The tragic farce of modern human rights discourse reached a grotesque milestone. According to the defenders of Palestinian “human rights,” Israel should not be allowed to defend itself—even when civilians are under direct rocket fire from foes eager to destroy the Jewish State.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s so-called “Special Rapporteur on Palestine,” brazenly declared that Israel, as an “occupying power,” has no right to self-defense. In Albanese’s warped worldview, a Jew in Israel has no right to life.
Albanese claims that Israel cannot defend itself from Hamas, the popular and dominant Palestinian political party and ruling power in Gaza.
This is policy for many. When the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to fund Iron Dome, a purely defensive missile shield that intercepts rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, a coalition of radicals opposed it. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene— antisemitic-bedfellows —voted against the funding.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted for the funding, the backlash from anti-Israel radicals was immediate. Vandals defaced her headquarters. They threatened her life. “How dare she support saving Jewish lives?” was the clear message, sprayed in graffiti.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez office vandalized after voting to fund Israel’s missile defense system
At Rutgers University, Noura Erakat, a Palestinian professor decried Iron Dome, essentially arguing that protecting Israeli civilians is an act of war. The Democratic Socialists of America demanded that Israel be isolated while defending itself in a multifront war. And many echoed the ridiculous claim that it is unjust for Israelis to have bomb shelters when Gazans do not—ignoring that Hamas has built hundreds of kilometers of military tunnels, used exclusively to shield terrorists and smuggle weapons, while civilians are left to die on purpose, to feed propaganda.
The global double standard is grotesque: Israel must accept rocket fire, massacres, and kidnappings—and not respond. Not defend. If it does, it is called an aggressor hell-bent on genocide. No country on Earth is asked to withhold defending its citizens.
The latest iteration of perverse Palestinian “human rights” demands that Jews die quietly, with neither fight nor protest. Palestinian “dignity” demands that Arabs stand atop Jewish graves, personal and physical manifestations mirroring the Islamic mosques sitting atop the Jewish Temples. Just as the world believes Jews should be silent at their holiest site, Jews must die quietly in their holy land.
When “human rights” for a particular group demands the sacrifice of another, basic moral math needs to be applied. When the perversion infects United Nations and U.S. government officials calling to strip and bind Jews in the Middle East, the terrifying equation yields a final solution.
On July 20, 2025, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan made a remarkable statement, considering his years of rebuke for Israel in the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan (E49AL/ the “West Bank’). He said that “it is time for the international community to come to terms with the facts on the ground” – in regards to Turkey’s presence in northern Cyprus.
Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and maintains 35,000 troops on the island to protect roughly 200,000 Turkish Cypriots. During the invasion, roughly 60,000 Turkish Cypriots moved to the northern Turkish section, while an estimated 150,000 Greek Cypriots moved south. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared itself independent in 1983, in an action the entire international community still considers illegal. Turkey has continued to illegally move parts of its population into TRNC, also illegal.
Turkey’s Erdogan stresses “facts on the ground”… for Cyprus
The Turkish Cyprus dynamic is much more severe than between the oft-discussed Israel- West Bank situation.
Ethnic Cleansing
Islamic Turkey ethnically cleansed Orthodox Greeks from northern Cyprus when it invaded. It echoed the actions of 1923 when Turkey and Greece exchanged their religious and ethnic populations, as though Cyprus wasn’t a distinct entity. More harshly, the Arab Muslim Jordanian kingdom ethnically cleansed all Jews from the land of Israel it illegally seized in 1949 and banned Jewish citizenship in 1954. However, in sharp contrast, when Israel took back the West Bank from Jordan in a defensive war in 1967, it did not remove any Arabs from the region.
Colonization
Further, Turkey already had an enormous country. Its colonial arm seizing northern Cyprus was seemingly to make up for the shame of losing the vast Ottoman Empire. That is completely dissimilar to the West Bank which has always been an integral part of the Jewish homeland, and was part of the British Mandate in 1922. Yet people have come up with a distinct term for Israeli Jews in the West Bank, “settlers,” even if they live in established cities (not new settlements).
Legality
No country recognizes Turkey’s illegal seizure of northern Cyprus. Yet several countries recognize Israel’s capital of Jerusalem and consider the West Bank to only be disputed land, especially as many western countries do not recognize a State of Palestine and Jordan abandoned all claims to the land in 1988.
