WASHINGTON: The need for healing was felt across America, as the media reported details of the murder of six-year-old Palestinian boy Wadea Al-Fayoume, whose murderer had his first day in a Plainfield, Illinois, court on Monday.

“All must speak out against hate,” wrote The Baltimore Sun, referring to a speech former President George W. Bush made at the Islamic Center of Washington days after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, where he urged Americans not to blame an entire religion and its followers for an act committed by a handful of militants.

Emphasising this point, The Baltimore Sun suggested that the campaign against hate “can start by mourning 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fay­oume,” who loved to play ball, loved to color, loved to swing, loved his family, and who, we surely can all agree, did not deserve to have his life ripped from him, stabbed 26 times“.

The court ordered that 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, who is charged with murder and hate-crime, must be kept behind bars without bail.

Czuba also stabbed Fayoume’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, dozens of times, but she survived the attack and is now in a hospital near Chicago.

“You Muslims have to die,” screamed Czuba, when he barged into the ground-floor apartment that he owned and where his tenants, Fayoume and his parents lived.

“You are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don’t deserve to live,” he shouted as he attacked his victims.

The county’s attorney Michael Fitzgerald said the boy’s mother told investigators that when first confronted by Czuba over the violence in Israel, she told him, “Let’s pray for peace”.

That’s when Shahin said he attacked her with a knife. “He didn’t give her time. He then attacked her with a knife,” Fitzgerald told the court.

On Monday night, people gathered outside Shahin’s hospital, while her son was laid to rest in a Chicago suburb of Bridgeview, where hundreds attended his funeral.

According to court documents, Shahin told police she rents two rooms in Czuba’s house where she lived with her son on the first floor, and Czuba lived on the second floor, according to the documents.

The family “had no reason to suspect what was to occur”, said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Chicago, as Czuba was friendly to the family until the bombing of Gaza began.

“It wasn’t until Czuba started watching the news and hearing the statements that something changed,” he added.

Czuba’s wife, Mary, told police he “listens to conservative talk radio on a regular basis”, and was heavily interested in the recent events happening in Israel.

Czuba told his wife on Wednesday that he wanted Shahin and her family to move out of the home.

Published in Dawn, October 18th, 2023