Author Archives: First.One.Through

The UK’s Troubling Misunderstanding of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the Middle East Today

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In a recent speech at the United Nations, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared his country was “determined to protect the viability of the two-state solution.” At first glance, this appears to be a standard diplomatic statement. But in elaborating on Britain’s historical role in the region, Lammy offered a revisionist take on the Balfour Declaration that reveals a deep and dangerous misunderstanding of Middle Eastern history—and raises questions about the UK’s current policy stance toward Israel and the Jewish people.

Lammy said the Balfour Declaration came with the “solemn promise that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the Palestinian people.” This phrasing might sound accurate to the uninformed, but in fact, it fundamentally distorts the language and intent of the original 1917 Declaration. The actual text stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” That is a significant difference—not a matter of semantics, but of historical and political accuracy.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy brings up the Balfour Declaration which he doesn’t comprehend

1. The Myth of a “Palestinian People” in 1917

In 1917, there was no recognized Palestinian national identity. The population of the region known as “Palestine” was a mix of Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and others. They lived across a geographic region that included modern-day Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and what is now termed the West Bank. The idea of a distinct Palestinian Arab national identity only began to emerge decades later, especially in reaction to the creation of the State of Israel.

By 1948, the demographics had shifted dramatically, in part due to waves of Arab migration into the British Mandate territories from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Lammy’s reference to “the Palestinian people” as the subject of the Balfour Declaration imposes a modern nationalist narrative on a time when none existed. Balfour’s “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” would exclude millions of Arabs who moved into Palestine after the 1917 declaration, whom Lammy probably considers “Palestinian people” today.

Balfour Declaration

2. A Jewish State That Did Not Prejudice Others

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it offered full citizenship to the roughly 160,000 non-Jews residing in its territory. Today, over 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab, enjoying rights and protections that are absent in many neighboring states. Far from violating the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities, Israel has ensured freedom of worship, speech, and assembly for all its citizens.

So when Lammy said, “this has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold,” he is lying. Completely. Israeli Arabs today enjoy far greater civil liberties than Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or in Palestinian Authority- and Hamas-ruled territories. The “historical injustice” is not Israel’s creation, it exists beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

3. Britain’s Role in Enabling Discrimination—Against Jews

Ironically, it was the UK itself—through the Mandate for Palestine—that laid the legal foundation for a Jewish homeland. And for ongoing antisemitism.

Britain unilaterally partitioned off nearly 80% of that territory in 1921 to create Transjordan (now Jordan), and stood by as the Hashemite Kingdom banned Jews from citizenship and ownership of land. When Jordan illegally seized the area later known as the “West Bank” in 1948, Britain was the only three countries (Pakistan and Iraq, which was also a British mandate) to formally recognize that annexation—a striking contradiction to the Balfour Declaration’s supposed promise of equal rights.

The Hashemite Kingdom, with Britain’s backing, quickly turned its part of Palestine into a Jewish-free zone, passing a citizenship law in 1954 that specifically excluded Jews. This glaring double standard—permitting discrimination against Jews while demanding protections for Arabs—is a historical stain that remains unacknowledged in Lammy’s telling.

Worse, it continues.

4. Britain’s Ongoing Endorsement of a Jew-Free Palestine

In 2016, the UK voted in favor of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared Israeli presence in the West Bank—including Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City of Jerusalem—to be illegal under international law. Then, in a joint statement with France and Canada last week, the UK reiterated this view, calling for Israel to “halt [Jewish] settlements,” and warning of potential sanctions.

In effect, the UK is advocating for a future Palestinian state that is entirely Jew-free—while curiously condemning Israel for allowing non-Jews to live freely within its own borders. How is this consistent with the principle of equal civil and religious rights? How can Lammy demand protections for non-Jews – who have rights – while simultaneously supporting policies that trample the rights of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland?

5. A “Two-State” Solution That Isn’t Two Equal States

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that what the UK envisions is not a genuine two-state solution. It is one and a half states for Arabs, and half a state for Jews—because one of those two states is expected to be Judenrein.