Population and troops
The Arab population in the West Bank has increased dramatically since Israel retook the land in 1967. Israel granted the vast majority of Arabs self determination as part of the Oslo Accords, specifically in Areas A and B of the West Bank. However, there aren’t even any Greeks in TRNC to consider.
Israel has roughly 10,000 troops in the West Bank protecting 450,000 Israelis, in normal circumstances. During periods of conflict, the number of soldiers can double. That ratio is roughly 45 civilians to 1 Israeli soldier, quite different than the one soldier per 5 civilians in TRNC. TRNC is essentially a fort.
Conclusion
While both cases involve territorial disputes and ethnic tensions, the moral, legal, and historical justifications differ greatly. The Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus is a blatant violation of international law, resulting in displacement and ethnic separation. The Jewish presence in E49AL/ the “West Bank” reflects a historic Jewish return, legal ambiguity, and an attempt at coexistence under a negotiated peace process.
Denying Jews the right to live in their ancestral homeland while excusing Erdoğan’s illegal occupation of Cyprus highlights a dangerous double standard: these disputes are really not about land or international law, but appeasing Islamic authoritarianism and ratifying antisemitism.
That has been the rallying cry of Hamas since its inception. It was not a metaphor or rhetorical flourish. It was a strategic doctrine and a religious creed. Victory would mean the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a devout Islamic state “from the river to the sea.” Martyrdom meant dying in pursuit of that cause — not just willingly, but eagerly.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas made its major play for victory. Thousands of militants and civilians from Gaza poured into Israel, raping, torturing, and slaughtering Jews in a pogrom of medieval barbarism. They hoped the spectacle would provoke a regional war — Hezbollah from the north, Iran from afar, Arab street uprisings across the Middle East. They imagined a domino collapse of the Jewish State.
It did not play out according to the preferred plan.
Hezbollah has been badly bruised. Iran has been humiliated. The IDF shattered Hamas leadership and destroyed its terror tunnels. The remaining Hamas fighters are mostly hiding — or dead or captured. Gaza’s infrastructure, above and below ground, is rubble.
Which leaves plan B: martyrdom.
Not just for themselves — many of whom will choose death over surrender — but for the people of Gaza whom they have indoctrinated for two decades. From kindergartens to mosques, from textbooks to television, they taught Palestinians that death for Allah is better than life without “liberation.” That there is nobility in dying while killing Jews.
Over 20,000 Hamas fighters are dead. There are almost twice that number of dead civilians. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza are leveled. Tunnels, schools, hospitals are gone.
That’s not failure for Hamas. That’s evidence that the campaign for martyrdom worked. Every dead Gazan is a stepping stone to paradise. Every civilian loss is a propaganda weapon. Hamas always calculated that if they couldn’t beat Israel in battle, they could win in death.
And it’s working.
Around the world, nations are blaming Israel for a “power vacuum” in Gaza — as if Hamas’s evil leadership was a success story over seventeen years. They demand “reconstruction” — as if Gaza was a victim of a natural disaster and not a self-inflicted holy war launched atop a powder keg. The idea that Gazans were brainwashed into seeking martyrdom is dismissed as Islamophobic. The western mind cannot comprehend that death is an accepted goal, not a consequence.
New York Times article blaming Israel for Hamas’s refusal to surrender
In the West, every death is a tragedy. But in Gaza under Hamas, it is currency. Suicide bombers once strapped explosives to their chests. Now, the entire Strip has been strapped into a suicide vest, and the detonator pressed.
This isn’t suicide-by-cop. It’s martyrdom-by-genocide — a warped campaign in which Hamas initiated all-out war against a vastly superior enemy, knowing full well the toll. And the more people die, the more it fuels the narrative they’ve crafted: that they are eternal victims, even while firing rockets from hospitals and launching ambushes from schools.
It is cruel. It is evil. And it is successful.
Because the more Gazans die, the more the world turns on Israel. The more Israel defends itself and fights to return its hostages, the more it is blamed for the destruction of Gaza. The West is so allergic to the idea of mass death as a chosen outcome that it must assign blame elsewhere.
So Hamas continues to fight, not to win, but to die. And in death, they declare success because the narrative of the Global South has been successfully instilled into consciousness of the Global North for the past decade. The insidious jihad has now reached peak toxicity.
“Victory or Martyrdom.”
A true defeat of Hamas – in which it gets neither victory nor martyrdom – would be for it to surrender. To hand over its weapons. To leave the Strip and be stripped of mention on any building, square or monument. To be vacated from government, military and textbooks.
