With the state of Israel being continually mugged in the court of public opinion, I decided to check out Monday’s celebration of the nation’s 78th birthday, held by the Consulate General of Israel in Chicago. See how they are holding up.
Expecting something fancy, I put on my blue blazer and khakis.
“These are Israelis, right?” said my wife, whose point of reference is when you could take a taxi from Israel to Egypt and sleep on the beach. But I read the room in advance correctly. Some of the 500 guests actually wore neckties.
I approached security. “You want to hear my Torah portion?” I asked the stern man giving me the once over, referring to the passages read in Hebrew at my bar mitzvah. “Yes,” he said, and I began to rattle off the beginning of Leviticus 25. He waved me through.
The first partygoer I recognized was Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza. I hurried over, and watched her show off a photo of a map of the Middle East that her son brought home from Smyser Elementary School, where the nation that since 1948 has been known as “Israel” is labeled “Palestine.”
“All these kids think Israel is Palestine because that’s what they’re being taught,” said Mendoza. “It’s everywhere.”
I asked her if she felt strongly about Israel.
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t,” she said. “Everyone should feel safe in this city. It’s scarier for Jewish people.”
One way to understand Israel now is the deep bench of peaceniks swept away by years of frustration, not to forget the Oct. 7 massacre. Now they’ve got the same rigid nationalists plaguing this country, busy blowing Gaza to smithereens, a gift to anti-Zionists everywhere. Strange times indeed, when the mayor of New York is a more vocal enemy of Israel than the king of Saudi Arabia.
The Chicago Public Schools serving up publicly funded propaganda inculcating anti-Jewish hostility was a common thread in my conversations. I bumped into Ellen Rosenfeld, an elected member of the CPS board, who said teachers give assignments like, “Explain why Israel is committing genocide.”
“We’re not teaching kids how to think, but what to think,” she said. When I asked how many CPS board members are passionate anti-Zionists. She replied, “20” — it’s a 21-person board — but then insisted that she was joking. Ha ha. Rosenfeld said that the other two Jewish members of the board come to meetings wearing watermelon pins — to show their support for Palestinians, despite supposedly belonging to a faith where venerating Israel holds a central position — and that sometimes her benign “Good morning,” to fellow board members is met with a bark of “Free Palestine!” (I always add, silently to myself, “… of what?” knowing that the “of Jews” is unvoiced.)
The event itself featured U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider (10th) and Mendoza as speakers, and only when the emcee moved past that pair to welcome elected officials from Iowa and Nebraska did it occur to me that this lineup is not exactly the parade of political power you might expect from a government locked in thrall to Israel. I asked my consulate hosts whether this might not be illustrative of how toxic support for Israel has become, politically, and was assured that, no, this is about par for the course.
Schneider is my congressman, and never struck me as a charming man. But he spoke well, and with conviction. Mendoza, running for mayor, told a protracted story about how she, as a Catholic, enjoyed walking the ground Jesus trod during a visit to Israel, and, while being re-baptized in the Sea of Galilee, she prayed for a friend who was expected to die in a few months from anaplastic thyroid cancer. So far, that friend has survived for two years. A miracle.
“Maybe she can promise, if elected mayor, she’ll return to Galilee and pray for a solvent Chicago pension system,” I whispered to Politico’s Shia Kapos.
Survival of the state of Israel is not a popularity contest to be decided on either college campuses or in teachers lounges. Monday’s event also celebrated America’s 250th. Doing the math, I realized that in five years Israel will be one-third the age of the United States, a nation also built upon land that once belonged to someone else. Maybe those hot to undo the past will begin agitating for our country to be given back to native Americans, with Chicago returned to the Potawatomi. The effort would be a refreshing change of pace, and the result would be the same.