The fact that millions of non-Jews can live in Israel while Jews are prohibited from living in the proposed Palestinian state is not a path to peace. It is the codification of apartheid, not its cure. Can any reasonable person believe that a state founded on the exclusion of Jews will live peacefully beside the world’s only Jewish state?

6. A Dangerous Historical Amnesia

Lammy’s casual misquote of the Balfour Declaration isn’t just historically inaccurate—it betrays a worldview that has forgotten the lessons of Britain’s own policy failures. Britain once promised the Jews a national home, but reneged repeatedly, prioritizing Arab appeasement and imperial interests. It didn’t vote for a Jewish State in the November 1947 UN resolution and walked away from Palestine in May 1948, leaving the warring parties to fight it out. At war’s end, it blessed Jordan’s illegal seizure and ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Today, that legacy lives on in the UK’s refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimate rights while whitewashing Palestinian maximalist demands—whether from the Palestinian Authority (Jew-free Gaza and West Bank) or Hamas (Jew-free “from the river to the sea.”)

The Foreign Secretary’s focus on providing the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) self-determination, has blinded him to history and the basic human rights of Jews. A vision of peace that requires the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and demanding that Israeli Arabs with full citizenship rights get somehow even more rights, is not a peace worth supporting.

Inching Antisemitism: Hate Hits Close to Home in White Plains

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White Plains, the county seat of Westchester just north of New York City, is no stranger to civic pride and Jewish community life. But as the election of anti-Israel Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani looms in NYC, many moderate Jews are finding that antisemitism isn’t just brewing in politics — it’s staining the streets right outside their homes.

On the quiet and sunny Sunday afternoon of August 3, 2025, residents of Coolidge Avenue — a peaceful, flag-lined street known for its American and Israeli banners — were shocked to discover the words “F*ck Israel” scrawled in red spray paint across the pavement.

Vandalism on the quiet streets of White Plains, NY on August 3, 2025

“It’s a slap in the face,” said Joseph Block, a senior at Columbia University who was home for the weekend, observing the Ninth of Av, the somber fast day mourning the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem. He had just returned from paying a condolence visit to a Holocaust survivor whose wife had passed away when he saw the fresh vandalism.

Police were quickly called. Officers initially attempted to power wash the graffiti, but the paint had seeped deep into the concrete. Rather than risk further damage, they placed heavy steel plates over the words — a temporary fix for an all-too-permanent feeling.

It wasn’t the first such incident in the area. In January 2024, nearby Scarsdale saw Jewish-owned stores defaced with the phrase “Genocide supporters.” But this time, it struck at the heart of a tight-knit neighborhood known for its pride, unity and neighborliness.

“I thought we were done with this kind of disgusting anti-Israel venom,” Block said. “Unfortunately, the attacks just keep coming.”

His brother Isaac who attends Yeshiva University echoed the sentiment: “This neighborhood — the Highlands — is one of the most pro-Israel places in the county. We’ve got Jews and non-Jews, all patriotic, all proud of our connection to Israel.”

The Highlands is home to five synagogues representing the full spectrum of Jewish observance — Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, and two Modern Orthodox – all within walking distance of each other. While their approaches to religion and politics may differ, the congregations often collaborate on shared causes, including pro-Israel activities.

Dean Ungar, one of the volunteers with the Five Synagogues of White Plains Israel Action Committee expressed deep concern over the attack. “We’re literally about to launch a program called Healing Arts to help Israeli children cope with trauma from the last two years,” he said. “And here we are, facing hate on our own streets.”

Just days before the vandalism, two of the Blocks’ front-yard pro-Israel lawn signs were stolen. “It’s escalating,” said Joseph. “From theft to vandalism in just one week. I’m scared to think about what might come next.”

In January 2023, Westchester County adopted the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) working definition of antisemitism for “identifying acts of antisemitism,” which include some types of attacks on Israel. It was signed by then-County Executive George Latimer, who now is the area’s congressman, having defeated anti-Israel Rep. Jamaal Bowman in the Democratic primary last summer.