That is precisely what Hamas is avoiding at all cost. It will not hand over the hostages and lay down its weapons. It will fight until every child in Gaza is dead rather than concede defeat. And the majority of Gazans continue to back that plan, even as recently as a May 2025 PCPSR poll.
The world refuses to admit the reality and prefers to blame Israel for the continued deaths rather than pressure Gazans to stand down. Without a Hamas concession, there is really no “day after.” The war will continue. Deaths will fill the pages of the next chapter.
Israel has denied Gazans the victory of victory and the world is enabling the victory of martyrdom.
All because the West cannot comprehend the mindset of psychopaths and remains blind to the mainstreamed antisemitism in their midst.
ACTION ITEM
Post on social media that the Gazan dead are not only victims of Hamas’s war but Hamas’s education. No such society is deserving of sovereignty.
Weekends in the Hamptons Synagogue are times to hear from politicians but infrequently a political war room. That changed on July 20. Former Governor Andrew Cuomo, political veteran and bruised warrior of Albany, came down from the bleachers and into the pit—this time, to describe the battle with far-left ideologue who had somehow captured the heart of New York City’s radical alt-left: Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.
Cuomo stood before a predominantly older, anxious crowd—not in his home borough, but in the summer home of hundreds of Manhattan’s Jewish residents. Rabbi Marc Schneier introduced him warmly, a gesture that symbolized more than courtesy. It was a call for a lifeline from a community watching its city slip into madness.
From Apology to Attack
Cuomo opened with an apology for his lackluster primary campaign, acknowledging what everyone in the room already knew: Mamdani’s young, radical left had shown up to vote, and Cuomo hadn’t shown up at all. But that was going to change. Cuomo pledged to fight between now and November—and then made a pledge to follow the suggestion of former New Jersey Senator David Paterson, that if trailing Mayor Eric Adams in the fall polls, he would step aside in September to avoid splitting the anti-Mamdani vote. He implied Adams should do the same.
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo addressed crowd at the Hamptons Synagogue in Westhampton Beach, on the dias with Rabbi Marc Schneier, on July 20, 2025 (photo: First One Through)
“fueling antisemitism”
In responding to a direct question, Cuomo refused to label Mamdani an antisemite because “I cannot see into his heart,” but was clear that the 33-year old very much “fuels antisemitism,” and further “engages in hate speech.”
Mamdani’s platform is a direct threat to Jewish safety.
Eli Beer, founder of Hatzalah in Israel, asking a question of Andrew Cuomo at the Hamptons Synagogue on July 20, 2025 (photo: First One Through)
A Plan for the City
Cuomo laid out his blueprint:
Enforce the law and prosecute hate crimes.
Hire 5,000 new police officers.
Build housing in a supply-starved market.
Attract businesses and jobs to the city.
He didn’t let the crowd forget what they lost: 15,000 jobs from Amazon’s Long Island City project—killed, he reminded them, by Mamdani’s comrade-in-ideology, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cuomo said that he had worked hard to win that competition, only to be foiled by a Democratic-Socialist. When the city and state were not blocked by terrible ideologies, Cuomo was able to accomplish a lot, including the Second Avenue subway, a new Laguardia Airport and a replacement to the Tappan Zee Bridge.
He was a Democrat who accomplished tangible results, while the Democratic-Socialist wing of the party impeded any progress with “stupid ideas.”
Desperation and the Wounded Gladiator
When Cuomo finished, the crowd didn’t roar—it exhaled. One person whispered into the microphone that the speech needed to be given in every synagogue in the city. Cuomo responded that he will do what he can but you need to get and be messengers. If you don’t organize, Mamdani wins.
Cuomo offered data: Mamdani won the primary because the activist class under 30 turned out en masse. But the general electorate was different: 70% Democrats, 15% Independents, and 15% Republicans. With Adams or Sliwa out of the race, Cuomo insisted, the math would work and recent polls show he is correct. He could win. If the others dropped out.
The audience, mostly over 70, carried the unease of people who had seen this movie before. Socialist cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago—were crumbling under the weight of their ideology and policies. New York had put its toe in the water in the past with Bill de Blasio and the results were terrible. A Mamdani mayoralty, Cuomo warned, could bury the city for two decades.
They wanted to believe Cuomo could win. But they also saw the crowded field ahead and Cuomo’s primary loss behind. It was like watching a wounded gladiator try to rise as the coliseum gates opened and the lions approached.
