Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. - Chicagoans whose controversial connections to Barack Obama made national headlines during the 2008 presidential campaign - spoke Sunday afternoon at First United Church to a gathering called by the Oak Park-based Committee for a Just Peace in Israel and Palestine. The talk at the church on Lake Street preceded a 1-mile walk of solidarity through downtown Oak Park.

Ayers and Wright were two of four speakers invited. Also addressing the crowd of about 260 people - Christians, Jews, Muslims and secularists from throughout the Chicago area, according to organizers - were Cecilie Surasky, director of communications for the Jewish Voice for Peace, and Reem Salahi, a specialist in civil right law who just visited the Gaza Strip with a National Lawyers Guild delegation.

This year's peace walk came a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House, a meeting on Monday during which Obama advocated a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Ayers, whose brother John lives in Oak Park, is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a mentor to at-risk youth. The co-founder 40 years ago of the Weather Underground - a group that protested the Vietnam War by, among other things, bombing federal buildings - who got unwanted notoriety during the campaign of fellow Hyde Parker Barack Obama, Ayers spoke about the role of education in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He decried attempts to silence critics of Israeli policy. Ayers said the creation myth of Israel mirrors the creation myth of America, that of a righteous people settling in an unpopulated land. He urged the audience to question and not be satisfied with an artificial balance of views.

"The goal in a classroom is seeking the truth by means of evidence and argument," Ayers said.

Wright, former pastor of the South Side's Trinity United Church of Christ - whose membership included Obama until tapes of some of Wright's sermons surfaced last spring, spoke about the parallels between the struggle against apartheid in South Africa and the Israel-Palestine issue. The struggle against apartheid seemed hopeless at times, Wright noted, but the effort resulted in profound change.

Wright, Ayers and Salahi - who gave a fiery firsthand view of suffering in Gaza after the three-week invasion by the Israeli defense forces - all received standing ovations after their roughly 15-minute speeches.

Surasky, who was the first speaker, spoke about the attempts of supporters of current Israeli policy to silence critics in the North American Jewish community. She was also warmly received.

But not everyone in the audience was impressed with the speeches.

"I would like to know, if they're so concerned about freedom of the press and the right to speak, why they didn't have a single person here who spoke on behalf of Israel," said Oak Park resident Sharon Mullins. "There was no one here to ask the question about the daily bombing of Israel with Katyusha rockets. I would like to know if they think Israel has the right to exist. And if Israel does have the right to exist, then why are they not condemning the fact of the daily Katyusha rockets coming from Hamas?"

Rockets weren't mentioned because the group focuses on the root of the conflict, said founding member Rebekah Levin, an Oak Parker who works in the same UIC college as Ayers.

"Our focus is on human rights and ending what we see as the major impediment, which is the occupation," Levin said. "The major human rights violation, the major problem is one that is being caused by the Israeli government. This in no way means that we support Katyusha rockets going into Israel. Of course we don't. Many of us, including me, have family and friends who live in Israel and are committed to the security and well being of all human beings there."

"We're criticizing Israel for certain policies that have had disastrous consequences on the prospect for peace," said River Forest resident Martha Reese, chairperson of the organizing group's steering committee. "We ... raise issues that are not being raised elsewhere."