Mother of Palestinian boy killed in US says they were targeted for being Muslim

The mother of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy killed in October 2023 in Illinois in a stabbing that authorities called a hate crime testified on Tuesday that her son's alleged attacker said they must die because they were Muslims.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

The trial began on Tuesday for a killing that marked one of the earliest and worst alleged hate crime incidents in the United States since the eruption of US ally Israel's military assault on Gaza after an October 2023 attack by Hamas.

Rights advocates have noted rising Islamophobia and antisemitism.

The family's landlord, Joseph Czuba, 73, was charged with murder and hate crimes and had earlier pleaded not guilty.

Police and prosecutors say he targeted 6-year-old Wadee Alfayoumi and his mother Hanan Shaheen for their religion and as a response to the Israel-Gaza war. Shaheen was stabbed several times but survived.

KEY QUOTES

"He told me 'You, as a Muslim, must die,'" Shaheen testified, according to remarks reported by local media.

Michael Fitzgerald, prosecutor at Will County State's Attorney's Office, presented a 911 call's recording in the trial.

"The landlord is killing me and my baby," the mother said in the recording played in court, according to CBS Chicago. "I am in the bathroom waiting for you."

Czuba did not speak on Tuesday. Alfayoumi was stabbed 26 times with a military-style knife, prosecutors said.

CONTEXT

Other US incidents raising alarm over anti-Arab bias include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas, the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters in California a Florida shooting of two Israeli visitors whom a suspect mistook to be Palestinians and a Vermont shooting of three Palestinian American students.

Incidents raising alarm over antisemitism include threats of violence against Jews at Cornell University that led to a conviction and sentencing, an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York Jewish centre, vandalisation of Jewish properties, and physical assaults against a Jewish man in Michigan, a rabbi in Maryland and two Jewish students in Chicago.