The government is coming down hard on Columbia University for failing to protect Jewish students. It has blocked grants from the school and has come after particular international students. Some civil rights organizations and Democratic politicians have argued that such maneuvers are trouncing protected free speech and are illegal actions against people who have different opinions than President Trump.
People are entitled to have opinions – even hateful ones, and share them aloud or in print. However, such rights are not absolute and have limitations at universities.
In general, people may not stop other people from enjoying their particular rights, say to enjoy the campus and study freely.
2. Students cannot engage in vandalism. Painting red triangles which are the signature of the Hamas terrorist group to target people and breaking glass is destructive. Anti-Israel Columbia students have done this repeatedly.
Red triangles painted on Columbia University COO’s apartment
The vandalism and takeover of schools is against both of these first two principles and certainly not part of free speech. The abduction of a school custodian during the building takeover also warranted severe disciplinary action.
3. People cannot disseminate propaganda and wave flags of US-designated terrorist groups. The United States has labeled several Palestinian Arab groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Sharing propaganda from such groups can be viewed as providing material support, a serious crime.
Columbia students who are part of Students for Justice in Palestine shared statements from Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh that “contextualizes” the slaughter of 1,200 people, kidnapping of babies and Holocaust survivors, and raping of women. They lionized the architect of the October 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and many other mass murderers.
Some of the students at the Columbia encampments have been at rallies with Hamas flags and headbands, and people calling to repeat the October 7 massacre in other parts of the world to achieve “liberation.”
Being associated with designated foreign terrorist groups jumps from “free speech” considerations to the blurry definition of “domestic terrorism” to the very real and illegal area of “international terrorism” which the federal government will prosecute immediately.
4. People may not intentionally provoke someone “face-to-face” in an action likely to be met with violence. Screaming “I am Hamas” to a Jew in the aftermath of Hamas’s butchery of Jews and the genocidal group’s promise to repeat the heinous slaughter would not be protected under free speech.
5. Beyond provoking a violent response, free speech may not intimidate or harass someone or a group of people, especially if they are part of a “protected group.” For example, a mob yelling for all Zionists to get off a subway is not protected under free speech.
More generally, free speech only relates to government involvement. A private business or university may have restrictions on offensive speech that are more restrictive than federal laws. The government may then investigate the select application of free speech at private institutions when only protecting certain groups’ permitted speech while not for others.
Further, free speech does not shield someone from the ramifications of such speech. Someone may something that is protected under the government’s definition of free speech and still lose a job or opportunity because it is viewed as offensive.
The list above may overlap. For example, drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed is protected speech but drawing it on a mosque is vandalism and harassment. Talking about an “Intifada” generally which might mean to “shake off” is okay, yet shouting to “globalize the intifada” while holding “zionism is racism” and “there is only one solution” banners before a Jewish institution is the equivalent of a bomb threat.
Free speech is a cornerstone of America—but so is liberty. The targeted harassment and intimidation of Jews across campuses and cities has crossed the line. Chanting genocidal slogans and glorifying the slaughter of Jews – at Jews – is not protected speech; it’s an assault on civil rights.
Defending the First Amendment must never come at the cost of abandoning the safety and liberty of American Jews.
As the Israelites were about to enter their Promised Land, the Bible relays stories of a series of conflicts.
After the spies delivered a bad report on the land in Parshat Shlach, we read the story of Korach who tried to launch a mutiny against Moses and Aaron. Then Chukat describes a war with Amorites, and Balak shares the story of a prophet trying to curse the Jewish people. At the end of Balak (Numbers 25:1-9), we read about Moabite women engaged in profanities with Jewish men. Pinchas, son of Elazar son of Aaron, took a spear and impaled the couple having sex in front of the Ohel Mo’ed, the tent Moses used to communicate with God.
Illuminated manuscript miniature from the 15th-century Alba Bible
And that is where Parshat Balak and the story seemingly end. With the murder of the couple and 24,000 others engaged in similar acts.
But it doesn’t really.
Parshat Pinchas continues the story with a pivot. Rather than highlighting the sins and the deaths, Numbers 25:10 begins with God appreciating the defense of holiness and His blessing Pinchas and his descendants. While the story may appear as a single episode, the Torah divides the parshas – and the narrative – between the violent and the holy, even when the violence was in the name of the holy.