Less than three miles from the graffiti is the headquarters of WESPAC, a virulently anti-Israel organization that has protested in front of Jewish elementary schools about Israel. The group has also tried to recruit Jewish students for a new anti-Israel school. Several White Plains residents wonder whether members of the organization were behind the defacement.

Neighbors think that the latest targeted hate crime will unlikely yield any arrests. It will, they believe, produce many more American and Israeli flags.

The solid US-Israel alliance that existed in 2012 is floundering

UNRWA, Hamas, and Genocide: A Lesson in Propaganda Over Truth

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As accusations of genocide in Gaza dominate global headlines, it’s important to revisit a revealing episode that exposes the deeper priorities of Palestinian political culture—from Hamas to institutions like UNRWA and even the Palestinian Authority.

Starting in 2009, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) made multiple attempts to introduce Holocaust education into its school curriculum. Hamas, which governs Gaza, unequivocally rejected the idea. Its officials declared that teaching about the Holocaust would “poison the minds of Palestinian children.”

  • Yunes al-Astal, member of the Hamas faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council said teaching the Holocaust in UNRWA schools would lead to “marketing and spreading a lie.” He said that adding the subject to the curriculum was “a war crime” and “support and service of the Zionists” (Filastin al-Yawm, August 30, 2009).
  • Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, said that Hamas opposed adding Holocaust to the curriculum because its objective was to justify the “Israeli the occupation” of the land of the Palestinian territories (Reuters, August 30, 2009).
  • Abd al-Rahman al-Jamal, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s education committee for Hamas, told a BBC correspondent that the Holocaust was “a big lie.”
  •  Mustafa Sawaf, editor of Hamas’ Felesteen, wrote an editorial (September 1) entitled slamming UNRWA’s intention to teach the Holocaust an attempt to brainwash the younger generation in the Gaza Strip and to “prettify the image of the murderous, criminal Jews.”
  • Jamila Al-Shanti, Hamas Minister of Education, said that “Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and religion.” (Washington Post, September 2, 2009).
  • The Hamas-affiliated Popular Committees for Refugee Affairs denounced UNRWA, claiming that the Holocaust had not yet been scientifically proven and that teaching it was liable to cause students to identify with the Jews. Members of the committee absolute refused to have their children “learn the lie invented by the Zionists” (Filastin al-‘An website, August 30, 2009). According to the Committees, “the Holocaust was not real and outstanding Western scholars have proved that.” (PalToday website, August 30, 2009). It added “Holocaust studies in refugee camps is a contemptible plot and serves the Zionist entity with a goal of creating a reality and telling stories in order to justify acts of slaughter against the Palestinian people.”

UNRWA teachers in Jordan also refused to teach about the Holocaust, saying “teaching UNRWA students about the so-called ‘Holocaust’ as part of human rights harms the Palestinian cause… and changes the students’ views regarding their main enemy, namely the Israeli occupation.”

The Palestinian Authority remained silent or dismissive about Holocaust education in the West Bank.

Consequently, UNRWA held back from pushing the issue, as its mantra is to work within the framework of the “host countries” in which it operates.

This episode illustrates three key realities:

  1. UNRWA and Hamas are not the same—but not separate either. UNRWA claims neutrality, but its own documents state that it must work with the local authorities—in Gaza, that’s Hamas. This means Hamas effectively vetoes what UNRWA can teach and what it can do, no matter what UN policy says.

2. Antisemitic attitudes aren’t limited to Hamas. The resistance to teaching the Holocaust spans Palestinian political and educational institutions well beyond Gaza.

3. Propaganda overrides fact. From Holocaust denial to blood libel-style rhetoric, the dominant trend has been the elevation of anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives over historical truth. Even Columbia professor Edward Said – who vilified the State of Israel – acknowledged the antisemitic and conspiratorial discourse in Palestinian circles regarding Holocaust denial. James Zogby went so far as to call the violent antisemitic obsession, a “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” when speaking at the United Nations in June 2023.

