The Glen Ellyn-based West Suburban Peace Coalition is in Illinois’ 6th Congressional District served by U.S. Rep. Sean Casten.
For nearly two years now, we have been lobbying Casten to turn against bipartisan U.S. policy, which fully enables Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza with over $20 billion in weaponry obliterating Gaza’s 140 square miles. Also, it is U.S. policy to veto any United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to the genocide, and U.S. policy does nothing to force Israel to feed the starving Palestinians its U.S.-provided bombs don’t kill.
Casten’s response is to express dismay at Gaza’s destruction, but he does nothing of substance to oppose it. He refuses to call it what much of the rest of the world, aside from the Donald Trump administration and most members of Congress, correctly labels it: genocide.
We recently asked his office if Casten would support H.R. 3565, the Block the Bombs Act, introduced by U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois’ 3rd District and co-sponsored by more than 50 others, including five additional members of Congress from Illinois.
Casten’s Sept. 8 response was astonishing. He omitted any support for the bill other than saying that he would “consider our views“ if it comes to a vote. But be a co-sponsor? You can’t be serious.
Casten knows full well we’ve supplied Israel with over $20 billion in weapons to unleash its genocide, beginning the day after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. We’ve provided over 50,000 tons of US bombs and related weaponry to kill upward of 100,000 Palestinians. The remaining 2 million Palestinians are slowly dying from starvation and lack of medical care — if they’re not shot to death reaching for the few shipments of food Israeli lets in.
We have no idea what occurs in Casten’s heart and soul to compel him to turn away from opposing the most grisly humanitarian crisis our country has ever enabled. But we implore every morally centered resident of the 6th District to demand Casten have an epiphany to begin removing the genocide enabler stain from his congressional record.
— Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn
Endorsing Palestinian state
If recognition by the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada of a Palestinian state isn’t a reward for the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and ensuing war, then what is it? A revival of “the hope of peace and a two-state solution” between Palestinians and Israelis? British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is delusional.
Peace will come when the Palestinians and their leadership become more interested in the well-being of their own people than they are with killing Jews and Israelis and wiping Israel off the map.
Let’s not forget that Israel is fighting a defensive war that it did not start and does not want. And let’s also not forget that Hamas members are not “militants” but terrorists.
Shame on the U.K., Australia and Canada for rewarding terrorism.
— Rebecca Shiner, Chicago
Betrayal of ‘never again’
A two-year investigation by the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. This finding is supported by 16,000 pieces of evidence documenting systematic killings, the demolition of homes, deliberate starvation, the destruction of Gaza’s health care system, sexual violence and the direct targeting of children.
In response, U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, dismissed the U.N. Human Rights Council as having a “disgusting and permanent fixation on condemning Israel” and claims it reflects a “bloated antisemitic focus.” Notably, Risch fails to engage with the extensive evidence the council has presented.
Navi Pillay, chair of the U.N. commission responsible for the report, states clearly: “I do not write these words as an adversary of Israel. … Our commission has documented the crimes by Hamas. But no crime, however grave, justifies genocide. To respond to atrocity with atrocity is to abandon the very values international law was created to protect.”
Prominent Israeli Holocaust and genocide scholars — Amos Goldberg, Omer Bartov, Daniel Blatman, Raz Segal and Shmuel Lederman — have also identified Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide. Why hasn’t Risch invited these experts to testify before his committee?
The United Nations Genocide Convention placed prevention at the center of international law. By rejecting credible evidence of genocide, the U.S. is betraying its promise of “never again.”
— Terry Hansen, Milwaukee
The targeting of Jews
Regarding the editorial “Iryna Zarutska’s death demands our attention” (Sept. 9): The Orthodox Jewish websites based in New York City remembered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. One of them ran the story of her killing on North Carolina mass transit for many days, though perhaps it got her age wrong.
Nonetheless, stories of brutality and other failings of our cities concern them because, differently, Jews are being targeted in New York and across the country by very angry, occasionally out-of-control people. You can thank Yeshiva World News and Vos Iz Neias for their coverage, concern and caring.
The mayor of Charlotte, North Carolina, really suffers from foot-in-mouth disease, to say the least.
Thank you for the editorial.
— Rosalie Lieberman, Chicago
Hypocrisy of Democrats
Members of the Democratic left just cannot help themselves from showing their true colors. Gov. JB Pritzker openly called for protests over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension.
It’s called decorum. You don’t make plane crash jokes, and you don’t joke about an assassination. Pretty simple.