The theme of separation can similarly be seen immediately after this in chapter 26, where God calls for another census of the tribes. Here, God counts the tribes and their families to allocate land for their inheritance. This is in contrast to the census of Numbers chapter 1 in which God wanted to account for how people would assemble in their journey and combat enemy forces. In the case of the journey and battle-readiness, there was a single head of each tribe; when they entered the land, each tribe’s family was specified.
It is a metaphor for how Jews assemble and coordinate today: there are wars that are fought in Israel and the diaspora against those who want to harm Jews and the Jewish State. Global Jewry understands the us-versus-them dynamic and the role for every Jew in the battle. It is related yet distinct from the interaction amongst Jews regarding our common heritage. We each have a part to play living together as a community.
Individuals fight with a common purpose. Families live under a societal umbrella.
We have tribes and borders and homes. We coexist with each other while understanding our peaceful lines. The separations today may be between synagogues or religious denominations. Between schools and political affiliations. Each aspiring for peace and holiness.
Those lines are very different than the battle lines between us and “them,” those who mean to harm us physically, morally and spiritually.
Upon entry into the Jewish holy land, Jews migrated from an army with legions to a people with property. While there were still wars to be fought inside the Jewish Promised Land, the muscle memory of understanding who is within the holy communal tent and those outside forces, was taught over the trials in the desert.
It is a lesson for our time as well: to clearly identify our allies and foes, and wage war and peace accordingly.
Nothing seems to animate Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as much as attacking America, Israel and Jews. Perhaps with the exception of defending those who do.
On July 15, 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives Education & Workforce Committee held a hearing on antisemitism at universities. Rather than show concern for Jewish Americans facing harassment, intimidation and persecution – the point of the hearing – Omar went on the attack against those who called out the Jew hatred.
Ilhan Omar at House hearing to address antisemitism at universities, July 15, 2025
At (2:28:09) of the hearing, Omar took the microphone and started to bash Canary Mission as a nefarious, shadow organization that worked in concert with the government to “dox” students and “repress speech” of those who spoke up on behalf of SAPs, the Stateless Arabs from Palestine. She called it “McCarthyism” in which the group denied “due process” to individuals, as though this group was an arm of the government, looking to silence dissent.
It was a wild and crazy display of her hypocrisy and lies.
First, some plain facts. Canary Mission is an independent group and not part of the government. It posts public information about what people say and doesn’t share personal information like home addresses or phone numbers (the definition of doxxing). It is all covered under free speech – sharing other people’s “free speech.”
Second, Canary Mission does not silence anyone the way Omar charged. It does not intimidate. It simply compiles the vitriol of those who intend to harm America, its citizens and its allies.
Here is one clip from the site about a 2024 conference where “Palestinian” radicals threatened to tear down “empire,” the code name for the United States.
Omar doesn’t want you to see this: Canary Mission video about jihadists looking to destroy the United States
Here is a review of CM’s profile of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, one of its longer highlights as he has long been attacking Jews and the Jewish State. It includes a long list of links to HIS comments. Nowhere does it provide his personal information.
Canary Mission video about those celebrating the October 7 massacre and seeking the destruction of Israel
Omar wants free speech for anti-American and anti-Jewish voices but not those who call out the haters. She doesn’t want there to be any ramifications for people calling to “tear down empire,” but only for those who showcase those shrill voices. She claims small private groups have power while she uses her powerful position in government to attack them.
Omar is the embodiment of hypocrisy and anti-American views, which she’s proud to broadcast while people are gathered to consider how to protect the most vilified minority-minority in America.
Omar has made her career out of playing both the victim and the defender of so-called marginalized voices—so long as those voices align with her political narrative. In Omar’s worldview, free speech is sacred when it targets America or Israel—but it’s dangerous harassment when used to expose her ideological allies.
Omar demands impunity for those who cheer jihad, but censorship for those who expose them.
Omar’s double standard is not just hypocritical—it’s dangerous. By shielding radical voices from criticism, she normalizes antisemitism and delegitimizes the right of Jews to call out hatred. Worse, she uses her platform to chill lawful speech, by mislabeling documentation as “doxxing” and criticism as “violence.”
This isn’t about protecting the vulnerable; it’s about protecting the radical. Her priorities are crystal clear:
Defend Hamas sympathizers
Smear Jewish watchdogs
Turn antisemites into victims
Turn their critics into villains
If Ilhan Omar were genuinely concerned about threats and intimidation, she would condemn the harassment of Jewish students, the glorification of Hamas, and the calls for violent uprising on American soil. But she won’t—because those voices are her own echo.
