Chicago, IL – Hundreds of protesters stood across the street from the Israeli consulate here, July 22, shouting, “Hey, Israel, waddya say? How many kids did you kill today?” They aimed their voices at a smaller crowd that waived Israeli flags and who gathered directly in front of the consulate in a show of support for the murderous assault on Gaza over the past two weeks.

While the pro-Israel rally was only a few hundred people, compared to the 700 that came out to support the people of Gaza, that didn’t stop the Zionists from acting aggressively. According to Hatem Abudayyeh of the U.S. Palestine Community Network and the citywide Coalition for Justice in Palestine, “The most rabid of them came across the street when their event ended to confront us.”

The Chicago Police Department sent their mounted police and others to face off, not with the approaching crowd from the Israeli side, but against the Palestinians and their allies. Abudayyeh said, “If our side had done that, gone across the street to disrupt the Israeli demo, the cops would’ve been all over us.”

Women leaders of Students for Justice in Palestine-Chicago led most of the rally’s chants.

After the Zionist event dispersed, the youthful protesters took off on a march across the Loop to the Chicago Tribune building. They held a die-in there to dramatize that Palestinians in Gaza are still dying under the guns, bombs and missiles of the Israeli attack.

For the Palestinian community in Chicago and the solidarity movement, Chicago won’t be quiet until the U.S.-backed siege of Gaza is over.

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