Oct 6

Oct 6 Marking One Year (II)

Chicago, Public Declarations, Protest, Performance, Demonstrations

Today at noon, around 300 pro-Israeli demonstrators gathered in the Wrigley Building Plaza for a march and rally marking the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack that left over 1,200 Israelis dead and resulted in over 200 Israelis taken hostage. While the time of the demonstration was posted on the Titan-Security website, the location was not disclosed, presumably for security reasons. (The site was later updated to include the location). I knew the time, but a fellow photographer notified me about the location.

Unlike their pro-Palestinian counterparts, the pro-Israeli forces have been timid when it comes to public demonstrations. The five or six demonstrations in the downtown area have been sparsely attended. Most of the demonstrations in the Chicago-area take place in the northern suburbs, often at indoor locations.

I repeatedly have been told that the Jewish community is afraid that they will be subjected to violence during public demonstrations. Given the sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country since October 7th, that concern is understandable. According to the Anti-Defamation League, from October 7, 2023, to September 24, 2024, there were more than 10,000 incidents, compared to 3,325 during the same period a year earlier.

Jews, however, are also capable of committing acts of violence, as I learned last October 22, when a seemingly observant Jew maced me, a police officer, and the members of a crowd gathered on Touhy Avenue for a demonstration. The young man was arrested at the scene.

Rather than beginning today’s rally with speeches and music, the organizers opted to first march around the block, starting at the Wrigley Building, heading over the DuSable Michigan Avenue Bridge, turning right on Wacker, turning right on Wabash, and then taking the pedestrian footbridge over Hubbard Street back to the Wrigley Building Plaza. I suspect that this highly efficient route was chosen largely because it minimized the likelihood of an attack similar to the one that killed Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia during a demonstration in opposition to a “Unite the Right” rally. James Alex Fields Jr. plowed his car into Heyer and other demonstrators as they marched.

The commemorative program began immediately after the marchers returned to the Wrigley Building Plaza. It ran for exactly one hour.

Anyone who has watched the excellent series Fauda knows that the subtext running throughout the series is that despite the longstanding dispute between Israelis and Palestinians over territory, the two groups share much more in common than either group might care to admit when it comes to family, religious devotion, and love of community. While both exhibit similar cultural traits, the two share little in common in how they demonstrate.

Length. Most notably, the pro-Israeli demonstrations are mercifully short; today’s rally lasted just over 90 minutes. When I mentioned the rally’s brevity afterwards to one demonstrator, she was shocked to learn that the pro-Palestinian demonstrations can run three or four hours.

Musicality. Today’s demonstration was musical—two guitar players, a singer, and two violinists. The musicians performed several religiously-rooted songs, a woman sang the National Anthem, and those attending were treated to excellent renditions of John Lennon’s Imagine and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.

I do not recall any angry chants; those being the hallmark of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. In fact, the only chant was the simple, “Bring Them Home, Now,” which was repeated exuberantly throughout the program, with emphasis being placed on the word “Now.”.

Last night, the Chicago’s Palestinian community held a benefit concert at the newly renovated Renova Theater in Bridgeport. The 10 PM televised news coverage showed some Palestinian musicians performing, as well as Chicago rapper, Common, who was the headliner. The heritage-Palestinian forces would be well-advised to incorporate music into their weekly demonstrations. I note that the pro-Palestinian Jewish groups—Jewish Voice For Peace and Not In Our Name—do include music when they demonstrate.

Tone. The pro-Israeli speakers exhibited a lot less anger than the pro-Palestinian typically do. Today’s focus remained squarely on the victims of the October 7th massacre and the hostages. I don’t like balancing the number of Israeli victims against Palestinian victims, but the Palestinians certainly have plenty of dead, resulting from Israel’s uncalibrated military response to October 7th, who are worthy of memorials. In fact, two of the more moving pro-Palestinian demonstrations during the last year occurred when people simply read out the names of the dead from a list compiled by the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

At today’s rally, there were two particularly noteworthy speakers. The first was Leah Polin, the grandmother of Hersch Goldberg-Polin, the 23-year-old man who first had his arm blown off during the Re’im Music Festival, then was taken hostage, and who finally was executed, apparently by a bullet to the back of his head, on or about August 29, 2024. The grandmother offered no new information, just memories as she exhibited great pride. Amazingly, she shed no tears, speaking from notes with great force and conviction.

