Do You Support Israel’s Right to Exist?

On pledging allegiance to an ethnostate committing wholesale ethnic slaughter

At New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary debate Wednesday night, the candidates were asked a peculiar question: If elected mayor, which foreign country would they visit first? One by one, they dutifully answered “Israel,” until Zohran Mamdani, the upstart progressive, offered the radical suggestion that he’d stay in New York to serve the people who elected him.

The moderator interrupted Mamdani, a 33-year-old Muslim State Assemblyman who has been dogged throughout the campaign by smears of antisemitism over his pro-Palestine advocacy, to ask if he, too, would visit Israel. As he patiently explained that he would instead stand up for Jews in New York, meeting them wherever they are across all five boroughs, the moderator cut in again and gave the whole game away: “Yes or no, do you believe in a Jewish state of Israel?”

“I believe Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights,” he said.

The other candidates heckled Mamdani, and the next day, as they gave press conferences to sow distrust in him over his response, he was grilled on Good Day New York for refusing to affirm its right to exist as a Jewish state.

“I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else,” he said. “Equality should be enshrined in every country in the world.”

Mamdani’s calm, reasoned response to these spurious attempts at character assassination should compel serious reflection on the real substance of the issue: Supporting Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state in a predominantly Arab region means endorsing a system where rights are tied to ethnicity. You can back that if you choose, but you can’t pretend it’s just, and suggesting that opposition to it disqualifies someone from being mayor of New York—or any position, for that matter—is flatly absurd.

Of course, people will go on pretending, as the refusal to reckon with these basic realities defines every corner of our discourse on Israel-Palestine. And this past week offered a distilled example of where that logic ends: bloodshed for all.

After blocking aid from entering Gaza for months and pushing it to the brink of famine, Israel facilitated the launch of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF)—a startup run by mercenaries with no relevant experience—to replace the aid organizations it had banned. The official justification was that Hamas had looted the old distribution channels and weaponized aid during the January 2025 ceasefire, so a new, more secure network was needed. But in reality, Israeli leaders had conceived the plan back in November 2023 as a way to bypass the UN and lure starving Palestinians into militarized zones. Within hours of the first site opening last week, Israeli drones and tanks sprayed the aid-seekers with bullets, killing 31 people and wounding hundreds more.

The first aid site preparing to open last Sunday.

“Families in southern Gaza grieving over their loved ones — killed by Israeli forces near the U.S. aid distribution center west of Rafah.” (Drop Site)

It cannot be emphasized enough: Every major humanitarian organization warned this was exactly what would happen if the plan went forward, and urged the world to pressure Israel to restore Gaza’s established aid networks. But in the aftermath of the massacre, Israel’s defenders, rather than acknowledge that this was the predictable outcome, reached for their usual playbook: Deny it happened, blame Hamas if it did, and scream “blood libel” at anyone who dared suggest otherwise. The debate over who pulled the trigger served its diversionary function, distracting from the plain fact that Israel engineered this deadly chaos from the start.

Later that day, the same pattern of deflection and projection played out in reverse after a man shouting “Free Palestine” attacked pro-Israel demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, with a makeshift flamethrower, injuring at least 12.

As with the DC shooting, Israel’s supporters immediately blamed the pro-Palestine movement’s rhetoric. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt, who has led the campaign to erase any daylight between Israel and Jews throughout the war, accused everyone from graduation speakers to social media influencers of inciting the attack, and urged Trump to “stop it once and for all.” As video evidence of the IDF’s aid site massacre mounted, Ambassador Mike Huckabee denied it happened and demanded “an immediate retraction of the lies” by the mainstream media that were “feeding and inciting violence against innocent people in the United States.”

Meanwhile, the Hunger Games’ body count kept rising. By the time multiple independent investigations confirmed that the IDF was responsible for last Sunday’s aid massacre, Israeli forces had carried out several more. As of this writing, Israel has killed at least 122 Palestinians seeking aid and injured over 600. The GHF claims to have “helped deliver 7 million meals without incident,” a figure as dubious as the rest of their narrative—and even if true, it would amount to less than 0.4 meals per person per day.

Note the subject line and the headline.

Then came the punchline: for months, Israel had blamed Hamas looters to justify the blockade, only for it to emerge that they’d been arming and supporting the actual looters all along: an ISIS-affiliated gang of drug dealers, murderers, and convicted criminals known as Abu Shabab. Netanyahu admitted as much, calling it a strategic move to help defeat Hamas—a perfect echo of Israel’s decades-long policy of propping up Hamas to undercut the Palestinian Authority and prevent unity between Gaza and the West Bank.

