So much negative going on. Let’s focus on the positive, shall we?
Brandon Johnson’s arm-twisting last week led to the meaningless — whoops, “nonbinding” — one-sided City Council resolution calling on Israel to unilaterally stop fighting Hamas, aka a “cease-fire.” The statement didn’t feel the need to call for an end to Hamas attacks on Israel. Good news: It’s not the most antisemitic moment in Chicago mayoral history. Not even close.
That would be in 1988, after Steve Cokely, aide to Mayor Eugene Sawyer, said Jewish doctors were injecting Black babies with AIDS — not as an offhand remark, which would have been bad enough, but in a taped lecture that the Nation of Islam then offered for sale, because that’s what they do.
Prompting Sawyer to ... well, maybe I should draw this out. It’s really too delicious to rush past. Let’s play, “You be the mayor.” So your adviser, who has been in your employ for years, disgorges this crazy, baseless, hateful, antisemitic garbage. On cassette tapes. Which he sells.
As mayor, you need to say something. But what? Craft your own mayoral statement in your mind and we’ll measure it against Sawyer’s actual reaction. Cue the “Jeopardy!” music: Dum, dum, dah, da-da, dum dum dah. ... Got it? Good.
Here’s what Eugene Sawyer actually offered up: “What Steve Cokely does on his own time, as long as it’s not illegal, is his business.” The mayor of all Chicago then allowed that he would go so far as to suggest Cokely “tune down his rhetoric.”
Sawyer eventually fired Cokely. And did other mayoral stuff. But when the subject of Sawyer comes up — an uncommon occurrence — that moment springs to mind. Something for Johnson to think about.
In our present mayor’s defense, the war raging between Israel and Hamas — which is still firing rockets into Israel — brings out the absolute worst in most everybody.
From those supporters of Israel able to shrug off 26,000 Palestinian deaths and horrendous civilian suffering, to supporters of Palestinians who seem unable to acknowledge that the war was provoked by the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust —1,200 civilians killed in a morning — committed on their behalf by their duly-elected legal representatives. (Although, to be fair, having lived in a nation run by Donald Trump for four years, I get the idea that you aren’t your leaders, necessarily. At least I hope not.)
The City Council resolution isn’t antisemitic the way, oh, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is antisemitic. Rather, its fault is in omission. None of the 13 paragraphs of “WHEREAS”s setting up the resolution suggests Hamas should stop trying to destroy Israel. There is no mention of tunnels or rockets. A person unfamiliar with the situation would have no idea that generalized “violence” hadn’t spontaneously erupted in Gaza, prompting good-hearted folks in Chicago to call for “a permanent ceasefire to end the ongoing violence in Gaza.” As if it were that simple.
“Saturday Night Live” mocked the gesture by reporting that Gaza had passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Chicago — also a place where innocent blood is shed every day. Such a resolution would be seen as a rude gesture, oblivious to the complex facts on the ground here. (Such as that the Chicago violence here isn’t being perpetrated by the government, generally, except sometimes when cops are involved ... as I said; it’s complicated).
The facts on the ground there, in case anybody cares, is that Israel, Hamas and various players — including Egypt, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the U.S. — are feverishly trying to work out a cease-fire right now, no prompt from Chicago necessary.
“Amid intense diplomacy, led by America and Saudi Arabia, a transformative deal is taking shape,” the latest Economist reports, the goal being, “to open a path to a Palestinian state; and then to use Israel’s commitment to that as the basis for a deal between it and Saudi Arabia.”
Not to suggest that a solution is either imminent or easy. But it sure isn’t helped by off-point pleas crafted amid chaos by combative local legislatures 6,000 miles away.
Or their newbie mayors. Johnson seems to be reading from the Lori Lightfoot Unforced Error Playbook. I’ve never met the man, but being a generous soul, I assume he isn’t acting out of antisemitism, but merely from inexperience, naivete and a tendency to be led rather than lead. That seemed to be the operating principle guiding him last week, and if history is any indication, it will continue next week and the week after until he is replaced in 2027.
