Copyright Chicago Tribune
On the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, a group of kids allegedly attacked a group of Jewish children with a gel-blaster toy gun while allegedly hurling antisemitic remarks at them. Police have since said the incident has been deemed a hate crime and will go before Skokie’s Human Relations Commission. And it happened at a park in Skokie, a suburban community with deep Jewish roots and, still, a significant Jewish population. The kids who were attacked ranged in age from 13 to 15, according to Skokie police. Their attackers were around the same age. Nearly 50 years after the Nazis threatened to march through town, residents are rattled by what happened to these children. The fact that kids carried out this attack forces a hard question: If hatred is being picked up this young, where — and how — are they learning it? While the focus has rightly been on understanding exactly what happened, the bigger issue is identifying what led to this behavior in the first place. In our view, this is less an indictment on the kids than it is on whoever taught them to think and act this way — the adults. That not only means the parents or guardians responsible for the direct care and nurturing of the kids involved. It’s broader than that. Today’s kids are immersed in a world that normalizes anger and division — from TikTok videos mocking whole groups, to political posters that vilify opponents, to television ads casting the other side as evil. The rhetoric surrounding the Israel-Hamas conflict is also incredibly charged, including slogans such as “Globalize the Intifada” — which we view as a call to violence against Jews. Point is, we can’t raise kids in a pressure cooker environment and be surprised when they act out the hate they see staring back at them from behind a screen or on the street — or even around the dinner table. Robyn Burgher Ackerman, who described herself on social media as mother to one of the victims, detailed her feelings on Facebook. “The reality that our children can no longer walk outside on a Jewish holiday without fear of being hunted, threatened, and terrorized for being Jewish is unacceptable,” she wrote. “Ignoring this is not an option.” We hope the children who attacked their peers have a change of heart. We hope the children who were attacked can feel safe again going out with their friends. More than that, we call upon the adults involved to set a better example for their children to follow.