Members of the Israeli-backed Abu Shabab gang.

Note the date.

At that point, the whole aid charade should have collapsed. Israel had created the conditions for chaos while blaming Hamas, used that chaos to justify slaughtering Palestinians, and then accused anyone who called it out of incitement to violence.

But instead of reckoning with this reality, the projection only escalated. Just one day after the story broke about Israel arming ISIS-linked gangs, Greenblatt gave a speech baselessly accusing detained student Mahmoud Khalil of ties to “groups overseas,” and comparing pro-Palestine student protesters to ISIS. The irony is so complete it borders on performance art.

This is how the system works, where every accusation is a projection. Israel accuses Hamas of looting while empowering the real looters. Calls protesters terrorists while arming ISIS affiliates. Fabricates stories of beheaded babies while blowing their heads off in Gaza. Condemns hostage-taking while holding 10,000 Palestinians captive. Cries ‘no partner for peace’ while backing the most extremist factions. In this mirror world, left is right and right is wrong—demanding equal rights makes you a bigot, and refusing loyalty to a foreign state means you can’t be trusted with the city.

Regarding the violence in the U.S., the truth seems simple enough: The flamethrower attack in Boulder was a horrifying and predictable outcome of 19 months of watching Israel burn people alive in Gaza. Fire, famously, has a tendency to spread, and a good way to lower its flames might be to stop feeding it corpses. But this line of thinking, like attempts to explain why violence erupted from behind Gaza’s iron wall on October 7, has no place in a system that requires the suppression of basic truths in order to keep running.

Five days after 9/11, Susan Sontag wrote in The New Yorker:

“The disconnect between last Tuesday’s monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public … Where is the acknowledgment that this was not a “cowardly” attack on “civilization” or “liberty” or “humanity” or “the free world” but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? … The public is not being asked to bear much of the burden of reality … A few shreds of historical awareness might help us understand what has just happened, and what may continue to happen.”

For this, Sontag was effectively canceled, and the refusal to “bear the burden of reality” helped launch the catastrophic forever wars that destabilized the region, gave rise to groups like ISIS, and fueled enduring hatred of the West.

Today, we’ll go on ignoring these warnings, flattening all violence against the “good guys” as “terrorism,” while feeding guns and bombs to an allied ethnostate carrying out a wholesale ethnic slaughter.

I’m reminded of what my friend Zaid said after one of the IDF’s daily raids on his West Bank village left a 14-year-old boy dead, a bullet in his chest, and the whole community terrorized.

“One day, these children will grow up, and some of them will fight back,” he said. “And the people in your country will call them terrorists.”

At least, this time, no one can say they didn’t see what was coming.

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Here’s this week’s roundup. If you find it useful, please tap the heart (algorithm fuel), share it around, and consider pledging for a future paid subscription.

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Gaza

Aid Massacres

One day after correctly identifying the IDF as responsible for last Sunday’s aid site massacre, The Washington Post issued a correction to meet its “fairness standards,” noting it had failed to clearly attribute the death toll to Gaza’s health ministry or sufficiently emphasize Israel’s denial.

Meanwhile, a CNN forensic investigation concluded Israeli forces were, of course, responsible, identifying tracer fire, the sounds of tank-mounted machine guns, and bullets consistent with IDF weaponry. (CNN)

The GHF closed its distribution centers on Wednesday and Thursday to work on “organization and efficiency,” while the IDF designated the sites “combat zones.” On Friday, some sites reopened, Israeli forces killed eight more people, and they were closed again by Saturday—only to reopen once more on Sunday, when the IDF killed five more Palestinians at dawn. (NYT, Guardian)

Helpful thread on how the daily GHF massacres unfold.

The Guardian reported on a mother who walked six hours with her children through rubble to a food hub in Gaza before being shot in the forehead while rehearsing with her family what to do if they got separated; her 20-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son crouched beside her corpse for hours as Israeli gunfire rained down. (Guardian)

As the bodies pile up, the U.S. State Department is weighing a $500 million funding package for the GHF. An anti-Muslim Trump ally and evangelical leader, Rev. Johnnie Moore, was named the group’s new director. (Axios, Haaretz)

The Boston Consulting Group withdrew from its engagement with the GHF, which it had helped design. The CEO apologized to staffers and fired two partners involved in the project. (WaPo)

The Israeli government reportedly transferred nearly $300 million to the GHF, despite its denials and claims that the group is independent. (Times of Israel)

The operation to arm the Abu Shabab gang, who roam Rafah in uniforms stamped “Counter-Terrorism Mechanism,” bypassed Israel’s security cabinet and was approved by Shin Bet, with Israel funneling weapons from Hamas stockpiles directly to the group. As the gang looted convoys, kidnapped drivers, and hiked food prices through black market resales, the army provided it with safe passage and protection.

