Chicago Councilwoman Rossana Rodriguez is under fire for writing “Free Palestine” on social media while Iran was firing a barrage of rockets toward Israel on Saturday.
Rodriguez defended herself hours later, claiming she had just gotten off a flight and hadn’t read the news before posting on X.
“I had just watched a video of Gaza with a father sobbing, holding his dead child. This moment is immensely tragic and it’s sad that there’s people choosing to create so much more hate,” Rodriguez wrote.
“I do not celebrate war or the loss of human life in any way,” she added.
This is not the first time that the Chicago assemblywoman has come under fire for her antisemitic beliefs. Just a month following the horrifying Hamas massacre in October, Sanchez took to X to post the antisemitic slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Rather than apologize for a chant that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, Sanchez instead defended her post by writing, “This is a moment to continue to sound the alarm around the right of Palestinians to live. No one should be scared to use that phrase. The freedom of Palestinians is not contradictory with the ability of others to exist.”
Chicago has seen a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents since the start of the Gaza war, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) local chapter. Most recently, a pro-Hamas protest led to the cancellation of a concert by Jewish musician Matisyahu, and a Jewish man was attacked at a screening of ‘Nova,’ a documentary on Hamas’ unprovoked attack on the Israeli music festival, on Oct 7.
