Yesterday’s pro-Palestinian march in Chicago

April 21, 2024 • 8:15 am

I suppose this counts as Readers’ wildlife today, as we’re dealing with the primate H. sapiens.  We have videos and photographs from a demonstration in Chicago.

Yesterday my colleague Peggy Mason (like me, an atheistic Jew) went downtown to get pick up her repaired watch, and ran smack into a huge pro-Palestinian demonstration around Michigan Avenue. These protests occurred widely across America yesterday, perhaps in solidarity with the entitled demonstrators squatting, snacking, and shouting on the campus of Columbia University (see this morning’s Hili Dialogue and the tweets below). I’ll first show two videos taken by Peggy and then add a group of her photos. First, her words:

This is just beyond anything I ever thought I’d see in my lifetime.  I was downtown today and there was a huge pro-Palestinian march on Michigan Avenue.  Also huge police presence walling them in.   Signs included anti-Zionism≠Anti-semitism, which is obviously not true here or in London or anywhere.  Next to that sign was a throwback to the Elders of Zion – “Their god is CAPITAL and God is our Witness.”

The people in the march appeared to be quite pleased with themselves.  There was no opposition to them.  Tourists ignored them.  I had no clue what I could do as a single person.  I did nothing but take pictures for Jerry.  I just don’t see how we return to comity and civility.

And two videos.  First, the cops keep the demonstrators in tight order.

More shouts. I can’t make out the words beyond “Genocide Joe”, but readers can help with that and other chants.

 

And some photos. Note in the first one the claim that anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism, which of course is an excuse to be anti-Semitic. I disagree with the slogan anyway, as to oppose an established country now, formed as a homeland for Jews expelled or demonized elsewhere, and long after the Holocaust made its existence necessary, is to say that you don’t think the country should exist—that it should be eliminated (and perhaps merged with Palestine, with dire results), or the Jews should be deported from Israel. Either way it’s anti-Semitic, so these protestors are flatly making a false statement.

Notice the blood libel here: the sign that says “Their God is Capital, and God is our witness.”  That’s simply the old claim that Jews worship money, and it’s a poster I hadn’t seen. This is the kind of stuff, in conjunction with things like the London police driving away people who look “openly Jewish” (see this morning’s Hili Dialogue), that makes me believe that the protests are moving from being anti-Israel to being anti-semitic.  Note also the “From the River to the Sea” poster.

Sundry other photos by Peggy:

This kid is doomed to being propagandized:

Of course I don’t deny these people the right to demonstrate and say whatever they want. (I’m pretty sure they had a permit.) What I am saying is that their speech is both hateful and scary, and not a good portent for Jews.

Truly, these people want to see Israel gone, wiped off the map—by “any means necessary.”  And the nature of chants and slogans is changing. As I said this morning, at Columbia you can hear stuff like, ““Remember the 7th of October” (and they’re happy about that), followed by “Ten thousand times”.  They are happy about the 7th of October attack, and they want it to happen again and again! It’s no coincidence that this is precisely what Hamas says. I can’t help feeling, and it chills me to the marrow, that many of these protestors think that Hamas did a good thing on October 7th.  After all, they say, they are no real “civilians’ in Israel, and that apparently includes babies, who are just infant colonizers.

You will not convince me that all these people want is a peaceful and terror-free coexistence between Israelis and Arabs.  They are in favor of getting rid of Israel, and you know what that means.  Meanwhile, things at Columbia are heating up last night and this morning, and the slogans appear to be in Arabic. Some tweets:

I am not sure, as the tweet below avers, that all the people in the video are “terrorists or “openly supporting terror,” which seems very hyperbolic.  I am putting up the first tweet just to show you how academia has become ideology.

Look at the epithets hurled at the rabbi and the Jewish students as they’re followed off campus. Click the button but read the epithets at the bottom of the screen. They’re clearly anti-Semitic, e.g. “Go back to Poland.” And the second tweet points out Jews as “targets”.  What else could that mean?

You can read about Nerdeen Kiswani at the Anti-Defamation League.

23 thoughts on “Yesterday’s pro-Palestinian march in Chicago”

  2. It is really frightening to have this happen in my lifetime. I never imagined it possible.

    1. If only the adults would step up and stop it. It can be stopped but no one wants to. The ignorance has spread so far that you can’t even have a rational conversation about it.