“What’s wrong with that?” Netanyahu asked in a public address. “It’s only good. It saves the lives of IDF soldiers.” (Zeteo)

LinkedIn Updates

The IDF promoted an officer who ordered troops to “shoot to kill” two Gazans waving a white flag. (Haaretz)

Mass Killing

Israeli forces killed at least 110 Palestinians in Gaza during the holiday of Eid. (Al Jazeera)

The Israeli military is using a broken algorithm to falsely declare neighborhoods as “cleared” before greenlighting airstrikes, killing civilians en masse while skirting international regulations around precautionary measures. (+972)

Israeli forces struck a tent inside a Khan Younis school on Wednesday, killing at least 14 sheltering Palestinians, mostly women and children. (Quds)

An Israeli strike on a press tent at Gaza City’s Baptist Hospital killed four journalists, bringing the death toll of journalists during the war to 226. (Quds)

A 70-year-old father of 11 from Gaza died in Israel’s Sde Teiman torture camp, bringing the post-October 7 death toll of detained Palestinians to 71. (ME Monitor)

As of this writing, Israeli forces have killed at least 31 people on Sunday. (Al Jazeera)

Accusation/Projection

A 63-year-old hospital worker from Beit Hanoun said he was abducted by Israeli troops after volunteering to translate at a checkpoint, then forced to serve as a human shield for three different military units over three months. He was dressed in an IDF uniform and sent alone into bombed-out homes to search for tunnels as a drone hovered overhead, while enduring daily beatings and mock executions. (Younis Tirawi)

“Jameel al-Masri following his release. Provided by the al-Masri family.” (Drop Site)

Destruction

The Gaza Health Ministry warned on Sunday that hospitals could become “graveyards” in 48 hours if no fuel is provided. (Al Jazeera)

Israeli soldiers admitted they were ordered to torch northern Gaza schools sheltering displaced families—“Destroy the neighborhood so Arabs can’t return.” (Drop Site)

Israeli excavators demolished the only specialised dialysis facility in Gaza. More than 4 in 10 kidney failure patients have died since October. (ME Monitor, Al Jazeera)

The IDF is remotely detonating explosive-laden armored personnel carriers— “suicide APCs”—creating shockwaves so massive they’re shaking windows in central Israel. (J Post)

An Israeli air strike severely damaged the Ansar Mosque in Deir Al-Balah. Since October 7, Israeli forces have destroyed at least 828 mosques and damaged another 167. (ME Monitor)

Israeli forces occupied the European Hospital in Gaza and released footage they claim shows Hamas tunnels underneath. (Drop Site)

Israeli soldiers at the European Hospital. (Drop Site)

Survivors

Al Jazeera profiled two disabled sisters living in a displacement camp. (Al Jazeera)

The sole survivor of Israel’s aid worker massacre says he watched wounded colleagues beg for mercy before soldiers executed them one by one. (Guardian)

An infant is rescued from the rubble of a home targeted by an Israeli airstrike. (X)

Aid Flotilla Approaches Gaza

Israel’s Defense Minister vowed the IDF would take “whatever measures are necessary” to stop “anti-Semitic Greta” and the “hate flotilla” from reaching Gaza. (X)

Israeli Casualties

Five Israeli soldiers were killed Wednesday when a booby-trapped building collapsed on them, bringing the death toll for Israeli troops in Gaza to eight this week. (ME Eye)

Israeli forces recovered the bodies of two Israeli Americans and a Thai citizen from Gaza. (Guardian, ME Monitor)

A Qassam Brigades spokesman said that Israeli forces are besieging the location where captive Matan Zangauker is being held. (ME Eye)

West Bank

Murder in the West Bank

Israeli forces shot 14-year-old Yousef Foqahaa dead near Ramallah, stripped off his clothes, blocked aid, deleted surveillance footage from a nearby home, and confiscated his body. (DCIP)

Weeks after demolishing Khalet Al-Dabia, Israeli forces declared the Masafer Yatta village a closed military zone and began arresting and deporting activists. Activist Basel Adra wrote, “My community will be destroyed unless more activists and journalists come and join us on the ground.” (ISM)

Settlers dressed in military uniforms assaulted and detained a man in Masafer Yatta on Sunday morning.