Billionaire Bill Ackman – and millions of other New Yorkers and Americans – are appalled at the victory of Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Ackman has been vocal about an anyone-but-Mamdani campaign and willingness to put millions of dollars behind a new candidate to run against Mamdani in the general election. He’s even asked Andrew Cuomo to drop out of the race while endorsing Mayor Eric Adams.
That’s not the way politics works.
Politicians run for office. That’s what they do. They don’t care about what millions of people want outside the framework of what it means for them personally. They don’t run for office for you any more than teacher unions work for students. Each is selfish and looks after themselves.
Ackman, realizing the flaw in the logic of adding yet another person into the race, announced that he is going to back Eric Adams, sort of like Elon Musk’s backing of Trump for president: a billionaire backing an incumbent with baggage.
Unsurprisingly, Cuomo said that he is not dropping out of the race, and President Donald Trump said Cuomo should stay in the race. A recent poll has Cuomo ahead of both Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa. Yet Ackman seems to think that money alone can turn the tide towards Adams.
In the multi-horse race and deeply Democratic city where people instinctively vote for the Democratic candidate regardless of who it is, Mamdani is likely to win in November.
Backing Mamdani is the alt-left who use Ackman’s comments to rally their comrades. Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders who thinks that capitalism is evil, sees this as yet another manifestation of it: people with money can run the table and buy the votes – and everything else that non-rich people have.
The correct play for Ackman is to buy Cuomo, not New Yorkers. Promise Cuomo some board seats in companies or other plum positions. Adams can win in a less crowded race but not with Cuomo still running, regardless of how much money backs Adams.
People – rich and poor – only have a single vote and millions of dollars cannot change that. Money can assist in getting out the vote, an important dynamic but not decisive for all of the candidates. Millions of dollars poured into Mamdani’s campaign from bundlers and via George Soros’s network of socialist charities like the Open Society Foundations (212-548-0600), which were effective in getting out the vote in the primary. Ackman money would have similar benefit but not enough.
In this race, the millions to be spent by anti-Mamdani people will only guarantee that Mamdani wins a plurality of votes but below a 50% majority in a crowded field. He will still become mayor.
ACTION PLAN
It is time for influential people to encourage Cuomo to accept another exciting position to drop out of the race for selfish, not benevolent reasons. Saving New York may depend on it.
Organize the vote. Make sure that older New Yorkers get to vote early.
In Jewish tradition, mixed dancing — men and women dancing together — is not banned because the act itself is necessarily sinful. Rather, it’s prohibited by Orthodox rabbis as a safeguard, a geder (protective fence) to keep people from straying into deeper moral danger. The actual target of the ban is adultery. The sages, with profound psychological insight, warned against behaviors that might lead to the destruction of intimate relationships. If lust can spark with a glance, how much more so with physical proximity, rhythmic movement, and emotional energy?
This ancient rabbinic logic should feel very familiar today. We are watching a tragic parallel unfold among secular and progressive Jews in America and the West, who, ignoring the early signs of danger, are “dancing” with partners who wish to destroy them and their relationships with the Jewish community.
In the UK, members of the Masorti movement — the equivalent of Conservative Judaism — watched impassively as anti-Israel protestors screamed “Death, death to the IDF!” Rather than draw a red line against those openly calling for the annihilation of Israel and its defenders, these leaders tiptoed around offense, unwilling to rupture intercommunal alliances that feed their progressive sensibilities.
In New York, the problem took a sharper form. A candidate for public office — Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and vocal supporter of anti-Israel slogans — dodged criticism over the genocidal phrase “Globalize the Intifada.” Far-left Reform rabbis in the city, self-anointed moral voices of the Jewish community, rushed to endorse him. They danced around the danger, preferring the fantasy of social justice alliances over the hard truth of growing antisemitism within their political home.
Article in the Times of Israel co-authored by co-authored by Rabbi Rachel Goldenberg, Rabbi Andy Kahn, Rabbi Abby Stein, Rabbi Barat Ellman, PhD, Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, Rabbi Nancy H. Wiener, and Rabbi Miriam Grossman.
The slope isn’t just slippery anymore — it’s greased with blood and cowardice. Mamdani’s continued place in the progressive tent is welcomed not only by radicals but by establishment Democrats, including Jews like Rep. Jerry Nadler. The Democratic National Committee embraces Mamdani with open arms, eyes shut tight to the threat he and his fellow “democratic socialists” pose to Jews in New York and beyond.
