(WBBM NEWSRADIO) – With a vigil planned for Wadea Al-Fayoume on Tuesday night in Plainfield, the head of a local Palestinian group urged politicians to weigh their words carefully after the 6-year-old boy's murder.
Hatem Abudayyeh, national chair of the U.S.Palestinian Community Network in Chicago, said bigots heard a dog whistle in the unequivocal support for Israel voiced by state and local politicians at the start of the war with Hamas.
"What they say absolutely matters," he said.
Politicians like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker must avoid connecting the Middle East crisis with a call for vigilance against threats here, he said. He noted the wider group of officials that has weighed in publicly on the Israel-Hamas war, including the Chicago City Council.
Aldermen last week approved a symbolic resolution condemning Hamas' deadly incursion into Israel, though some City Council members expressed misgivings about some Israeli responses and their impact on innocent Palestinians in Gaza.
Will County prosecutors say Joseph Czuba told Wadea's mother he was angry over what's going on in Israel before he attacked them Saturday at their unincorporated Plainfield home. The Palestinian American boy was stabbed 26 times, and his mother remains hospitalized.
Czuba became obsessed with the Israel-Hamas war and regularly listened to conservative talk radio, according to information aired in court this week. He reportedly withdrew $1,000 from the bank amid worries the "grid" would go down.
Gov. Pritzker, who is Jewish, has called the boy's murder evil and a hate crime and said he joins Muslims and Palestinians in mourning the tragic loss.
Czuba, who has been detained pending trial, is charged with a hate crime.
Abudayyeh, the Palestinian American organizer, said he hopes politicians will speak more carefully moving forward.
"Is this going to be the impetus for them to be more responsible and to be more public and to come out and make statements about how the Palestinian and Arab and Muslim communities are not our enemies and they're our neighbors and all that sort of thing? Yeah, that might happen."
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