After using a prime-time speech Thursday night to condemn antisemitic and Islamophobic violence in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, President Joe Biden spoke to the father of Wadea Al-Fayoume, the 6-year-old boy of Plainfield, Ill., stabbed to death in a hate crime attack against the Muslim boy and his mother.
In a statement following the national address, the White House said Biden and first lady Jill Biden spoke to Al-Fayoume’s father and uncle and “expressed their deepest condolences” to the family and “their prayers that Wadea’s mother, Hannan Shahin, makes a full recovery.”
Biden and his wife also expressed “their commitment to keep speaking out against anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim hate and violence,” the White House statement said.
Biden invoked the child’s death and the serious wounding of his mother during the speech, in which he sought to explain the strategic need to combat terrorism in both Israel by Hamas and in Ukraine orchestrated by Russia.
“His name was Wadea,” Biden said during the speech from the Oval Office. “Wadea, a proud American, a proud Palestinian-American family. We can’t stand by and stand silent when this happens.”
Wadea’s mother, Hanaan Shahin, 32, was seriously injured in the same attack that killed her son in their home in unincorporated Plainfield Township.
The suspect, 71-year-old Joseph Czuba, was the family’s landlord. Will County prosecutors said Monday that Czuba had attacked the pair after growing “heavily interested” in the Israel-Hamas conflict through conservative talk radio. He is charged with multiple criminal offenses, including two counts of hate crimes.
Wadea’s death and Shahin’s injuries drew condemnations from politicians throughout Illinois and the U.S. as droves of people attended the boy’s funeral and a subsequent vigil honoring his life. Biden described the stabbings as brutal and called for compassion in his Thursday address.
“When fear and suspicion, anger and rage run hard, we have to work harder than ever to hold onto the values who make us who we are,” he said.
“I know many of you in the Muslim American community, the Arab American community, the Palestinian American community and so many others are outraged and hurting and saying ‘here we go again’ with the Islamophobia and distrust we saw after 9/11.”
Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas in Israel that left about 1,400 Israelis dead and almost 200 taken hostage, religious and community leaders have sought calm, fearing a rise of attacks targeting Muslims and Jewish people.
