Cicero Indipendiente: When a Genocide Hits Close to Home: Q&A with Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid
By Ankur Singh
Ankur Singh is a Cicero-based, Chicago adjacent freelance journalist and organizer. His work has been published in The Washington Post, In These Times, Chicago Reader, Prism Reports, Truthout and more. He is a co-founder of the hyperlocal, bilingual news outlet Cicero Independiente.
Last summer, in August 2025, news broke that Khamis Ayyad, a Palestinian-American father of five who raised his family in Cicero, was killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. Ayyad moved back to the West Bank five years ago. His family claims that Israeli settlers had set fire to cars in his village and Ayyad was killed by inhaling smoke as he attempted to put out the flames.
CAIR Chicago, a civil rights organization, immediately demanded a full investigation by the Department of Justice into the killing. Present at their press conference was Illinois State Representative Abdelnasser Rashid, who represents parts of Cicero and surrounding suburbs, including Bridgeview, also known as Little Palestine.
Several months later, in November 2025, Cicero Independiente spoke to Rep. Rashid to talk about his proposed bill, called the Illinois Human Rights Advocacy and Protection Act (HB 2723) to revoke a law that penalizes companies for boycotting Israel, his experience as Illinois’s only Palestinian elected official, and the significance of the election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City who did not shy away from calling Israel’s violence a genocide.