By Bob Seidenberg
Red balloons, their strings tied to shoes and alongside pictures of victims, fluttered across Evanston’s Fountain Square in a dramatic representation Sunday in a solidarity rally calling for the release of the hostages taken captive by Hamas.
Former State Senator Jeffrey Schoenberg, an Evanston resident, was one of the speakers at the ceremony, which police estimated drew between 200 to 250 people.
“There are more than 240 men, women and children who are innocent, whose only crime is that they’re Jewish and that they live in the land of Israel,” said Schoenberg, a longtime Evanston resident, speaking in front of a large red, “Bring Them Home Now,” banner. “We can all walk in the land of Israel, no matter where in world we stand at this moment, but there are over 240 Jews in tunnels underneath Gaza,” who do not have that right, he said.
The rally was sponsored by the Israeli-American Council, a group which provides support to the Israelis living in this country, and works to strengthen bonds between America and the State of Israel.
Schoenberg told crowd members that he goes to the same congregation in Evanston as Judith Raanan, one of the citizens taken hostage, and later released.
He had just seen her a few weeks before she was taken captive, and said she had talked about how excited she was about her forthcoming trip with her daughter Natalie, to be in Israel for her mother’s birthday.
After he heard about the kidnapping, Schoenberg said he called his cousin, who also lives in Evanston, and who already knew about the mass abductions.
“I have to say I had a 22-year career in politics, where I had many difficult conversations, but there’s nothing that prepares you in life to tell somebody who you know and care about, ‘Don’t call your friend on her cell phone,” he said of his conversation with his cousin. “She’s not going to answer.”
“We cannot have our voices silenced out of fear, out of intimidation, because we are on the side of what is just, we are on the side of what is right,” he stressed. “And we are on the side, regardless of our religious denomination, regardless of our standing in the community, we all want the hostages to come home to their families, to their loved ones, and to their communities.”
Another speaker, Gil Engelstein, who teaches history at Northwestern, was one of a number of members from the local Israeli community attending the more than hour-long event.
“And we are so incredibly grateful that you came to stand with us here today,” he told crowd members. He noted that along with Jewish hostages, “there are Palestinian hostages, there are international citizens held right now in the tunnels in Gaza.”“We are standing in solidarity with all of them,” he said. “And we join their families, and their friends, calling, saying, release all the hostages today.”
“There are too many who view grief, empathy, humanity as a zero sum game — as a limited resource — as a test of loyalty,” he said. “There are those who tear down posters, which insist to view everything only through the lens of conflict, animosity, propaganda,” he said. “And out of shared grief, I want to offer us all here today a tiny bit of hope. Those voices, the voices of dehumanization, may be loud, but they are wrong and they are in the minority. We are not alone.”
Ira Piltz, a lawyer with an office in nearby Skokie, also spoke.He said after “this is real.”
“I mean, we tend to look at these things in abstractions,” he said. “It’s a war going on 5,600 miles away with geopolitical ramifications.”
The victims “were stolen from their homes — babies, the elderly, non-combatants people out enjoying a music festival — were stolen like cars and taken away,” he said. “There’s no justification. I don’t care what your politics are. There’s no justification for these actions.”
He’s a lawyer, he said, “and the reason that I’m a lawyer is I believe that society has to operate by a normative set of rules. We’re dealing with somebody who doesn’t care what the rules are.”