Whether or not what is happening in Gaza today constitutes a genocide is a matter of intense debate. But what is beyond dispute is the long-standing, systemic preference in Palestinian political culture to weaponized falsehoods to spread propaganda to destroy the Jewish State.

From Devarim to Today: Firsthand Testimony as a Covenant Across Generations

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In Parshat Devarim, Moses begins his final speech to the Israelites. He does not begin with the Creation of the world or the stories of the Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs. The Book of Genesis — with its grand universal themes and personal family journeys — is set aside. Instead, Moses focuses on the collective journey he himself witnessed: the liberation from Egypt, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the rebellions and reckonings in the wilderness. It is as though this is where the Jewish people’s national story truly begins.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks observed that Deuteronomy is not just a repetition of laws — it is Moses’ personal testimony, his urgent effort to pass on memory, meaning, and mission. As the Israelites stand poised to enter the Land, Moses knows he will not go with them. What he offers instead is the one thing only he can give: the lived truth of experience.

This resonates today more than ever. We are witnessing the passing of another generation of eyewitnesses: the survivors of the Holocaust and the founders of the modern State of Israel. Like Moses, they saw the journey with their own eyes — from slavery and destruction to sovereignty and rebuilding. They walked from Auschwitz to Jerusalem. They built a state out of the ashes, defended it in war, and gave it the infrastructure of a living, breathing nation.

Their stories — of suffering and survival, of faith and fortitude — are not just history lessons. They are testaments. And they come with a charge: to remember, to be vigilant, to defend our people and our land, and to carry forward the values of Torah and the reality of Jewish nationhood.

Just as Moses recounted the past to prepare the people for the future, so too must we internalize the legacy of those who came before us. Their firsthand accounts are not simply about what was, but about what must be. A people grounded in memory is a people prepared for destiny.

If we listen to their voices — and not merely archive them — we gain strength to resist the deniers, the revisionists, and the haters. We reaffirm that we are not just a people with a past, but a people with a purpose — a covenantal mission that stretches from Sinai to today.

Kotel Plaza

Guterres’ Dangerous Delusions

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has once again proven himself to be a reckless ideologue, dangerously detached from reality. In his latest remarks on July 28, 2025 regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Guterres declared that Palestinians have a “right” to a state. This is not only false, but dangerously misleading at a time when thousands of lives hang in the balance.

No group of people has an entitlement to a state. International law does not guarantee statehood to any specific ethnic or religious population. What people have is the right to self-determination, which can be fulfilled through various frameworks — including autonomy, federation, or integration with existing states. The assumption that this must culminate in Palestinian sovereignty from the river to the sea is not a legal imperative; it is a political preference, and a deadly one at that.

Guterres framed the issue as a false binary: either Palestinians get a state, or they will be condemned to expulsion or second-class status. This is a silly strawman, ignoring the obvious alternatives. Palestinians could become citizens of Jordan or Egypt — both of which administered the West Bank and Gaza, respectively, before 1967. Or they could establish a state in Gaza and in Area A of the West Bank, which is already under Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords. But they have no right to demand Israeli land, nor a capital in Jerusalem.

His reference to “East Jerusalem” as if it were a legitimate, independent entity is equally misleading. “East Jerusalem” was never a recognized capital or separate city — it was a temporary result of Transjordan’s illegal occupation between 1949 and 1967. The 1947 UN Partition Plan, which Arabs rejected with violence, never designated it for an Arab state. There is no legal basis to call Israel’s presence there “occupation.”

The most disturbing part of Guterres’ statement is his call for Hamas to be included in a unity government with fantasy notions of “we must support Palestinian unity around a peaceful, democratic and inclusive vision for statehood.” Let’s be clear: these are the same Hamas terrorists who committed mass rape, torture, and murder on October 7. This is a group with the most antisemitic and genocidal foundational charter ever written. To reward their atrocities with political power is not peacebuilding — it is moral depravity. It is the very definition of appeasement, sanitizing evil and encouraging further violence.

