The Orthodox Jewish man shot and wounded while walking to a Northwest side synagogue shared his story publicly for the first time today.
"I am only here by the grace of God and the miracles I experienced," Eitan Bleichman told members of the Chicago Commission on Human Rights on Monday, as he shared his account of the October morning in 2024 when he was shot and wounded as he walked to services at his synagogue in Chicago's West Ridge neighborhood.
He said the man who shot him - identified by police as 22-year-old Sidi Mohamed Abdullahi - was motivated by hatred for the Jewish people: "He was even further blinded by his anti-Semitism that he fired at first responders and police officers because they were helping a Jewish person."
Police shot and wounded Abdullahi, who later died at Cook County Jail.
Bleichman says he's being treated for PTSD and still has questions about what could have happened on that day: "What if my kids weren't too tired and came with me - would I have been able to protect them? What if his gun didn't jam? What if the neighbors ignored my pleas for help?"
His testimony came during a full day of testimony about incidents of anti-Semitic activity in the city. Before the hearing, North side alderwoman Debra Silverstein - who's the only Jewish member of City Council - said her constituents have seen a surge in anti-Jewish hate, including vandalism and anti-Semitic flyers.
"This is not abstract," Silverstein said. "This is not theoretical."
She also accused the commission and the Johnson Administration of deliberately excluding input from what she called traditional Jewish organizations: "That is not an oversight. That is a choice."
Before the end of his testimony, Bleichman called on the city to do more to crack down on anti-Semitism: "Little comments, little things ... they all need to be counted."