situation in Gaza; advocacy groups told the AP they’ve noticed an uptick in “hateful and threatening rhetoric on social media.”
“This atmosphere has created a monster out of a normal man who once built a treehouse,” said Ahmed Rehab, part of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Illinois, during a news conference on October 15. "What we have is a murdered Palestinian child by someone who is radicalized by the environment in which we live right now, that casts Palestinians as human animals." The phrase “human animals” refers to its use by Israel Prime Minister Yoav Gallant, who claimed Israelis were fighting “human animals” in response to the October 7 Hamas attacks.
Many have drawn comparisons to the Islamophobia that boomed under the Bush administration after 9/11, and highlighted how current dehumanizing rhetoric, if not stopped, may lead to further attacks. As reported by NPR in 2018, “History shows when dehumanizing language is repeated, people start seeing their fellow human beings as subhuman.”
Officials in Illinois have condemned the killing. “Wadea should be heading to school in the morning. Instead, his parents will wake up without their son. This wasn’t just a murder; this was a hate crime,” said Governor JB Pritzker in a statement on October 15. “Every single Illinoisan —including our Muslim, Jewish, and Palestinian neighbors — deserves to live free from the threat of such evil.” Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson echoed these sentiments on October 16.
President Biden, whose administration has so far supported Israel’s full-scale military response to the Hamas attack, released a statement on October 15 condemning Al-Fayoume's killing and Islamophobia generally. Biden seems aware and critical of what experts warn could be a “bloodbath” should Israel proceed with a ground invasion in Gaza.
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