What kind of values is Guterres promoting when he elevates genocidal psychopaths into prospective leaders of a future state? It is not peace. It is not justice. It is not coexistence.

UNSG Antonio Guterres

Time and again, Palestinian leadership — whether Fatah or Hamas — has made its goals clear: no Israel, and no Jews. From school curricula to charters to chants in the streets, the obsession is not with borders, but with obliteration. The Secretary-General’s repeated attempts to whitewash this reality reveal either staggering ignorance or something much more nefarious.

Guterres is not a neutral peacemaker. He is actively endangering Israeli lives by proposing that Israel close its eyes to reality and pretend Hamas is a peace partner. He is fueling conflict under the guise of diplomacy and exposing the rot at the heart of the UN system.

When Dignity Becomes a Death Sentence

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In many societies around the world, the concepts of honor and dignity are considered sacred. They are meant to reflect integrity, courage, and the moral fabric of individuals and communities. But in some cultures, the language of honor has been twisted into a tool of control, oppression, and even justification for murder—particularly against women.

“Honor killings” represent one of the most brutal manifestations of this warped morality. These acts of violence—often carried out by family members—are meant to “restore” honor allegedly tarnished by a relative’s behavior. In this framework, dignity is no longer something inherent in the individual, but something projected onto them by a society steeped in twisted religious patriarchy and fear of shame.

Honor killing by West Bank Muslim man

Across the world, honor killings persist, especially in parts of Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Gaza regularly report killings tied to perceived slights like refusing an arranged marriage, or even being a victim of rape. In such societies, a woman’s body and choices are not her own. They are just tools in a selfish calculus.

It is especially revolting to note that some societies legally protect these “honor killings.” The Palestinian Authority still has the Jordanian Penal Code No. (16) of 1960, and the Palestinian Penal Code No. (74) of 1936 in the Gaza Strip which provide reduced sentences for such family murders of girls.

Unsurprisingly, societies that bless the murder of women and girls for “honor,” have no compunction about sacrificing them for the dignity of everyone. Gaza’s leaders send women and children into harm’s way while they hide underground. They have even less regard for female enemies: Gazan soldiers and civilians marched into Israel on October 7, 2023 and raped women in front of their families and burned girls alive.

The radical jihadists in Gaza have a vastly different definition about honor than people in the Global North. Insisting that a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict meet Gazan’s measure of dignity is a death sentence for women, girls and Jews in the Middle East.

We Let Minorities Die In The Middle East

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They came for the Yazidis. They came for the Druze. They came for the Kurds.
We came for the Jews.

Across the Middle East, ethnic and religious minorities have been hunted, uprooted, and erased. Yazidi women were rounded up and sold like cattle. The Druze were betrayed by neighbors and hunted in the streets. The Kurds—called terrorists for seeking sovereignty—were chased by Turkey with Western silence as a shield.

Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves in Iraq

We watched. We said nothing. We let them disappear, acknowledging—without saying it—that the Islamic Middle East had no place for ethnic and religious minorities. In our United Nations chairs, we shook hands with their butchers and waited for the news cycle to move on.

But not for the Jews.

The one minority whose return to sovereignty we supported—however begrudgingly many decades ago—was the Jews. We recognized their state, and in doing so, we made demands. MAKE demands. Demands no other people are burdened with.

We demand that Israel allow its citizens to be slaughtered and call for restraint. That it accept that others dictate its borders and immigration policy. That Jews be barred from praying at their holiest site. That any territory not clearly within historic armistice lines be judenrein, Jew-free.

And when Israel resists these demands – no, conditions we now apply for its existence – we condemn it. Not just at the UN, but in our schools, in our media, and on our streets—training citizens to treat diaspora Jews the same way: that they are alive only due to our grace. We are not equals; they owe us for everything.

