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Chicago Protests Barak’s Visit
by Dina Rashed and Ayub
Khan
CHICAGO (IslamOnline) – On a freezing
cold Monday evening nearly 3000 Chicagoans stood waiting the arrival of Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak at the University of Illinois at Chicag0 Pavilion
(UIC) to address the United Jewish Communities’ members, gathered in the city
for their General Assembly.
Palestinian flags, banners, and
demonstrators with loud speakers had been waiting for the Israeli head of state
to arrive since 7:00 p.m., knowing that he would start his speech at 8:00 p.m.
For two hours,
protestors could not catch a glimpse of Barak entering the Pavilion building. At
9:23 p.m., WBBM news radio, a CBS affiliate station, broadcast that Barak had
yet to address the audience therein.
“If the demonstration made him change his
schedule, then that’s good enough,” said Omar Khalil, a scientist at Abbot
Labs, who came with his wife and attended the rally despite the bad weather.
“We have always been supportive of the
Muslims rights, this is not our first participation, we protested before when
the Bosnians were massacred years ago,” said Hoda Khalil, a scientist also at
Abbot Labs.
 Protestors
were asked to keep their activity within the fenced parking lot just across from
the Pavilion on the corner of Racine and Harrison Streets, a measure designed to
control the demonstration. But many protestors felt as if they were being caged
and disapproved of the cordon.
“It is crazy, its insanity, that we are
trying to protest peacefully, yet they confine us in this big cage. If some
people did wrong things in the past it does not mean that every time something
wrong will happen. I can’t believe this is happening here, in the U.S., the
land of the free supposedly,” said Sabreen Zein, 20, a retail manager.
But it seemed security authorities were not
taking any chances. Hundreds of police officers surrounded the Pavilion, the
neighboring street and the train station a block away. Other officers on
horseback faced demonstrators in parking lot.
One of the security measures included
protestors to be escorted in few numbers if they chose to cross on the side of
the street to leave the demonstration.
“Once you get inside the parking lot, you
can not get out,” said one a police sergeant, “You need to have an officer
to escort you out to the other side of the street.”
A few protestors were permitted to stay
outside the parking lot fence on the sidewalk, or allowed to sit on the fence,
or in trees on the street carrying unsupported flags - since the police asked
them to take the sticks off the flags for security measures.
Protestors led chants with and without loud
speakers, yelling, “Long Live Palestine,” “Free Free Palestine,” “Down
Down Israel,” “End the Occupation Now,” and “With Souls and Blood, We
will sacrifice for you Aqsa”
A martyr-like
dummy was carried on a stretcher carried by some young Palestinians. Just next
to the stretcher, a black box symbolizing a coffin was carried by several
others.
Not only Arabs and Muslims
The protest included many human rights
activists: members from the Progressive Labor Party, the Workers Party, the
Revolutionary Worker Party, the Socialist Party, and Amnesty International.
“I am Irish and I come here today because
I oppose Zionism and I see it as any other form of colonialism,” said Tom
Burke, member of the Service Employee International Union, one of the largest
unions in the country.
Burke
participated in solidarity with the Palestinians during the first Intifada at
the end of the 1980s while he was a UIC student. He still remembers how that
protest brought the first police helicopter to campus to monitor the
demonstration.
Some Jewish Americans joined the protest,
demonstrating against Israeli policies towards Palestinians in the Occupied
Territories.
Members from the newly founded Jewish group
“Not in My Name” held banners that read “I am Jewish and I want Israel to
stop killing the Palestinians.”
Earlier in the day, they issued a statement
saying that the United Jewish Communities did not speak for all American Jews.
The statement asked the U.N. to take a leading role in the peace process stating
they did not believe that U.S. could be an honest broker.
“We are very concerned with the portrayal
of this conflict as a religious struggle. This is not a battle between Jews and
Muslims, but a struggle for the human rights and dignity of a people who wish
only to obtain political independence and an end to the illegal occupation of
their homeland [as declared by the U.N.],” said the statement.
