Why US is complicit in the murder of Palestinian boy in Illinois

Only two weeks after his sixth birthday, Palestinian boy Wadea al Fayoume was murdered in his Plainfield, Illinois apartment. He was living there with his mother Hanaan Shahin, 32.

The murderer is the apartment landlord Joseph Czuba, 71. Before stabbing Al Fayoume to death last weekend with a “military-style knife” (well over 20 times), Czuba – having just arrived at the apartment – tried to first attack Shahin with the knife while yelling “you Muslims must die!”

Such heinous cruelty is further compounded by the fact that Shahin pleaded with Czuba that he consider peace over violence. Instead he chose hate, snuffing the life of a defenceless boy who he saw as the “enemy”.

It would not be a far stretch if in future legal proceedings it is determined that Czuba killed Al Fayoume specifically because he was Palestinian, in addition to being Muslim. This is not only because he’s already received various murder and hate crime charges.

It’s also because of the anti-Palestinian climate that’s been created in America, intensified since Israel began its ongoing attack on Gaza, October 7. From that time American media, such as incendiary outlets like the New York Post that routinely demean Palestinians as “savage” or “primitive”, and American politicians, such as US President Joe Biden falsely claiming to have seen “confirmed pictures” of babies beheaded by Hamas, have stoked animosity towards Palestinians.

Accordingly, Osama Abu Irshaid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), stated at a press conference, preceding the funeral service for Al-Fayoume: “The criminals who perpetrated this crime against Wadea…is not the person who stabbed him alone”.

They are also the aforementioned media and politicians, emboldening the likes of Czuba to see Palestinians (and Czuba knew Al Fayoume was Palestinian), the majority of whom are Muslim, as a “threat”, “dangerous”, a “non-human being” who does not even deserve to live peacefully in their own apartment.

This of course parallels how Israel views Palestinians in Gaza, where they have been relentlessly bombing and massacring civilians who had nothing whatsoever to do with the violent Hamas attack on Israel earlier this month.

In the distorted view of Czuba and Israel alike the Palestinian is a “liability”, prone by their very nature to destroy the lives of Israelis and so must be “neutralised”.

The sheer racism underlying this is nauseating.

Holding both American media and politicians responsible for their role in intensifying the anti-Palestinian climate in the US, Abu Irshaid made two demands at the conference.

The first calls on Biden “to walk back and to apologise for using debunked stories [that vilify Palestinians in American media]. He has not apologised yet”.

Abu Irshaid rightfully added that “the White House walked back that statement by him. But for him to claim that he's seen it with his own eyes and not to apologise for it, that will continue to promote anger and to charge bigoted people to commit more crimes”.

There is a disturbing subtext here to which Abu Irshaid alludes, namely that there are people – in America and beyond – who feel they have “permission” from those in power to, endorsing their own feelings of bigotry, act in a hateful manner.

In the extreme this amounts to what Czuba did. But we also see it where, on and offline, people don’t think twice about outwardly expressing Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. For what they should be ashamed of, let alone unnecessarily harming others, they do with an air of confidence, pride, as if it’s “right” because, if only indirectly, power has declared it permissible.

“[Biden] also needs to come out and state clearly that American people have the right to speak out against Israeli atrocities,” said Abu Irshaid, making the second demand.

Irshaid said speaking out against Israeli atrocities does not make anyone an extremist "as the media is trying to portray it".

"We are standing for human rights, and the Palestinian people deserve to be afforded and extended the same human rights that we [all] enjoy”.

So far Biden has hardly heeded anything like this demand. Instead he overwhelmingly sides with Israel in what he says publicly and through his obscene military support (upwards of three billion American dollars annually) for Israel, which – in contrast to speaking out Israeli atrocities – only fuels them, specifically against the Palestinians.

Like other Western leaders, he’s nowhere on record issuing any substantive condemnations of attacks against Palestinians and their allies – be they journalists, educators, scholars – for simply speaking up for Palestine, as when making wholly legitimate criticisms of Israel for its heinous attacks on Palestinian people.

Instead they’re left to fend for themselves when Israeli lobbyists, for example, pressure employers to fire these same persons, effectively punishing them for doing what’s morally correct and ultimately what we, given our shared humanity, are called to do: challenge Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people – in all its forms.

Where the public, including would-be murderers of Palestinian children in America, see that power largely fails to hold accountable those who persecute others for expressing solidarity with Palestine – thereby honouring the rights, freedom, and dignity to which every person is entitled – they are at-risk of internalising the spurious (and of course offensive) view that Palestinians and their allies don’t matter.

If America is truly a democracy it will do everything it can to counteract this. Arguably, allowing such ignorance to fester only increases the chances that, echoing Abu Irshaid’s troubling but important message, Palestinian children will again be killed.

Whether on American soil or elsewhere, that should never happen at all.