We did not protect the Kurds. We abandoned the Yazidis. The Druze are being rounded up and killed. But we took action to help the Jews defy their extinction after the Holocaust. And for that, we believe they owe us—debtors with no right to complain. We pretend that Israel is a peer at the UN but we know the reality: it’s a vassal state and will be commanded by the order of the day.

Druze hunted in Syria

We don’t ask anything of the Gazans. Their genocidal rage toward Jews is seen as instinct, not ideology. Understandable. Natural. That’s why global protests erupt only when Jews defend themselves—not when they’re killed. Dog bites man, not the other way round.

To help Jews survive, we crafted Israel as a dam. It may shield its people inside from the massive jihadi flood—but only within walls we design.

However, once built, we insist that the floodwaters be let in. Millions of Muslim “refugees” must be allowed to “return” to the spring. The saltwater ocean that surrounds and crashes against the well’s walls, will mix with the spring water inside to become undrinkable.

We know it makes no sense. But we know we can’t contain the ocean, so we poison the well. It will happen eventually anyway, we reason.

The entrance to the United Nations’ Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem, with a key on top showing that the doorway to get into homes inside Israel is via the UN

The world is watching—and learning. There is no future for Druze, Yazidis and Kurds. We silently move our lips, and our streets at home are silent. Yet when Jews retaliate when massacred, we rage and our people echo the screams.

Collectively we wonder whether maintaining the Jewish State is too hard.

Whether under dictatorship or democracy, religious zealotry or secular law, the story repeats: minorities are tolerated in the Global South only as long as they are passive, picturesque, and dying. The moment they survive and carve out self-determination, they are a threat to those with seats in the august UN chambers. Will these little tribes demand rights and sequester land too?

Yet another vote against Israel at the UN General Assembly

“Globalize the intifada” is not just a slogan; it is already in motion. Those floodwaters have breached the shores. The jihad is mowing down non-Muslims in the Middle East. It is teaching the Global North the chorus courtesy of Qatar, and dance moves via TikTok from China.

Marchers in the Global North demand an end to the Jewish State and persecution of Jews everywhere

The Global South – 42% Muslim outside of China and Latin America – will soon control the UN and is preparing to erase the exception of the Jewish state. Once America is convinced to step aside, the protective walls will surely collapse and the Jews will be slaughtered like other minority groups.

Druze mowed down outside hospital in Syria

Jews wonder why the streets are empty of protestors when various nations of the Middle East slaughter ethnic minorities, but are packed when Israel fights terrorists. It’s because Jews have still not internalized that the world views them as a minority which will ultimately be erased by the tide of the Islamic jihad, and it regrets making an exception for the most persecuted people on earth.

Related:

Discrimination: Religion and Sex; Israel and the USA

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In 2020, the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal arm of the Reform Movement in Israel, filed a lawsuit against Gett, a popular Israeli taxi-hailing service. The offense was offering a “Mehadrin” option for riders who wanted drivers who observed Shabbat. The IRAC said the offering discriminated against Arab drivers who didn’t qualify under that label, and ultimately, the case was settled in June 2023. Gett paid out $1.6 million (NIS 6 million) in compensation to Arab drivers and to two NGOs that promote Jewish-Arab coexistence.

The clear message was that religious preferences in ride-hailing services are a form of discrimination. No special preferences would be tolerated.

Yet, here we are, in the United States.

Uber, the global ride-hailing behemoth, has quietly introduced a service in various markets that allows female drivers to opt into picking up only female passengers. It’s being billed as a safety measure—one that empowers women to feel more comfortable driving and riding in liberal cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Detroit. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees: this is gender-based discrimination, plain and simple. A man hailing a ride and seeing it canceled because the driver opted for a woman-only ride is, quite literally, being excluded based on sex.

How is allowing female drivers to exclude picking up male riders making life “better for everyone?”

Where is the outrage from liberal groups? Where is the Jewish Reform Movement? Why hasn’t a lawsuit been filed on behalf of male riders who must be put in the back of the line to get home? Why no amicus brief filed in solidarity with equality under the law?

