This is excerpted, with the permission of its authors, from a letter to the editor of the Evanston Roundtable by Evanston for a Free Palestine. We’re grateful to be able to post it.
… We’re grateful for the Evanston RoundTable’s coverage of the July 13 Evanston City Council Meeting, at which members of the Chicago Jewish Alliance expressed outrage that our organization — Evanston for a Free Palestine — was allowed to march in Evanston’s Fourth of July parade.
As Mayor Daniel Biss affirmed, it “would have been a deliberate effort to silence a bunch of Evanstonians — by the way, many of whom are Jewish,” to exclude Evanston for a Free Palestine from the parade. The Evanston Fourth of July Association explained that their decision to approve our participation was based on their “core values: [including] freedom of views and expressions, respect for individual rights, [and] responsibility to provide fair and equal treatment of participants and spectators.”
We were, however, taken aback to learn (from the RoundTable article and not from the association) that the association asked the Evanston Police Department and the Evanston city manager about our organization. Only after both reported that “there were no direct threats and that this parade entry is not on any watch lists” did they recommit to allowing us to participate …
… This baseless suspicion of pro-Palestinian voices is a goal of pro-Israel activists like the Chicago Jewish Alliance, which has a long history of sowing fear of and ultimately silencing the speech of pro-Palestinian activists …
… We applaud the Evanston Fourth of July Association’s courage in including pro-Palestinian voices in the parade, although we regret that they seem to have been influenced by pro-Israeli activists like the CJA, who urge Americans to suspect Palestinians and their allies of being potential terrorists.
CJA presents its campaign as a defense against antisemitism, but attempting to exclude Palestinians and their supporters from civic life is not a legitimate way to protect Jewish people.
Nadia Greenspan, Andrew Ginsberg, Lesley Williams and Lynn Pollack are members of Evanston for a Free Palestine.