Chicago solidarity activists tell mayor: no business as usual with Israel
Chicago, IL – Approximately 20 protestors marched at 7am, March 3, outside the Palmer House Hilton, in opposition to an official Sister Cities relationship between the City of Chicago and the municipality of Petach Tikva in Israel. The event was organized by the Palestine Solidarity Group-Chicago (PSG) in response to the Annual International Business Breakfast keynoted by Mayor Daley.
The Palestinian Solidarity Group (PSG) rejects use of the Sister Cities program to normalize Israeli apartheid, demanding that Israel instead be held accountable for its human rights violations. PSG also protests the relationship between the Petach Tikva Sister Cities program and Israeli governmental institutions and other organizations that have played a role in the colonization of Palestinian land and the continued dispossession of the Palestinian people.
PSG was joined by activists from Voices for Creative Nonviolence and the International Anti-Zionist Network. “Mayor Daley, choose a side, cut ties with apartheid!” and “Petach Tikva is no sister of Chicago!” were amongst the picketers’ chants.
Petach Tikva symbolizes the dispossession and colonization of the Palestinian homeland. The first Jewish-only settlement in historic Palestine, known in Israel as the “mother of all settlements,” Petach Tikva is built on the remains of depopulated Palestinian villages whose descendents are denied the right to return home. Petach Tikva is an officially segregated city where Palestinian citizens of Israel are subjected to institutional racism and an apartheid legal system. Petach Tikva is also home to one of the largest interrogation and detention centers in Israel, where Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip are illegally transferred for interrogation and routinely subjected to torture.