The second was a young Israeli woman who is somehow associated with Kibbutz Be’eri, one of the first communities attacked by Hamas on October 7th. A total of 101 Israeli civilians and 31 security personnel were killed. Thirty-two residents were taken hostage. If I heard her correctly, she was not present during the attack, but returned, apparently participating in a cleanup effort. Once again, her personal testimony gave voice to the victims. i was particularly impressed when she really didn’t care whether the Hamas leaders were hunted down and killed. Vengeance was not on her mind despite her relationship to Kibbutz Be’eri.

At the Palestinian demonstrations, there often is personal testimony about family members and friends who have been killed in Gaza. For me, those speeches, like the ones from Hersch Goldberg-Polin’s grandmother and the young woman, are the most memorable and moving parts of the demonstrations.

Attitude Toward the Chicago Police Department. On at least three occasions, today’s organizers and speakers thanked members of the Chicago Police Department for providing them with protection. As I left the demonstration, several attendees made it a point to thank individual CPD officers as the demonstrators headed home.

Somewhat puzzlingly, the pro-Palestinian groups are generally antagonistic to the police. Not once have I heard anyone at a pro-Palestinian rally thank CPD for their service and assistance, as the organizers did today, and as the Ukrainians and Russian émigrés regularly do. Somewhat incongruously, I do see the heritage-Palestinian organizers chatting and joking around with the police. Yet, at virtually every pro-Palestinian demonstration, the crowd recites a chant equating CPD with the KKK.

Interestingly, there were far fewer police officers present than I had expected. The police face two basic issues at any demonstration—keeping the demonstrators safe and dealing with acts of civil disobedience. No one was expecting any acts of civil disobedience today. In fact, the crowd marched on the sidewalk rather than in the street, apparently in part to avoid disrupting traffic. So, the relatively light police coverage suggests that dealing with potential civil disobedience requires more manpower than keeping a group of people safe.

The Visuals: Signage and Flags. Both the pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators rely on signage. From a visual standpoint, the pro-Palestinian organizers do a much better job than the pro-Israeli ones. The laminated “Kidnapped” signs that were so prevalent today do carry a stark message when strategically placed on the cement. The black and yellow balloons were also a nice visual touch, but the pro-Palestinian forces bring out much bigger signs with far catchier slogans. They also bring larger flags, and a lot more of them.

This is an issue of branding, with the pro-Israeli demonstrators falling short. Just look at the image below of the DuSable Michigan Avenue bridge as the demonstrators pass over it. There is largely no signage and only one or two Israeli flags visible. I selected that photograph from a digital contact sheet of ‘bridge’ photographs as the one that best depicting a pro-Israeli march. If, however, the viewer did not have context, he or she might not realize that this is a group of pro-Israeli demonstrators.

The organizers should also have had marshals that kept the group compacted. Visually, there was too much empty space between the clusters of marchers as they walked the route.

Finally, the lead banner was much too small. The Palestinian banners often span two or three traffic lanes. In short, the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are much savvier when it comes to visual branding than their pro-Israeli counterparts.

Lessons To Be Learned. The pro-Israeli forces could learn a lot from the pro-Palestinian forces when it comes to demonstrating, and vice versa. Today’s demonstration was much more of a memorial to the dead and a plea for the return of the hostages than a demonstration against Hamas or Hezbollah. it was far more spiritual than the typical pro-Palestinian demonstration. The pro-Palestinian organizers would do well to adopt a more spiritual tone, but with all the death and destruction that has taken place in Gaza over the last 12 months, the anger certainly is understandable. More prayer; more music, more memorials.

The pro-Israeli organizers clearly need to up their game when it comes to visuals. Demonstrations serve to build community cohesiveness, which today’s rally certainly did, but they also represent marketing campaigns directed at persuading the general public that the group’s cause is a worthy and just one. Without adequate signage, flags, and other visuals, today’s march failed when it comes to public messaging.

Along these lines, numbers matter. With the exception of the Israeli-flag-raising ceremony in Daley Plaza on May 14th, this was the largest pro-Israeli demonstration I’ve attended in Chicago since last October 7th. Nevertheless the turnout was unimpressive. The organizers need to put far more people on the streets.

In that regard, I noticed that there were no buses in sight, which most likely meant those living in the suburbs were underrepresented. For the flag-raising ceremony, the organizers bussed in what looked like high school students.

Finally, aside from Hersch Goldberg-Polin’s grandmother, there were no well-known speakers to draw a crowd. Where were Midwest Israeli Consul General Yinam Cohen, U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, Chicago Ald. Debra Silverstein, and Jewish United Fund President Lonnie Nasatir, among other notables?

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]