The silence is telling. Discrimination only seems to bother rights advocacy groups when it’s associated with religious practice or victims of preference. If Arab drivers are excluded from rides, liberal groups in Israel convinced the courts that it’s discrimination. But if male passengers in the United States are excluded to create a woman-only safe space? That’s empowerment.

The hypocrisy is glaring. If the principle is equality, then apply it. If the standard is fairness, then be consistent. And if the cause is justice, then justice should not be contingent on whom it implicates.

Is there a red line of equality under the law that differentiates between religion and sex? Or is Israel more progressive regarding equality than the United States?

No Context For NY Times’ Gaza Flotilla

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The word “context” has been given a lot of play since university professors made a point of using the term to answer questions at congressional testimonies as to whether they would enforce discipline on students engaged in antisemitic activities. They claimed those actions needed to be “targeted and persistent” to cross the line into Jew hatred deemed unacceptable.

One has to imagine whether a mirror needs to be held up to media operations – whose job it is top provide context to stories – when they fail to do so when writing stories. If they refuse to provide basic background to stories that could make Israel or Jews appear in a favorable light and do not do so, is that an indication of rank antisemitism?

Another Gaza “Flotilla”

In yet another attempt at seeking publicity, a ship set sail for Gaza in the middle of Hamas’s current war on Israel. The boat was picked up and brought to the Israeli port city of Ashdod for processing without incident.

To read the New York Times’ story, one would imagine that this was an aid boat desperate to bring life saving aid to the people of Gaza amid an illegal blockade of the region, and crushing war that is not popular amongst Gazans.

That’s a complete lie. So let’s unpack the story shared without background, and insert some relevant facts which were omitted.

For starters, Israel’s land-based blockade started in June 2007 after Hamas, a group whose antisemitic foundational charter is sworn to the killing of Jews and destruction of Israel, took over the Gaza Strip. The naval blockade started over a year later, in January 2009, after Hamas started a war with Israel using imported missiles.

In July 2011, the UN released the Palmer Report which attested to the legal nature of Israel’s blockade. Specifically it wrote:

“As this report has already indicated, we are satisfied that the naval blockade was based on the need to preserve Israel’s security.  Stopping the importation of rockets and other weapons to Gaza by sea helps alleviate Israel’s situation as it finds itself the target of countless attacks, which at the time of writing have once again become more extensive and intensive…  We have reached the view that the naval blockade was proportionate in the circumstances… The Panel therefore concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal… Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza.  The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.“

This is never mentioned in the article.

The article – over-and-again – states that the boat’s mission is to bring aid to “a population in Gaza facing rising starvation.” If that was the goal, it could have easily set sail directly to Ashdod where the aid would have been processed and thereafter sent by trucks into Gaza. However, the actual aim of the ship was to break Israel’s legal blockade during a war via a publicity stunt. If the world pressured Israel to remove the blockade, more weaponry would be able to flow into the terrorist enclave to continue the genocidal war against Israel.

Maritime closure on Gaza has caught weapons bound for Hamas, this video from 2011

Yet the Times preferred to write a propaganda piece on behalf of Gaza’s supporters. It continued on “the activist group” narrative:

It was no accident that the article led with “baby formula, diapers” to make the mission appear to be about innocent babies. This was raw propaganda. The blockade isn’t about baby food but weapons used to slaughter Israelis. In 2010, a ship called the Mavi Marmara prepared weapons to kill Israelis when they boarded the boat to escort it to Ashdod. The “activists” had gas masks at the ready with iron bars and knives.

“Activists” on the Mavi Marmara in May 2010

When the article chose to give context to the “flotilla,” it only mentioned the ships which sailed over the past year, making them appear to be in reaction to Hamas’s current war. The various European “aid ships” are marketed as concerned about the situation of civilians during the current battles.

