"From the river to the sea," the speaker's voice echoed across Union Park. "Palestine will be free."
The sun was high and blazing Monday, the air electric with drums and chants and squawking bullhorns. Thousands of people milled around, holding signs, backpacks, bottles of water.
The only way to cover such a sprawling chaos is to pick a person and dive in. I settled on a trio holding a banner 45 feet long featuring the thought of the day: "FREE PALESTINE." I approached the young man on the left and asked: Free Palestine ... of what? To me, the end of that phrase is obvious: "... of Jews."
"Absolutely not," he said. "To me, it means the freedom in Palestine to live, to have food and water. To not be in an open-air prison. To not be exterminated."
He said they were with Students for Justice in Palestine.
"My personal goal, the reason why I'm here, is to call for a cease-fire and to call for peace," continued the man, 19, who did not want to be identified. "The situation is pretty complicated, to be honest. It would take a long time, but I do think a single-state solution could work."
A future of peaceful coexistence was not exactly being floated from the stage.
"Stop all aid to the racist, colonial, terrorist state of Israel!" the speaker shouted. "We will continue to march, until we ... achieve total and complete liberation of Palestine. From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free."
At a New Students for a Democratic Society booth — echos of the 1960s SDS — I spoke with a young woman whose face was wrapped in a green keffiyeh.
"Everybody has the right to exist, to live," she said. "We believe everybody should be liberated, but most importantly, the Palestinian people should be liberated."
And the Jews?
"Israel is a colonized state. They really didn't exist before, I believe, 1960," she said [actually, 1948]. "The UK had given away Palestinian land without permission. It was not theirs to give. I have nothing against the Jewish people, I think they are all beautiful people and all deserve the right to live like anybody else. But at the cost to another person, it's an injustice."
Seeking to get the Jewish side of things, Wednesday I attended a reception given by the consulate general of Israel to the Midwest, where I cornered Michael Herzog, Israel's ambassador to the United States, and put my question to him.
"When they talk about 'free Palestine from the river to the sea,' it means only one thing," he said. "It means eradicating the state of Israel. That's all it means. Any acrobatics will not change that. That's what they mean. It's very clear."
Usually, this issue is presented as a tug-of-war between two impassioned, opposing sides. Which is why, at Union Park, I drifted toward two women who stood out for their bright "WHEN WE FIGHT WE WIN" T-shirts depicting a smiling Kamala Harris.
Benee Hardy-Ross (left) and Denise Delegol came over to Union Park from the Democratic National Convention at the United Center to see what the protests were about. They’re against innocent people being killed in Gaza but don’t think that’s a reason to not support Kamala Harris, or to support Donald Trump.
Neil Steinberg/Sun-Times
"We kinda just stumbled over here from the convention. We were trying to understand why they were protesting," said Denise Delegol. "Everybody, I would think, wants a cease-fire. These innocent women and children are being killed. Hamas is actually hiding within the facilities. But they should stop the bombing when they know it might kill innocent people. So we understand that completely.
"But the flip side is that if you don't support Harris, who are you going to support? The crazy man, Trump? That man has made it clear he would just wipe them out. Unless they don't do research, or can't read, I don't understand what their thinking is."
Added Benee Hardy-Ross: "I was excited to find out the true feelings from the people here. A lot of times the media views get twisted. So far, I saw that people are against both the Democrats and the Republicans. I did not believe that they thought not voting either way would make a difference."
I mentioned to Delegol and Hardy-Ross the protesters' demand that all lands be returned to the indigenous peoples who once lived there, but the protesters don't seem to realize that doing so would require ceding Chicago back to the Potawatomi.
"Where are you telling us to be shipped to?" asked Hardy-Ross. "Because we were born here. I don't know where you want me to go back to."
"Some of the views here are really tyrannical," Delegol said. "You wonder almost why are you here in this country, talking like that. We have to come together. It's give and take. Nobody is going to get everything they want, on either side. Things that are basic human things, like stop the bombing, that's just common sense. Stop it."
