Chicago’s City Council is becoming embroiled in the political fallout from the armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, as aldermen prepare to consider a resolution backing Israel following the attack launched from the Gaza Strip.
Far North Side Ald. Debra Silverstein, the City Council’s lone Jewish member, plans to introduce the “Israeli Solidarity Resolution.” The symbolic document supports Israel as its military hammers the Gaza Strip after Hamas fighters based there killed hundreds of Israelis in a brazen weekend assault.
Silverstein hoped to bring her resolution to the council floor Wednesday, but held it after discussions with Mayor Brandon Johnson and city lawyers in which she said they pointed out introducing it might violate the state Open Meetings Act.
Aldermen will instead return to City Hall for a special meeting Friday afternoon to consider Silverstein’s resolution.
An ugly council fight during Wednesday’s meeting, with questions for Johnson after many of his progressive aldermanic allies opposed the resolution, would also have threatened to become a distraction from the mayor’s speech unveiling his proposed $16.6 billion 2024 city budget.
Johnson opened his news conference after his budget address by calling for a moment of silence for “every innocent life that has been lost” in the recent fighting.
He then condemned Hamas for “attacking and killing innocent Israeli civilians, including children in front of their parents, and indiscriminately firing into crowds of innocent people,” calling it “truly heinous” and saying it “represents one of the worst acts of terror we’ve witnessed.”
Asked whether Silverstein’s resolution should be amended to reflect the oppression and violence Palestinians have endured at the hands of Israel, as Johnson council ally Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd, has said, the mayor punted.
“That’s the conversation that happens amongst the council,” he said. “And what I’m doing is, I’m going to oversee a meeting that allows for the type of robust conversation to take place so that everybody is very clear about how we must center humanity in this moment.”
Silverstein said the need for the council to show solidarity with Israel through her resolution is obvious.
“This was a terrorist attack against innocent civilians,” she said of the initial Hamas incursion into Israel. “They targeted and killed men, women, children, the elderly. I don’t know how you can sit back and not condemn it in the strongest terms. Israel has the right to defend itself.”
As Silverstein sought to build support for her plan Tuesday, Rodriguez-Sanchez, who Johnson chose to chair the council Committee on Health and Human Relations, pushed back against the resolution.
While saying in a note to Silverstein that she was “deeply sorry for all the violence, the pain and the loss of life that took place over the weekend and that continues to escalate as I write this email,” Rodriguez-Sanchez also said “any resolution that speaks on this matter should in my opinion also center the humanity of Palestinians who are confined to an open air prison and whose lands have been occupied for decades.”
“I would be happy to work together on this resolution so that it provides a more nuanced understanding of the situation,” Rodriguez-Sanchez wrote, according to an email exchange Silverstein provided to the Tribune.
Rodriguez-Sanchez could not be reached for comment.
Silverstein said in an interview that she had no intention to amend the language in her proposed resolution.
It characterizes the Hamas attack as “shocking in its brutality and cruelty, seeing the murder and abduction of innocent babies while parents were gunned down in front of their children.”
The resolution contrasts that with the Israeli response, which it says “has been ethically driven, with the goal of eliminating the terrorist infrastructure and taking extreme measures to minimize civilian casualties.”
“Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and the obligation to protect its citizens against terrorism and attack by hostile foreign powers,” the resolution reads in part.
Meanwhile, at least 3,000 Palestinian supporters filled the plaza at Eagle Fountain in Grant Park Wednesday afternoon with chants of “free, free Palestine” and “resistance is justified when people are occupied.”
“This is about the unfair treatment of Palestinians,” Victoria Hani, 39, said. She brought her teenage son, wrapped in a Palestinian flag, and 9-year-old daughter to the plaza.
“(People) think this is a religious conflict when it’s about government,” she said.
Chicago Tribune’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed.
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