  3. I think some are just doing a little extra volunteering to pad out the resumé.

    … I’m trying to make that satirical.

    1. The sad thing is, some of them probably are adding this to their resume, and there are people who will view that positively.

  4. I disagree with the Twitter user about Terrorism being an ideology. Terrorism is a belief in the efficacy of terror for political ends. It does not include within it a definition of what those ends are or a broader world-view. Terrorism is action. That is very important, because our free speech tradition distinguishes between mere words and overt acts. Supporting terror in the pursuit of political goals may be stupid, but it does not make one a terrorist.

    We should be asking, though, do coordinated disruptions of major traffic arteries and airports constitute, with the goal of negative economic impact, terrorism? The group A15 (named after April 15) says on its website:

    A proposal to coordinate a multi-city economic blockade on April 15th in solidarity with Palestine recently received overwhelming commitments to participate around the US and internationally.

    The proposal states that in each city, we will identify and blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact, as did the port shutdowns in recent months in Oakland, California and Melbourne, Australia, as just a few examples.

    I have no doubt that a similar group is coordinating other protests, including yesterday’s. And why isn’t the DOJ launching a RICO investigation into these people and their financiers for conspiracy to commit criminal acts?

    1. These people hate and despise the “West” its society, customs and economy but, don’t they just love all the technological wizardry which it makes possible to string all this hatred together and they use to advantage and we not only allow it but do little to stop it. I am aghast.

  6. Random thoughts after too little sleep and before coffee so please be tolerant:

    1. The behavior of demonstrators for the Palestinian cause helps me understand why no country in the Middle East wants to accept Palestinian refugees. The passionate outrage exuded by advocates for Palestinian causes seems to destabilize any culture it touches.
    2. The demonstrations make my primate brain scream “those a**holes are them, not us.” We are not anti-Semitic, anti-Israel or pro-murdering terrorist thugs. Yet many of the demonstrators are probably wonderful, caring people who think they are helping a beleaguered group. My group brain’s rejoinder: by joining a group they have adopted by endorsement that group’s values. The Holocaust didn’t happen overnight. It took pervasive anti-semitism, injections of hate from loud agitators, the silent acquiescence of the uninvolved, and permission or assistance from community leaders to kill that many people that quickly.
    3. Looking at the issue through an historic lens, at the very least, it is ironic that the loud agitators of and for anti-Semitic rhetoric and action are many people who think of themselves as progressives and leftists. They seem to want to progress backwards to before 1948, before the British and Ottoman occupations of Palestine, and to some mystical time when Islamic Palestinians controlled the region they consider to be their homeland.

  7. PZ and the Horde are all staunchly supporting the protestors at Columbia, including the ones shouting genocidal chants about Jews. No surprise, since Pharyngula is the home of rancid antisemite WMD Kitty, who claimed Hamas’s massacre and rape of Jews on 10/7 was “staged”. A view now echoed and promoted by a certain Rebecca Watson… How quickly the “believe all women” trope collapsed…

    Anyway, they’re also complaining about how the protestors’ freeze peach, sorry, I mean free speech (the former was their favourite term for free speech) is being trampled on, which would be credible if they hadn’t spent the last decade and a half opposing the concept of freeze peach, erm sorry, free speech.

    1. The Columbia protestors are not being punished for speaking, chanting, or holding signs. They are being removed, arrested, and, in some cases, expelled for violating campus rules, i.e. protesting in places and at times that are forbidden.

  8. The language is growing increasingly sinister and personal. Identity politics has become infused and converged with the war demonstrations. These are not peaceful protests. I see things getting out of control. The relative safety of the US streets is enabling the ratcheting up of the tenor. It looks and sounds ugly and threatening to me.

    1. I’m especially concerned that some of them are actively celebrating Oct 7. Another subset is saying that most of the deaths were caused by the IDF.

  9. A set of Americans telling another set of Americans to go back to somewhere else strikes me as odd. I thought everyone there is American. And the chants about taking back their land. Whose land? I thought you were Americans.