What’s most astonishing is not that radicals hate Jews — an old story — but that Jews are oblivious. Or worse, they see it and prefer the warmth of progressive adulation over the cold loneliness of standing apart.
This is not a moment for nuance or middle-ground moral posturing. The bell curve of American political identity has collapsed into a barbell — a society without a center and where extremes dominate. The Left hosts open antisemites under the banner of “justice,” while the Right has become a safer harbor for traditional Jews who value Israel and religion.
Still, many Jews still won’t leave the party. The music is loud, the slogans intoxicating, and the identity politics too thrilling to resist. They are reveling in center stage, swaying to the rhythm of the mob, arms locked with people who chant for Jewish blood. It is dirty dancing in every sense of the phrase.
While UK’s Glastonbury music festival condemned the violent chants, Masorti Jews excused the vitriol
The sages understood that proximity leads to temptation, and temptation leads to destruction. The rabbis who banned mixed dancing did not hate fun but feared the cost of heedless joy — of dancing with people who don’t have your best interest at heart. That entrance you with intoxicating passions that undermine foundational bonds.
Today, Jews must ask: Who are we dancing with, and how long until the music stops and we realize we are profoundly alone?
Zohran Mamdani, a rising star of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and winner of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, is a vocal critic of Israel, consistently aligning himself with those who deny the Jewish state’s legitimacy. The DSA’s New York chapter, to which Mamdani belongs, infamously demanded that candidates pledge never to visit Israel, a democratic country that has long been an ally of the United States and home to nearly half of the world’s Jews. DSA-NYC only targeted the Jewish State in its campaign; not a single American adversary was listed.
This is not policy criticism—it is ideological exclusion.
Mamdani often speaks in terms of equality for all in the Holy Land, especially being opposed to a “hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion.” But it’s worth pressing on what that actually means. In Jerusalem today, at the holiest site in Judaism—the Temple Mount—only Muslims are allowed to pray. Jews, Christians, and all other non-Muslims are banned from uttering a prayer or even moving their lips in spiritual devotion on the site where the two Jewish Temples once stood, and which remains sacred to Jews.
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound
This discriminatory policy is issued by the Jordanian-run Islamic Waqf, which holds administrative control of the Temple Mount under a decades-old, uneasy “status quo.” The United Nations repeatedly reinforces this Islamic exclusivity, often omitting any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount altogether. Both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas vocally oppose any Jewish prayer there, calling it a “provocation.” Jews just visiting the site are denounced by Palestinian leadership with denunciation that Jews are “storming al Aqsa” in an attempt to rile up 2 billion Muslims to jihad Jews.
So, what does “equality” mean to Mamdani in this context?
Does he believe Jews should have the same right to worship – at their holiest site – as Muslims do at a site they consider less holy? Would he support Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount? Or would he continue the pattern of defending Islamic supremacy over Jewish heritage, consistent with the positions of his political allies?
More pointedly: would Mamdani support turning the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine that sits on the very spot of the Jewish Temples, into a synagogue? And would he support giving Jews preference to the site on Saturday, comparable to Muslim access granted each Friday?
Mamdani’s party and political base support antisemitic edicts. They have increasingly mirrored the rhetoric of Palestinian leaders who call for the complete “de-Judaization” of Jerusalem. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority both deny any Jewish historical connection to the site. Any mention of rebuilding a synagogue—let alone a Temple—is immediately labeled “incitement” and met with threats of, and actual, violence.
The DSA has never condemned this apartheid of worship. Instead, it condemns Israel for even maintaining security on the Mount after violent jihadi riots. That Mamdani would remain silent or complicit on this speaks volumes.
The deeper truth is that equality in Mamdani’s rhetoric masks a goal for a radical reordering of the Middle East in which Jewish identity and history are subordinated or erased altogether. It is not about equal rights—it is about erasing Israel. Supporting open Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount would be a minimal step toward showing that his ““equality” includes Jews.
Will he denounce Hamas’s threats of violence against Jews praying in Jerusalem? Will he demand the Waqf end its ban on Jewish prayer? Will he advocate for genuine religious pluralism on the Temple Mount?
Or will he continue to chant slogans of “equality” in the language of Islamic supremacy, complicit in religious apartheid?
First One Through 