"My son is a martyr. I hope the people of Gaza will accept it from me."
With these words, (1) the father of the Palestinian child, "Wadih Al-Fayoumi", mourned his son to his final resting place, after he was the victim of what the American media calls a "hate crime", in a horrific incident that occurred in the US state of Illinois earlier this month, where an elderly American named "Joseph Chuba" attacked the child and his mother only because they are Muslims, and stabbed them while repeating: "You Muslims must die."
A state of frustration and pain accompanied the condolences of the child Wadih and dominated the attendees of the press conference(2) held before the funeral prayers, as some stated that they fear to return to those days after the events of September 11 / September / September / Ramadan was targeted and feared for their safety.
These fears were renewed as the American media and senior politicians, led by US President Joe Biden, adopted Israeli allegations about the recent war launched by the Israeli occupation army on the Gaza Strip, which takes the conflict out of context and does not convey the full picture of events. According to his wife's interrogations, Chuba (the child's killer) always listened to "conservative" radio programs that dealt with the conflict in Palestine.
This coincided with a report published by the British newspaper "The Guardian" in which it expressed concern about the increase in hate crimes in the United States, after US police departments reported an increase in cases of harassment and assaults after the escalating events in the sector.
"Gaza Martyr" in Chicago
Joseph Chuba was the owner of the property inhabited by the family of the child Wadih in a town near southwest Chicago, and according to the testimony of the child's uncle and neighbors, the man loved Wadih and bought him toys, but on the night of the crime he broke into the house on Mrs. Hanan Shaheen (32 years old) trying to suffocate her while chanting anti-Muslim phrases, Wadi's mother tried to resist him but he stabbed her more than 12 times, and when he failed to get rid of her, he emptied his anger at the child Wadih (6 years) directed him more than 26 Stab.
After the military operation launched by the resistance movement under the title "Al-Aqsa Flood" on October 7, the Western media began to promote the Israeli claims(40) about "<> Israeli children beheaded" by Hamas fighters, when US President Joe Biden came out in a televised interview, saying that he saw photographic evidence of the beheading of children, and news reporters began crying Israeli children live during media coverage of the events. All of these allegations were later proven to be false, and the White House denied in a subsequent statement that any images of the alleged child deaths had been seen.
Despite this, Biden's statements amounted to a mandate for Israel to attack civilians in the Gaza Strip, which provoked the resentment of Western citizens and Jews (6) (7), who condemned Israeli violations in the Gaza Strip through short videos that spread on social media, as well as the Western media and how they avoid publishing the number of victims from the Palestinian side.
The most prominent examples of this targeted media discourse came in the intervention (8) of the American Zionist activist Ben Shapiro with the program of the famous British broadcaster "Piers Morgan", when he stated that sympathy for what is happening inside Gaza should be considered sympathy for terrorism, justifying Israel's right to defend itself. This tone, which satisfied the American media, was condemned by many supporters of the Palestinian cause, considering it an escalation of the anti-Islamic discourse, which works to dehumanize the Palestinians by giving the green light to Israel to carry out the ethnic cleansing campaigns currently taking place in the Gaza Strip.
This was confirmed by the report of the World Socialist website, which accused the American anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian propaganda of being the cause of the barbaric attack on the child Wadih Al-Fayoumi, especially after prosecutors stated that the criminal Choba had regularly listened to right-wing media coverage in the days before his crime.
Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zaher said in a statement with ABC News that he fears that "hate crimes" that the authorities describe as individual incidents may be the result of what the media witnessed last week of "political incitement", saying that there were only two times in his life in which he received a phone call from his mother telling him: "Be careful in America," the first was after the events of September 11, and the second was yesterday, meaning after the war launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian-American comedian Amer Zaher says he fears that "hate crimes" may be the result of last week's political incitement in the media. (Photo: Al Jazeera)
Certainly, there is a state of fear that dominates a large segment of the Arab and Muslim communities in the United States, as they are afraid to go out in public, and have become more cautious with their surroundings. That's what American Morgan Fuller, who converted to Islam three years ago, said that since the war began, her friends have been escorting her to her car every day after work out of fear for her. Fuller wears a hijab, but recently some close associates advised her to take it off for her own safety and that of her 9-year-old daughter.
The current speech. Does it cause a "wave of hate"?
There is a state of bigotry[11] in many US states at the hands of right-wing supporters and those affected by extremist media discourse regarding solidarity with Palestine. Abed Ayoub, executive director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, noted that the general atmosphere that grips American society in recent times reminds them of what was the case in the early days after the September 100 incident: according to the Associated Press,[<>] more than <> cases classified as "hate crimes" ranging from verbal harassment to threats, intimidation and physical assaults, including numerous death threats, were reported.
Osama Abu Irsheid, executive director of American Muslims for Palestine, notes that voices in support of Palestine are being muzzled, including those of African-Americans, Christians and Jews in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. He tells USAToday that recent days have left them feeling trapped and unable to even show support or express grief when their families are killed in the Gaza Strip.
In the past few days, Meta, the technology giant that owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads, deleted content supporting the Palestinian cause as supporting terrorism, while describing the massive bombardment launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip as a "reaction." This decision came in the wake of the European Commission's lobbying campaign to remove illegal and harmful content, in compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA), and the technology company justified its action by fighting misinformation and violent content (14).
Cory Saylor, director of research and communications at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said that now is different than ever, in the midst of talk about the fierce targeting campaign against students, as he expressed concern about the harassment and threats they face in American universities as a result of their solidarity with the Palestinian people.
A good example of this was the case of "political intimidation" suffered by supporters of the Palestinian cause on the Harvard campus. The situation was fuelled by a letter issued by the Palestine Solidarity Committee in which the signatories stated that they "hold the Israeli regime fully responsible for all acts of violence that unfold," followed by a violent reaction from some Jewish students who disagreed with their peers because they blamed Israel only for the current violence, with the result that one of them passed by a truck near the Harvard campus, carrying billboards displaying the names and faces of the students who signed the letter issued by the Committee.
Following the killing of the child "Wadih Al-Fayoumi", US President Joe Biden stated that the United States of America is not a place to practice hate, and the US Department of Justice opened an extensive investigation into the "hate crime" that caused the death of Wadi, although this is only one of several hate crimes against the Arab and Muslim American communities since the start of the war on the Gaza Strip.
In Boston, the word "Nazis" was written on the banner of the "Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace", and during a demonstration of solidarity with the Palestinians in the boycott of Lebanon, Pennsylvania, the demonstrators protesting the recent Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip were surprised by a man passing by his car with his weapon pointed at them; chanting many racist insults before he quickly left the place, in the end the authorities managed to arrest him, and charged him with "sectarian intimidation."
This coincided with threats of violence in the Muslim-majority city of Dearborn, Michigan, over the past few days, one of which was what a man posted on his social media account asking who wants to go to Dearborn and hunt Palestinians.
It is still too early for specialized bodies to issue their reports on the effects of the current conflict in the Middle East on the increasing waves of hatred in the West, but according to the American newspaper "Washington Post"(7), hate crimes have increased overall in the United States by 2022% in 2021 compared to the rates announced for <>, according to annual reports issued by the FBI. Experts (<>) believe that there are a number of factors that led to the escalation of violence last year, and they cited aggressive political rhetoric as one of them, and expressed concern that the upcoming presidential election season and the current events in the Middle East may exacerbate the situation.
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