We estimate the crowd at perhaps two thousand, three thousand tops, making it one of Chicago's largest protests against the aggressions of the Israelis against Palestinians and the Lebanese since the beginning of the second Intifada. It was a really successful protest, and on far from just the numbers front.

To anyone who watches rally sizes and cares about numbers: The size Saturday may have equalled or even been less than the numbers at the pro-Zionist rally the Monday before, but there is a flaw in interpreting crowd size as crowd strength. Arabs and Muslims, as we know, have been at the center of serious persecution especially since 9/11/01. There are no Jewish communities who have been depopulated of men because of deportations. There are no detention facilities exclusively housing Jewish prisoners, there is no constant threat of deportation by authorities, and there is no popularized blanketing of Jews as terrorists in the news media. Jewish charities haven't been shut down at all, much less across the board, and Jews are not being intimidated into silence by anyone. Arabs and Muslims are, so that a crowd of a few thousand people, overwhelmingly a majority of whom were Arab and/or Muslim (at least 90%), that is a sign of strength far beyond the strong numbers. That is a sign of desparation and worry, unity and solidarity, and the organizers should be damn proud.

And any white activists or government officials or news media workers should seriously consider the courage that it took for the Arab and Muslim communities to come out this past Saturday before dismissing this issue or taking sides on this conflict.