Denied a permit by the City of Chicago to hold a pro-Israel event near the Democratic National Convention, the Israeli-American Council instead secured a private lot near the event in which to hold a “hostage square” installation, not unlike the one some 6,000 miles away at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
Jeff Aeder, a Chicago realtor who coordinated an event at the art exhibit on Tuesday, told JNS that he “wanted to figure out some way to express what I think the majority of Americans feel—not necessarily the vocal minority, which have been covered so closely by the media.”
“That is, horror from what happened on Oct. 7,” he said. “I thought to do it in a way that was not screaming at each other in a demonstration, but doing it in a way that we could express our pain and desires and hopes.”
In the exhibit, the enormity of the pain was conveyed literally.
Gigantic milk cartons—each bearing a photo of an Israeli-American hostage held in Gaza—sat in the asphalt lot near a 30-foot-long pair of gray pants, spattered with thick red paint that suggests blood, hanging from a wall. The latter referenced infamous video footage of Naama Levy being paraded through Gazan streets, her pants bloodied in sensitive places, evidence of the sexual violence that Hamas terrorists carried out on Oct. 7.
In the center of the lot, red “teardrops” fell from a sculpted tree. Elsewhere in the installation, drawings, paintings and other installations responded to the worst antisemitic attack since the Holocaust.
‘As long as someone feels something’
“It’s not easy to create such a horrible symbol,” Tomer Peretz, an Israeli artist based in Los Angeles who made the 30-foot-long pants, told JNS.
Peretz, who made multiple versions of the sculpture and tore some up before arriving at the final work, said that he wishes he could create art about something else before he trails off at a loss for words.
He told JNS that many people asked what the piece was about since he provided no explanation.
“There’s no QR code. There is no banner on top of it to explain to you what it is,” Peretz said. “It’s supposed to touch emotions, and as long as somebody feels something, that’s the whole point.”
“When they come and ask questions, I think that’s when the conversation starts,” he said.
Visitors who engaged with the installation on Tuesday told JNS that they were indeed conversing and feeling.
DNC delegate and financial adviser Todd Richman told JNS that the display was “by far one of the most important events” this week in Chicago.
“We need to make sure that people within the Democratic Party and the nation understand that there are many hostages that are still being held captive, and five of them are Americans,” he said. “It’s important that we let the elected officials know that we care, and that this is front and center of our mind.”
Soraya Dean, a U.S. Muslim activist and community organizer, told JNS that she visited Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and has “been amazed by the love and compassion the Jewish people still have in their hearts.”
Dean, in turn, has been “appalled” by the silence of U.S. Muslim leaders about the hostility that Jews have experienced since Hamas’s attack, she told JNS.
Aeder, the realtor who helped organize the event, said that it can help people heal, which is “something that’s very Jewish.”
“I think that it’s very good to be creative, to think alternatively and not to think in a vengeful, screaming-at-each-other sort of way,” he said. “Art is used for therapy with trauma victims. Art is a way of expressing ourselves.”
“As soon as I decided that we would do this event through art, and asked for some suggestions of people who could create it, the outpouring, the amount of people who came up with ideas and wanted to be involved with it was amazing,” he said.
Windy City snub
Earlier this month, Elan Carr, CEO of the Israeli American Council, told JNS that the IAC had a presence at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where there were anti-American and anti-Israel protests.
“We were there in force. We had mobile billboards surrounding the convention center talking about our hostages and our pride in being American Zionists,” he told JNS at the time. IAC’s intention was to have a “very big presence” in Chicago, too, “especially since our enemies—the enemies of America and the enemies of the Jewish people—are descending en masse onto Chicago to disrupt the goings on and to disrupt our democratic process in Chicago.”
“Unfortunately, the City of Chicago hasn’t granted IAC a permit to have a pro-America and pro-Israel rally in Chicago during the DNC,” Carr told JNS. “They granted a permit to the anti-Israel and anti-American forces to have a rally right outside the United Center in Chicago, but they’re not granting us a permit. That’s an example. We sometimes have to deal with hostility even from our elected officials, which is really sad and really pathetic.”
Carr said that the IAC was also denied the ability to advertise in Chicago airports, where it wanted to show photos on digital screens of the American citizens held hostage in Gaza, during the DNC. “They said, ‘No. We’re not gonna let you do that, and no, there’s no change you can make to the content that would allow you to advertise it on our billboards,’” he said. “This is the City of Chicago saying this.”
“It is a rank violation of the First Amendment. It’s content-based discrimination. That’s what the City of Chicago is doing,” he said. “The Jewish people are not going to be quiet. We’re going to stand up and we’re going to defend our rights as Americans, and we’re going to make sure that our country changes.”
“We’re going to be very loud until that happens,” he added. “That’s what we’re going to do in Chicago one way or another.”
Aya Shechter, chief program officer at the IAC, told JNS at the event that “we are creating a pro-Israel space for people who want to show solidarity with Israel, with the hostage families and to raise awareness of the situation of the hostages still being held in Gaza, among them American citizens.”
“What is important for us here—and what I’m hearing and what I’m happy about—is that some delegates and some congressmen are going to be here and hear what we have to say,” Shechter told JNS. “That is a huge success—to have them come here and talk to us.”
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