The events of Oct. 7, 2023, shook me to my core, and its aftermath has turned my world upside down, leaving me questioning everything I was taught to believe in.
I have done a great deal of soul-searching and am trying to better educate myself about the long-standing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That a well-planned pogrom could have laid siege on Israeli citizens under the watchful eye of the Israeli government was a shock.
But in the ensuing months and now years, I am deeply disturbed by the evisceration of the Gazan people through bombs, starvation, lack of medical care and a litany of other horrors. On both sides of the conflict, the death tolls are gut-wrenching, but comparing them seems flawed.
There are still Israeli hostages being held in Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to relentlessly attack the region, and to what end, leaves me shuddering. While participating recently in a Run For Their Lives walk, which advocates for the hostages held by Hamas, I was waging an internal battle about the multifaceted tragedy of the conflict. The perhaps dozen or so of us on this walk were dogged by a driver shouting pro-Palestinian phrases at us and at one point spitting on one of the participants. I did not think that individual was antisemitic so much as misinformed, angry and seeking a voice.
In the current and deafening climate of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, immigration protests and military intervention, how is it possible to hear one another?
Interestingly, I was given a “Run for Their Lives” sign to carry during the walk. Scrawled on the other side was, “Bibi it’s time to resign.”
Several of us on the Run For Their Lives walk could not agree more.
— Moisette Sintov McNerney, Arlington Heights
No ‘license to kill’
Regarding the op-ed “The phrase ‘Free Palestine’ is freeing no one, but it is killing some of us” (June 10): The phrase “Free Palestine” is killing nobody.
If we don’t live in a world where basic human rights are valued pertaining to religious affiliation, ethnicity or color of skin, the phrase “Free Palestine” shouldn’t need pondering, since we all know what is freedom, especially when we are deprived of it, such as what is happening to the Palestinians.
Therefore, the phrase “Free Palestine” is not a “license to kill” Jews or Zionists, as Jay Tcath, president of the Jewish United Fund, writes.
However, Israelis and Americans have said these things: “We are fighting human animals” (Defense Minister Yoav Gallant); “There are no innocent civilians” in Gaza (hostage Mia Schem); “We nuked the Japanese twice. … That needs to be the same here” (U.S. Rep. Randy Fine). Tcath doesn’t condemn those words but tries to criminalize the “Free Palestine” call for freedom.
For those of us who are not Palestinian, “Free Palestine” is a demand to end the apartheid in the only democracy in Middle East. “Free Palestine” is our plea for forgiveness from the innocent kids of Gaza who have been killed, maimed or starved to death with the use of U.S. taxpayer money.
“Free Palestine” begs the divine for mercy; we beg to be set free from the burden we can’t continue to carry watching the demise of humanity in Gaza.
Free, free Palestine!
— Idhan Tahirovic, founder, Bosniak Brotherhood of Genocide Survivors, Schiller Park
End the violence
Regarding the op-ed “You can’t separate anti-Zionism from antisemitism. Stop pretending you can” (June 12): In condemning violence against innocent Jewish people, my alderman, Brendan Reilly, equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism. In the same Tribune issue, I read the article “Health officials: Palestinian death toll in war tops 55,000.”
Surely, there is a disconnect here. The violence against innocent people, whether Jews or Palestinians, whether in this nation or the Middle East, surely needs to cease.
To protest the oppressive and alienating policies of the present administration of Israel is to stand with many of my Jewish friends and neighbors, not to mention the Jewish members of my family.
For a path forward, I’m convinced that anti-Zionism, in its totalitarian and exclusionist form, must be distinguished from antisemitism and be held to account.
— HD Mitchell, Chicago
Required reading
Andy Shaw’s op-ed should be required reading for all Chicagoans as well as the politicians he calls out (“Public officials must cut the fat before begging for taxpayer bailouts,” June 6). Shaw rightly calls out the bad players and their complete lack of integrity when dealing with their unsustainable bloated budgets.
Shaw should also include the majority of roughly 7,000 governmental bodies in Illinois; the state has unfathomable pension debt.
Additionally, we need an investigation into how much the lawsuits Illinois and Chicago are filing against the federal government are costing taxpayers. Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson’s complete lack of accountability and their smug statements regarding their broken budgets are just more disregard for their constituents. They need to stop pointing the finger at others and start governing; state lawmakers and aldermen need to do that as well.
All Illinoisans must wake up. Nothing is free, and we will all pay if drastic action is not taken now.
Can we all write in Shaw for governor or mayor?
— Philip Milord, Western Springs
Waste a way of life
Andy Shaw’s opinion piece could not be more on point.
Our mayor and governor try to scapegoat the president’s policies for the financial disasters that decades of fiscal incompetence and mismanagement on the part of City Hall and Springfield have placed in the lap of taxpayers.
Elected officials in City Hall and Springfield have no compunction about spending the hard-earned wages of the citizenry however they see fit. But they don’t need to worry; their personal financial futures are secured by the bloated pension system they have awarded themselves.
As in Washington, pork, waste, mismanagement, abuse and even outright fraud are too much a way of life that our elected officials have either created or turned a blind eye to. Too many are more interested in personal wealth and status than of actually serving the interests of the voting public.
Less than 20% of Chicago voters approve of Mayor Brandon Johnson, yet he is spending Chicagoans into an abyss that we may never escape from. Gov. JB Pritzker is increasingly politically divisive in a divided state where the interests of Chicago too often trump those of the rest of Illinois.
It’s time for the electorate wake up. Voters should force the state and the city to enact term limits and recall measures to enable us to throw the bums out. That likely will never happen since those elected officials control the agenda, not the voters whom they should be serving.
— Jon Boyd, Chicago
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