Gov. JB Pritzker is known to choose his words carefully and wait until it’s politically safe before weighing in on contentious issues. He has repeatedly offered us what has become a kind of political comfort food in conversations about Israel’s genocide in Gaza: a reasonable-sounding nonanswer.
So we should all pay attention when the governor steps up to defend his fellow Democratic billionaire donor and ally Michael J. Sacks, who recently lectured us about the importance of solidarity with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and Israel’s genocidal government, conflating policy criticism with antisemitism.
The governor blessed Sacks’ unflinching support of AIPAC and a government that has spent 2½ years killing more than 70,000 people, cutting off food sources and slowly starving Palestinian children to death. He spoke of believing in a two-state solution with “a peaceful and secure state of Israel” and “a Palestinian state that gets created.”
More Top Picks Twice Exceptional 2e Kids Signs And Support Strategies
The truth is that supporting the current government of Israel will never get us to a two-state solution. The governor missed the opportunity to lift up our First Amendment right to dissent through economic pressure and call for divestment from the illegal settlements in the West Bank that make a two-state solution absolutely impossible.
Sadly, Illinois is one of the states where this right is curtailed, but the governor has the chance to follow the lead of Illinois legislators who introduced the Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Protection Act (House Bill 2723) to restore our civil liberties in this area of state law.
On top of all of that, Pritzker’s words defending Sacks and Israel could have been said by Democrats going back decades — almost as if the abject human suffering we’ve all borne witness to simply hasn’t happened. No amount of gaslighting can erase genocide.
AIPAC has been a reckless and shameless cheerleader of genocide in Gaza and endless apartheid in Israel. The organization has spent more than $22 million in Illinois congressional races alone — not to advance peace but to punish any Democrat who dares to call for a ceasefire, who demands that humanitarian aid reach starving people or who simply asks whether the United States should keep sending weapons to a military campaign in Gaza.
AIPAC doesn’t just support candidates. It runs an organized political operation to attack anyone who refuses to give unconditional support to the Israeli government’s military agenda.
And what’s the result of Israel’s military agenda? Families marking Eid in the rubble of homes that no longer exist. Children who have never known a day without hunger, thirst and constant fear. A population that has been displaced, starved and killed at a scale that humanitarian organizations and legal scholars around the world are calling a genocide. AIPAC is spending its money to insulate from political accountability.
Then there is the governor’s own stated reasoning for walking away from AIPAC. He told us he stopped donating when the organization became, in his words, “right-leaning, Trumper-leaning.” If Trumpism was disqualifying then, where is that same conscience now? Because today’s AIPAC isn’t just backing Republicans — it spent over $100 million on 2024 elections to silence the American politicians most willing to say that Palestinian lives matter and that the systematic murder of innocent people is genocide. If writing a check to a pro-Donald Trump Republican was too much, how is endorsing the suppression of anti-genocide, ceasefire voices not?
As author and civil rights leader Ta-Nehisi Coates said of Democrats claiming to be a force against Trumpism, “We are at a moment right now where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy … and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy.”
Gov. Pritzker, the people of Illinois deserve a straight answer, not a careful pivot to what feels palatable for your future political aspirations.
Do you believe Israel has gone too far?
Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez represents Chicago’s 25th Ward and is an independent candidate for Illinois’ 4th Congressional District.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].