US police have arrested an American man for stabbing a pro-Palestinian youth in Texas, in what a major Muslim advocacy group says must be treated as a hate crime.
Bert James Baker, 36, was arrested by Austin police on Sunday night for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Baker allegedly attacked a 23-year-old pro-Palestinian man and three other Muslims as they drove home from an anti-Israel demonstration.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) civil rights group reported on Tuesday that following the pro-Palestine rally on Sunday night, Baker approached the small group of Muslim Americans returning from the demonstration in a car and started to verbally abuse them.
Baker then attempted to “rip their Free Palestine flag off their car” before starting a fight and stabbing the 23-year-old Palestinian-American in the chest.
The stabbing victim, whose wounds were described as serious and potentially life-threatening, was taken to hospital for treatment.
In October, a 71-year-old white man in the US state of Illinois motivated by anti-Palestinian rhetoric fatally stabbed a 6-year-old Muslim boy 26 times, and seriously injured his mother.
The lboy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, and his mother, Hanaan Shahin, had been stabbed with a military-style Rambo knife, a 7-inch (18-cm) serrated blade, according to the Will County Sheriff’s Office.
As the man was stabbing the little boy and his mother, he was shouting, “You Muslims must die!”
These incident take place amid Washington’s all-out support for the Israeli regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinians trapped in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that at least 27,585 Gazans have been killed since early October.
It added that a total of 66,978 people have also been wounded in the blockaded territory.
