Shot fired, pepper spray used as tensions erupt at pro- and anti-Israel rallies in Skokie Sunday

A shot was fired and people were injured by pepper spray during a counterprotest to a solidarity with Israel rally in Skokie on Sunday.

The Israel solidarity rally was held at Skokie's Ateres Ayala Sunday evening.

But prior to the event, a pro-Palestinian rally was held as a counterprotest on the same street a short distance away in the 3400 block of Touhy in Skokie.

Approximately 200 protesters showed up to support the Palestinian cause, according to a news release from the village of Lincolnwood.

During the gathering, a person was confronted by several others in the Lincolnwood Town Center mall across the street from the event. The person pulled a firearm and discharged the weapon into the air, the release said.

There were no injuries, and the person who fired the weapon was taken into custody by Lincolnwood police.

The village said the incident is under investigation.

Also, according to Skokie police, a Chicago police officer and two people suffered minor injuries from being pepper sprayed by a person attending the protest. One person was taken into custody, said police, who are investigating the incident.

In a separate incident at the counterprotest, Skokie police said, another person was arrested and released without charges.

The organizer of the pro-Palestinian rally told ABC7 that as his group was leaving after demonstrating, at least two men, who weren't with the group, came up and fired pepper spray, injuring several people, including a police officer. Then, he says, he heard gunshots.

During the pro-Palestinian rally, tensions also erupted between some of the pro-Palestinian protesters and Jews in a Touhy Avenue parking lot separating the two events.

As Skokie police stood between them, on one side, a number of Pro-Palestinian supporters waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea,” while on the other side, one man was draped in an Israeli flag, while another played Israel's national anthem, Hatikvah, on a saxophone.

As the evening proceeded and Israel supporters filled the room at the pro-Israel event, hosted by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a massive deployment of police vehicles arrived on the scene, while Touhy was blocked off to traffic.

Among the speakers at the Wiesenthal Center event was Yinam Cohen, consul general of Israel to the Midwest, who grimly cataloged the carnage wrought by Hamas on Oct. 7, including more than 1,400 souls, including “babies, mothers, children, the elderly, entire families, young adults,” with more than 30 Israeli communities destroyed, “the deadliest killing of Jews since the Holocaust.”

He also mentioned those taken hostage, including Holocaust survivors and American citizens, and, to the applause of the crowd, demanded the release of all the hostages.

As Israel works to eradicate the leadership of Hamas, Cohen emphasized the need to maintain “our moral clarity,” adding, “I'm very grateful to President Biden for providing the moral compass for the world.”

“Let's be very clear. Hamas did not commit these heinous attacks of terrorism to advance the two-state solution or the well-being of Palestinians,” he added. The goal, he said, was to “destroy the one and only Jewish state and killing as many Jews as they can.”

Prior to the event, Deerfield resident Peggy Shapiro, from the group StandWithUs, a nonprofit pro-Israel education and advocacy organization, handed out pictures of those held hostage by Hamas.

Shapiro, a child of Holocaust survivors, said the importance of Sunday's event was “to speak out against genocide and to try to not be outshouted by people who want to murder us. You can't let people go cheering for groups that behead babies and not speak up.”

But another view was held by pro-Palestinian protesters on Touhy Avenue.

“I think there is a false narrative that says this is a war or a battle between Israel and Hamas, and that's not true,” Hatem Abudayyeh, the national chairman of the United States Palestinian Community Network, said. “The Palestinian resistance is made up of all the political forces, all of the ideological trends, all of the social sectors of Palestinian society. In a unified way, with a unified leadership, they are fighting to defend the Palestinian people from 75 years of oppression and occupation and colonization.”

• ABC7 contributed to this report.