As alleged anti-Jewish attacks have risen in Chicago, a diverse panel of civic and religious leaders Monday showcased the personal impact of the trend but wrestled over how best to confront “an everyone problem.”
Rabbis, victims of alleged hate incidents, representatives from the Chicago Urban League, the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, the Anti-Defamation League and Chicago police testified at a hearing held by the city’s Commission on Human Relations.
The hearing featured testimony from rabbis who spoke about increased security at their synagogues — and from Eitan Bleichman, an Orthodox Jewish man shot on his way to his Rogers Park synagogue last year. He said “antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem.”
“It is an everyone problem,” Bleichman said. “So many things could have gone differently. What if my kids weren’t too tired and came with me? Would I have been able to protect them? What if his gun didn’t jam? … I hope the work done here today will help us eliminate anti-Jewish hate.”
The commission’s most recent report showed a decrease in hate crimes across most categories last year except for anti-Jewish crimes and homophobic crimes against gay men.
The report is based on data categorized by the Chicago police, which shows a 58% rise in reported anti-Jewish hate crimes from 2023 to 2024. The data includes hate crimes based on a victim’s testimony, even if the department’s felony review unit does not approve a hate crime charge, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Mike Milstein, a deputy chief with CPD, told the commission that at least some of the increase is due to improved processes for reporting hate crimes.
The hearing comes amid a rise nationally in both antisemitic and Islamaphobic hate incidents since the October 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel and the nearly two-year war, and now famine, that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza since.
The hours-long hearing drew criticism from the City Council’s only Jewish member and several other alderpeople who weren’t satisfied the list of speakers included enough “mainstream Jewish” voices.
The hearing also highlighted a fracture within the Jewish community over how to characterize antisemitism, as criticism of Israel has grown amid the war in Gaza. More moderate or conservative Jewish panelists slammed the commission for inviting “fringe” progressive Jewish voices critical of Zionism. Progressive Jewish panelists decried the conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel.
“Some of my colleagues in the Jewish community and in organizations that are collecting hate crime data are incorrectly and falsely lumping in instances of anti-Zionism as antisemitism, which they are absolutely different things,” said Jewish panelist Ashley Bohrer, a Gender and Peace Studies professor at the University of Notre Dame.
“The conflation of political support for Palestinians with anti-Jewish hate has muddied the water so much that it makes it harder to do our job to confront anti-Jewish hate,” Bohrer said.
In a statement, the Chicago Police Department said anti-Israel incidents are “not characterized as an anti-Jewish hate crime, unless there is something that occurs within the same incident that would classify it as a anti-Jewish hate crime.”
Bohrer and other progressive panelists said the rise in antisemitism as a symptom of far-right white supremacy they argue has been propped up by President Donald Trump.
State Sen. Celina Villanueva (D-Chicago) testified that her office was recently vandalized with graffiti of swastikas and the phrase “ICE rules.” That was just one of several different recent incidents of swastika graffiti in Chicago, including near a synagogue in Hyde Park.
“This act of hate was meant to strike fear… painted on a place that serves Mexican and immigrant families,” Villanueva said, adding that antisemitism happens “not in isolation but as connected to the broader rise of bigotry.”
Bohrer spoke during the same section of the meeting as the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism, according to its website.
“Normalizing inflammatory rhetoric, Nazi comparisons, and justification of violence as resistance, and amplifying this rhetoric on social media platforms and here in this chamber, ultimately can inspire violent actors,” said Rebecca Weininger, senior regional director at the ADL Midwest.
After the hearing, Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th), the council’s only Jewish member who has been outspoken in her support of Israel, condemned the commission for shutting out “mainstream Jewish organizations” from planning the hearing and inviting “only two actual victims of anti-Jewish hate to testify.”
The statement was signed by 15 council members. At least eight of them did not attend the hearing at all.
The commissioner plans to produce a report within 60 days on how to reduce anti-Jewish hate.