The city of Chicago, former President Barack Obama’s adopted hometown, has given permission for anti-Israel protesters to demonstrate near the Democratic National Convention but has stonewalled a pro-Israel group that requested to hold a solidarity march near the venue.
“The Israeli American Council, a nonprofit organization representing Israeli-Americans that seeks to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Israel, filed two applications with Chicago’s Department of Transportation at the beginning of July, according to Aya Schechter, the group’s chief programming officer,” Jewish Insider reported. “But with just under two weeks remaining until the convention, the IAC has yet to receive an answer from the city, despite following up via phone and email.”
Yet last month, Chicago Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration offered a coalition of anti-Israel demonstrators a route near the United Center, where the convention will be held, for their “March on the DNC.”
“It’s a win. But it’s not the win,” coalition spokesperson Hatem Abudayyeh told the Chicago Tribune in July. “Organizing works. You put a little pressure on the powers that be and you can move them.”
In June, the Israeli American Council submitted an application for a demonstration within “sight and sound” of the United Center. That application was rejected; the city wrote back that the rally “would be a direct interference with a previously planned permitted activity or public assembly and would create public safety issues.”
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The city said it would permit a stationary rally during the convention’s last night, but it would have to take place at a park far from the venue. “It seems like we don’t have equitable access to whatever the other group was approved for,” Schechter told Jewish Insider. “We didn’t get any offer to do a march, not even in an alternative location.”
Meanwhile, the anti-Israel groups were still not satisfied with what they received; they asked U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood to let them march even closer to the convention.
Abudayyeh has reportedly openly supported the terrorist group Hamas for years. According to Canary Mission, he stated in a July 22, 2006 interview, “The U.S. and Israel will continue to describe Hamas, Hezbollah and the other Palestinian and Lebanese resistance organizations as ‘terrorists,’ but the real terrorists are the governments and military forces of the U.S. and Israel … the Lebanese and Palestinian resistance must be supported.”
Canary Mission also noted that in a March 20, 2017 interview, “Abudayyeh praised Hamas for taking ‘the most leading role in the military resistance against Israel’ and called Palestinian terror groups ‘resistance forces.’”
