Tuesday, March 04, 2025

Illinois man who killed 6-year-old Palestinian boy found guilty of murder, hate crime

Joseph Czuba, 73, was convicted on Friday for the murder of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, in October 2023. Czuba, who was the boy's landlord, faces life in prison after a jury found him guilty of committing a hate crime.
 February 28, 2025 
MONDOWEISS

6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume (Photo via social media)

On Friday an Illinois man has been found guilty of the murder 6-year-old Palestinian American, in an attack that prosecutors said was influenced by events in the region.

Joseph Czuba, 73, was convicted of first-degree murder for the fatal stabbing of Wadea Al-Fayoume. He also stabbed Wadee’s mother, Hanan Shaheen, but she survived the assault. The killing took place a week after the October 7 Hamas attack and authorities say that Czuba had targeted the family, which had been renting rooms in his house, over their Muslim faith and the fact they were Palestinian.

Al-Fayoume was stabbed 26 times and Czuba reportedly said “All Muslims must die.”
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Days before the attack Czuba had told Shaheen that Muslims were killing Jewish babies and that they had to move out of the house.

“I told him, ‘Pray for peace,’” said Shaheen during her testimony.

“This happened because this defendant was afraid that a war that had started on Oct. 7, 2023, a half a world away in the Middle East, was going to come to his doorstep,” prosecutor Michael Fitzgerald told jurors during his opening statement. “This happened because Hanan and Wadee were Muslim.”

Al-Fayoume’s murder occurred amid repeated calls for the U.S. to destroy Gaza and consistent dehumanizing rhetoric toward Palestinians. In the days after October 7, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has called for Gaza to be “flattened” and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that the Israeli army was fighting against “human animals.”

“We are not animals, we are humans,” Al-Fayoume’s uncle, Yousef Hannon, told reporters shortly after the killing. “We want people to see us as humans, to feel us as humans, to deal with us as humans, because this is what we are.”

“I can’t take this anymore,” wrote Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) on Instagram in response to the attack. “The hate and racist rhetoric coming out of Washington is pushing incendiary, hateful, and dehumanizing anti-Palestinian & anti-Muslim rhetoric that must be called out. Stop it! All of you.”

“Wadea did not deserve his 6 year old body to be mutilated 26 times with a knife,” she continued. “He didn’t deserve his country to have people believe he is sub human. Allah Yerhamo.”

Jurors deliberated for less than 2 hours before delivering the Guilty verdict.

“I don’t know if I should be pleased or upset, if I should be crying or laughing,” said Wadee’s father, Odai Al-Fayoume, through a translator after the trial. “People are telling me to smile. Maybe if I were one of you, I would be smiling. But I’m the father of the child, and I’ve lost the child.”

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