Man Sentenced to 53 Years for Stabbing 6-Year-Old Palestinian American to Death

TEMPO.CO - Jakarta - A man in the United States has been sentenced to 53 years in prison for the stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy. He was found guilty of racial hate crime and murder.

Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak announced the decision on Friday, May 2, 2025, as reported by Aljazeera.

The perpetrator, Joseph Czuba, a 73-year-old landlord in Illinois, attacked his tenants, Hanan Shaheen and her young son, Wadee Alfayoumi, a few days after the start of the Israeli genocide in Gaza on October 14, 2023.

The police reported that Czuba arrived at the Palestinian family's home angry about the ongoing war.

He forced his way in, strangled Shaheen, and held her before pulling out a military knife. Shaheen suffered over a dozen stab wounds before fleeing to the bathroom to call 911 for help. Meanwhile, Alfayoumi was stabbed 26 times and did not survive.

During Czuba's trial, audio recordings of Shaheen's 911 emergency call and testimony from his mother were featured. Testifying in English and Arabic, she described Czuba becoming increasingly paranoid and Islamophobic as the Israeli attacks on Gaza unfolded.

The family had rented a pair of bedrooms in Czuba's Plainville, Illinois, home, just outside Chicago, for almost two years before the attack.

However, after the war began on October 7, 2023, Shaheen recalled Czuba telling her to leave their residence because Muslims were not welcome. During the attack, Shaheen overheard Czuba reiterating his beliefs, saying,

"He told me 'You, as a Muslim, must die,'" Shaheen said.

The incident is one of the most well-known anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim acts of violence in the U.S. following the Gaza war.

Czuba was found sitting outside his house covered in blood after the attack.

He pleaded not guilty, and his defense team tried to have the sentence overturned, claiming that the prosecution had manipulated the jury. It only took the jury less than 90 minutes in February to find Czuba guilty.

Judge Bertani-Tomczak rejected the appeal, calling Czuba’s actions "brutal" and "vile." She imposed a 30-year sentence for Alfayoumi's murder, an additional 20 years for the assault on his mother, and three years for the hate crime.

Alfayoumi’s great-uncle, Mahmoud Yousef, was the only family member to speak at the sentencing. He said that no prison sentence could replace the loss suffered by the family.

Yousef also explained that Alfayoumi had considered Czuba a grandfather figure and questioned what "fake news" about the Gaza war could have driven such violence.

"Some people are bringing this war to this country," Yousef said. "We cannot do that. We can’t bring the war here. We cannot bring hatred to this country."

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) responded by urging Americans to reject hate and prejudice. "This sentencing brings closure to the case, and a measure of accountability and justice to a tragedy that has shaken our community," said ADC Executive Director Abed Ayoub.

"We must come together to ensure that tragedies fueled by anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian hate, and Islamophobia are never accepted as the norm in our society," he added.

In March, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released a report stating that they had received 8,658 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents in just the past year, a 7.6 percent increase. This marked the highest number of incidents recorded by the group since they began collecting data in 1996.

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