I can only assume that Republicans can now call for a boycott of the Hyatt hotel chain?
I believe it was Pritzker who said that President Donald Trump foments division. The stunning hypocrisy of Democratic leadership jumps off the page.
— Randall Ray, Gurnee
A negotiator of peace
President Donald Trump may have achieved the impossible — getting Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson to agree on something. In voicing their opposition to sending in the National Guard, they’ve united against a common enemy.
Maybe Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize after all.
— Sheryl Slone Tarkoff, Chicago
Focus on what ails us
Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker has better things to do than calling for boycotts and protests against Walt Disney Co. and its ABC network for suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show.
Pritzker needs to concern himself with Illinois’ high taxes, fleeing corporations, persistent crime, and job and and population loss — not a network’s business decision.
If nothing else, the governor needs to vet his violence disrupters better. Then Pritzker wouldn’t have to scrub a photo of him posing with a community violence intervention worker who has been accused of involvement in a fatal collision following a Louis Vuitton smash-and-grab on North Michigan Avenue.
— Bruce R. Hovanec, Chicago
Resources are available
Chicago Public Schools participated in a University of Chicago survey of students, and almost 40% of them reported suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the 2023 report. That’s double the rate for returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead of getting on its high horse about how great Chicago is, why doesn’t the Tribune Editorial Board take an honest look at what is actually working in Washington, D.C., a city that has experienced the same intractable crime problem as Chicago for decades? Smart police work has always worked. Coordinating resources works.
The governor has similar resources at his disposal now to change the dynamic in Chicago overnight — without President Donald Trump. All it takes is will.
Illinois has 13,000 National Guard troops, nearly 2,000 state troopers and myriad state law enforcement agency officials capable of freeing up resources for the Chicago Police Department to do its work — such as what’s being done in D.C.
The success in Washington is looming larger every day as a national rebuke to small thinking. The endless deflecting about root causes has run out of credible runway. Those root causes can never be addressed when the malignancy of crime goes unaddressed.
Again, the successes in D.C. will not succumb to being gaslit by the convoluted rhetoric of hapless politicians. It’s too obvious. Incantations of “nothing to see here” have crossed over into parody and are falling flat — globally.
Chicago is the most American city. It captures all that is great about our country. It is a can-do place like no other, dedicated to a specific form of commonsense excellence unique to our country. That’s why in the past, so many visitors from other parts of the nation felt immediately at home here. Where is that feeling now, with fear, PTSD among our children and boarded-up retail shops in our downtown?
The Tribune Editorial Board is part of that history. Don’t settle. Get over your animus to our president, suck it up and find what works. Demand that the governor and mayor adhere to zero tolerance for lawlessness and do their jobs.
— Mark McAdams, Wilmette
Criticism of the mayor
I have enormous respect for Barbara Ransby as a public intellectual and as a progressive activist, but in the op-ed “Our mayor is standing on the right side of history. Chicago should stand with him,” she gets a fundamental point wrong.
Yes, President Donald Trump’s “threat to militarily occupy Chicago, overriding the wishes of local elected officials, is indeed an unconstitutional overreach,” and, if it comes to that, I am ready and willing to join Ransby and Mayor Brandon Johnson at the barricades. Nonviolently.
I voted for Johnson and would do so again — if he could do a few things better than he has so far. Things such as work effectively across the progressive-moderate divide on the City Council, right-size our school system and share information, such as the Ernst & Young budget analysis, more freely. These are steps that many Chicago residents like me would like to see Johnson take.
But with this statement, “If critics of the mayor would pitch in and stop trying to sabotage and undermine his leadership, we would be a stronger, better city and able to resist the illegal occupation that Trump is orchestrating, while rebuilding stronger, healthier, safer communities,” Ransby goes too far.
Criticism is not sabotage. And, unfortunately, much of the criticism of Johnson is legitimate.
— Jeff Epton, Chicago
Vallas’ op-ed on the Fed
Regarding “What to do about the Fed?”: Paul Vallas simplifies U.S. economic failures by blaming the Federal Reserve without any mention of the laws passed by Congress and fiscal deficits authorized by Congress and approved by several presidents with which it must manage.
Vallas says nothing about the external pressure being repeatedly voiced by our current president and his Treasury secretary to lower interest rates while the Fed seeks to understand the inflationary aspects of our country’s new tariff policy.
— George Collias, River Forest
Does Vallas have expertise?
Why is Vallas writing about a subject where he has no expertise? Why is the Tribune opinion section publishing it?
— Rich O’Brien, Evanston
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