The reality is that these boats have been going on for years. Europeans have constantly tried to end Israel’s blockade of the terrorist enclave, which would open the door for Hamas and the other terrorist groups to stockpile even more weaponry to wage war against Israel.

European “Flotilla” bound for Gaza in 2015

As described above, the blockade is legal and Israel enforces it with the minimum use of force necessary under the circumstances. Still, the Times only quoted these “activists” saying that Israel was acting in an illegal manner without any background. Zero. Just a quote without explaining the history of the blockade or its legal nature.

The Hamas fluff piece went on to quote “Adalah, an Israeli human rights group,” which advocates for Israeli Arabs. It did not share that the group is funded by Europeans and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. For years – well before the latest Hamas war – the group called Israel “an apartheid state committing genocide,” which should be boycotted. It has even held events with groups affiliated with terrorist groups like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

But the Times didn’t write any of that. A reader is left to believe that an Israeli human rights group wanted to provide legal services to aid activists and was blocked by the Israeli army. A scripted anti-Israel narrative

With so much fluff, perhaps the editors may have wanted at least a little background for the episode, so in the ninth paragraph (out of twelve) a smidgen of color was given. Just a drop, still never adding that Israel has let in tons of non-military aid to Gaza, and forwards whatever non-military aid the ships bring.

The article states that the blockade started in 2007 which is only partially accurate. as mentioned above, the land blockade began in 2007 while the naval blockade started in 2009.

Remarkably, the most famous of these flotillas, the Mavi Marmara in May 2010, was never mentioned. The nature of the political boat stunts – in this case deadly – was never flagged.

Instead, the legal naval blockade was wrongfully portrayed as an “Israeli military” war against “rights groups.”

Europeans attempting to facilitate the flow of weaponry into the hands of Gazans during a genocidal war is appalling. That it is provided cover by the media is disgraceful.

Antisemitism in universities is punishable when it is “targeted and persistent.” Jew-hatred in the media should be punishable when the basic context of the situation is consistently omitted.

France’s Old Habit Of Vilifying Jews For Being Victorious

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In 1967, just days after Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six-Day War — a war it neither started nor wanted — French President Charles de Gaulle publicly rebuked Jews:

  • the Jewish State was “war-like state bent on expansion”
  • impugned the Jewish people “throughout the ages” as “an elite people, sure of themselves and domineering,” who had “created ill will in various countries at various times.”

The accusation wasn’t merely tone-deaf — it was malicious in intent. Israel had just repelled a coordinated Arab onslaught aimed at its annihilation. In response, rather than offering admiration or even neutrality, de Gaulle reached for the language of old European antisemitism: that Jews are too proud, too successful, too capable — and therefore must be cut down to size.

Historian Bernard Lewis noted how this framing, after 1967, became a tool not just of European elites but of Arab leaders humiliated by defeat. The Jews had survived — worse, they had won — and for that, they were to be condemned as arrogant victors. He quoted one writer who said “It was bad enough to be conquered and occupied by the mighty empires of the West, the British Empire, the French Empire, but to suffer this fate at the hands of a few hundred thousand Jews was intolerable.”

Fast forward to today.

French President Emmanuel Macron repeats the posture of his predecessor, albeit with 21st-century polish. After Hamas butchered Israeli civilians in their homes on October 7, 2023, Macron offered sympathies — but quickly shifted blame back to Israel.

In the first weeks after Israel struck back at Hamas, Macron accused Israel of collective punishment, while never applying the same outrage to Hamas’s use of civilians as human shields, or to its decades-long charter of antisemitic terror.

And now, Macron leads calls for France to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state — not as a reward for peace, but as a diplomatic slap to the Jewish state for defending itself too well.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Like de Gaulle, Macron cloaks condescension in the language of law and balance. But the message is unchanged:

When Jews are victims, they earn pity.
When Jews resist, they invite suspicion.
When Jews win — they must be reprimanded.

To call Jews “domineering” after a war of self-defense is to rewrite the story of Jewish survival into one of guilt. France did it in 1967. It is doing it again today.