– Ghalib Husain
Chicago Correspondent
Chicago: Hate crime charges were filed on November 18 against a woman who terrorised a Palestinian couple at a Suburban Panera. Alexandra Szustakiewicz was arrested and arraigned in court the next morning. She was charged with two hate crime counts and disorderly conduct. Alexandra had verbally and physically attacked a Palestinian man and his pregnant wife for wearing a Palestinian hoodie. The incident was caught on video.
CAIR-Chicago thanked the Downers Grove police department and the DuPage county State Attorney’s office for their swift investigation and action.
“I’m a born and raised American who took his wife out for lunch. I was not able to do that simply because I was Palestinian,” said Waseem who shielded his wife from several punching attempts by the attacker.
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director said in a statement: “We have long seen how European migrants like this woman feel a bizarre sense of entitlement to regularly harass and accost native Palestinians in their ancestral homeland, knowing they enjoy full impunity and knowing their victims have no recourse. Now, shockingly but not surprisingly, that same anti-Palestinian hatred has followed them into their new homeland, here in America, where they were born and raised. She also expected impunity, taking swipes at a pregnant woman, saying “I don’t care” when she was informed, and “this is my land.”
“Their crime, breathing while Palestinian. Fortunately, ours is a country of laws and recourse. This shameful and abusive behavior has to be understood and called out for what it is, not only in its horrid details but in the context of the larger hateful phenomenon of which it comes; it cannot and will not have a home here.”