David Zinder, 37, a computer programmer,
and a group member, said he came to the protest because he objected to Israeli
programs and policies, and that his pride in his religion and his identity as a
Jew does not prevent him from opposing the practices that contradict the values
and beliefs that he adopts.
“I don’t
agree to the occupation, this is unquestionable. I think the government over
there is murderous,” said Zinder holding a protesting banner, “I think the
Palestinians are entitled to a real state of their own, I looked at the map of
the West Bank and what the Palestinians were offered were some dotted scattered
areas that cannot form a state. I don’t think the Oslo accord started a real
peace.”
Although he
agreed to its declaration, in reality the execution did not carry the spirit of
the peace, he added.
Two Korean War veterans carried a banner
which read, “USS Liberty 1967”, a U.S. Navy vessel attacked by the Israelis,
killing American seamen. The veterans told IslamOnline that while much fuss is
made about the bombing of USS Cole, nothing is ever mentioned of this incident.
By 9:00 p.m., buses that had carried
activists primarily from the South side of the city came back to the parking lot
to pick up dispersing demonstrators who were leavinv as peacefully as they came.
Participating Children
Several families brought children as young
as toddlers, in their strollers. Others brought their 4- and 5-year-olds, so
that they would know their history and their heritage.
Ryan, not even 5 years of age, accompanied
his teenaged brother and parents. His father, Aziz, stated he has been out of
the his homeland for the past 33 years, and like other refugees, has moved
around, especially within some Arab countries, - Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia
- before he finally ended up in Chicago.
“How long do you think Palestinians can
be patient? How do you think we feel when we are ousted out of our homes and we
live in a tent seeing our places given to others? In the settlements they [the
Israelis] have their state-of-the-art luxurious homes, while we do not have the
minimum human conditions to live in,” said Aziz.
“Excuse me for saying this, we didn’t
even have the least decent place to s**t in,” he added, lowering his voice,
“If we have acted as real Muslims we wouldn’t be in such situation now.
Allah says for those who fear him, He would give them a way out of their misery,
He is our hope.”
Aziz, a sales person said he brought his
younger son, although he may not understand what is happening now, but that
someday he would remember his family’s protest, hoping that his son should be
proud of his heritage and his identity.
Sana, 25, a teacher aid at Universal school
in the South side, also brought her son, Mutasseem, 5. Sitting over his
mother’s shoulder, Mutasseem held a banner that read “Barak, Blood in Your
Hands”
“This is not his first demonstration, he
has been in four others, and he is not too young to understand that. I think he
knows he does that for his people and his country,” Sana said, who chanted as
hard she could with a group of other women all in Islamic hijab. The women all
came in 20 filled-buses from the Mosque Foundation.
“I do believe in the peace process, but I
am afraid the Israeli way of showing it is killing our chances in any peace with
them. We don’t trust them, they go back on their words,” she added.
Several of the people IslamOnline
interviewed agreed that the fight is a political issue, an issue of land
occupation and an issue of human rights violations.
They all expressed concern that Israeli
practices, especially concerning al-Haram al-Sharif and the al-Aqsa Mosque are
dragging the conflict into a religious Jewish- Muslim confrontation.
Barak’s speech
Chicago media
allowed to cover Barak’s speech reported that he sounded tougher than ever
towards the peace process.
Barak said Israelis will accept nothing
less than permanently secure borders; retaining the 80% of Israeli settlements
in Arab lands remaining under Israeli control, no right of Palestinian refugees
to return to Israel and a Jerusalem under Jewish control, the Chicago Tribune
reported Barak as stating Tuesday.
“We derive great strength to know we in
Israel are not alone,” Barak told the gathering to a standing ovation.
He spent much of
Monday nursing a bout of laryngitis that sometimes rendered him speechless and
forced him to cancel meetings with the local media.
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