  10. There is no doubt that the protestors want Israel and its Jewish inhabitants gone. People of good will find it hard to believe that they could really want the Jews of Israel gone—or dead—and will be first to latch onto other explanations: that what the protestors really want is peace, for example. But the seemingly unbelievable really does need to believed when it’s true.

  11. The worst of Jew hatred has found an excuse via the current war in the Levant.

    I’ll be blunt: It should be clear by now that what these individuals want is the annihilation of Israel and Israelis. And, also, the annihilation of Jews in the world.

    It is really astonishing the speed with which these protests materialize and are executed….the signs, the costume, the entire theatre. There is, as we know, big money behind all this:

    “The Tides Center is sponsoring the bail fund for those arrested during the nationwide “economic blockade” on April 15, which featured protesters blocking the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and the highway outside of Chicago O’Hare International Airport and waving Hezbollah flags in lower Manhattan. The Washington Free Beacon reports that the website for the protests, A15 Action, directs users to a “bail and legal defense fund” hosted through ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s online fundraising platform. According to the ActBlue page, donations for the fund go to the Community Justice Exchange (CJE), which provides legal services to “community-based organizations … that contest the current operation and function of the criminal legal and immigration detention systems.” CJE is a fiscally sponsored project of Tides, which, as we’ve reported, is a gargantuan dark-money clearinghouse funded by George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Warren Buffett, and other progressive billionaires. Tides also fiscally sponsored Black Lives Matter from 2020 to 2022. ”

    https://thedailyscroll.substack.com/p/april-17-2024-trump-ukraine-whistleblower

  12. I have the hope that once the current crisis in Gaza dies down, then this current wave of craziness will also die down. A bit like how some of the hysteria in Covid times surrounding mask requirements, or vaccinations. There were those on both sides that went a bit nuts, didn’t they? But I am not under the illusion that any future subsidence means this evil has gone away. Only that it’s gone into hibernation.

  14. The rise of the de facto Palestinian
    I’m sure they care but so do we minus the insanity.
    From Dr Brydon’s comment:
    ” blockade major choke points in the economy, focusing on points of production and circulation with the aim of causing the most economic impact,…”
    …and for good measure lets butt ream those working individuals who earn our daily handout of US UN aid.. correction, aid provided weapons.

  15. I don’t think anyone here has mentioned “Civil War,” the 2024 movie currently in theaters. I saw it alone this past week, and then I saw it a second time with my wife, who had initially protested that it would be both too distressing and depressing for her to appreciate. She is now recommending the movie to our friends. We may see it once more before it leaves the theaters.

    The movie is both cautionary and potentially inciting, but, in any case, it is done extremely well, we think. Very little, if anything, in the movie is gratuitous. Almost every scene has a purpose, including the violent scenes, and there are many scenes that are just beautiful.

    Much has been written about how the movie doesn’t point fingers at any one political party, but I found enough suggestions that it has a somewhat liberal slant, though there are bad actors of various political persuasions.

    The writer & director is Alex Garland, who is also the writer & director for the very thought-provoking and elegant 2014 movie about artificial intelligence, “Ex Machina.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_War_(film)

  16. Thank you to all the protestors for standing up for the oppressed and against the oppressor. These are people marching for peace. The pro-Israel folks are fine with the pre-1948 terrorism. No one seems to care about the fact that an early Israeli PM was clearly a terrorist before 1948. No one cares that what happens to Palestinians in the West Bank is clearly terrorism. I reject all terrorism even when committed by Jews. No one seems to care about the thousands of Palestinians held hostage by the IDF without charge many who are children. Taking hostages is wrong. Even when it’s Jews taking them. Torture and sexual violence is wrong. Wrong with done against Jews and just as evil as when done by Jews. Murdering babies was a myth of 10/7 but horrified everyone. Murdering babies is an hourly occurrence in Gaza but no one seems to care. Thank god for protestors on the side of good and against genocide and for peace.

    1. You get one say here, and only one, because your post is full of lies, starting with “marching for peace”. continuing with sexual violence done by Jews, and “murdering babies is an hourly occurrence” in Gaza, as if it were intentional (nor is it hourly).

      You’ve been rendered completely ignorant by propaganda.

  17. Many thanks to Peggy Mason for taking the photos and videos. Nicer to get a report from a WEIT reader than any of the news outlets and their inevitable slant and commentary.

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