On Wednesday, Israeli forces shot a 13-year-old in the leg during a Jericho raid. (ME Eye)

“Operation Iron Wall” extended into Al-Far’a refugee camp in the northern West Bank on Wednesday. (New Arab)

Israeli forces arrested at least 11 Palestinians in early Saturday raids that included a second closure notice for Al Jazeera’s office in Ramallah. (ME Monitor)

Pogroms

Dozens of Israeli settlers stormed Deir Dibwan on Wednesday, setting fire to homes, cars, and farmland, and injuring at least seven Palestinians. (Haaretz)

Deir Dibwan. (Haaretz)

The largest spring in the Jordan Valley dried up two months early amid drought and settler sabotage. (Haaretz)

Israeli settlers cut down 100 olive seedlings on Palestinian farmland northeast of Ramallah. (ME Eye)

Israeli settlers reportedly kidnapped and tortured two Palestinian-American brothers from Burqa. (WAFA)

Subcontractor

PA President Mahmoud Abbas is backing efforts to disarm Palestinian resistance factions in Lebanese refugee camps. (Electronic Intifada)

Israel

The Leaders

Ultra-Orthodox parties are threatening to dissolve Netanyahu’s governing coalition over the military draft of yeshiva students. (Haaretz)

Over 70 Israeli lawmakers are demanding the expulsion of Palestinian MK Ayman Odeh after he declared, “Gaza will prevail” at a ceasefire rally. (New Arab)

Israel’s new Shin Bet chief, David Zini, said, “Messianism is not a derogatory word. We are all messianics, just like David Ben Gurion and the founding fathers of the nation.” (Times of Israel)

Popular Opinion

A Zeteo report examines how Israel’s Channel 14 became a mouthpiece for genocidal incitement—celebrating starving children, airing calls to “wipe Gaza off the face of the earth,” and platforming guests who propose war crimes, including using crop dusters to blanket Gaza in gas and set it on fire. (Zeteo)

A mother published a video of children vowing to “Get Greta Thunberg,” who is sailing to Gaza with food and aid.

A Pew poll found 21 percent of Israelis believe peaceful coexistence with a Palestinian state is possible. (J Post)

Zvika Klein, the Chicago-born editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, said that “Relocating Gazans is and should be an option.” When pressed on where they’d go, he replied, “I don’t know, wherever.”

“Broader Israel”

Israeli airstrikes targeted southern Syria on Wednesday morning, hours after two missiles were launched towards the occupied Golan Heights. (ME Eye)

Overnight on Thursday, Israeli jets pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs with at least 10 airstrikes, violating the November ceasefire. (ME Eye)

US

On Integrity

Matthew Miller, Biden’s former State Department spokesperson, admitted that Israeli forces have committed undeniable war crimes in Gaza, but said, “When you’re at the podium, you’re not expressing your personal opinion. You’re expressing the conclusions of the United States government.” (Sky News)

Higher Education

Despite capitulating to the Trump Administration’s demands to crack down on Palestine solidarity, Columbia University is still facing a possible loss of accreditation after the Education Department accused it of violating civil rights law by not protecting Jewish students. (TNR)

The University of Michigan paid undercover security contractors at least $800K to surveil, intimidate, and provoke pro-Palestinian students, trailing them around campus and reportedly using footage to justify criminal charges and disciplinary action. (Guardian)

One of the private investigators pretended to be disabled when approached by a student:

A tenured Jewish anthropology professor, Maura Finkelstein, was fired from Muhlenberg College after reposting a Palestinian poet’s call to “shame” Zionists. (NYT)

In a new court filing, Mahmoud Khalil wrote, “Instead of holding my wife’s hand in the delivery room, I was crouched on a detention center floor, whispering through a crackling phone line as she labored alone. I listened to her pain, trying to comfort her while 70 other men slept around me. When I heard my son’s first cries, I buried my face in my arms so no one would see me weep.” (Guardian)

Washington Report

House Republicans introduced a resolution praising ICE and labeling “Free Palestine” an antisemitic slur. (Axios)

Senator Lindsey Graham joked about drowning Greta Thunberg and other activists aboard the aid flotilla, less than a month after a drone strike nearly sank the last one. (X)

Ha ha ha.

The U.S. vetoed a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza, despite backing from all 14 other members. (Axios)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions on four ICC judges in retaliation for charges filed against Netanyahu and Gallant. (ME Eye)

More than 20 House progressives introduced a bill that would require Congressional approval for every weapons transfer to Israel. (New Arab)

A leaked U.S. proposal would allow Iran to enrich uranium at low levels. Chuck Schumer, apparently preferring hostilities with Iran, called Trump a chicken and accused him of folding. (Axios, Reason)

Homeland Security

The man responsible for the flamethrower attack in Boulder was identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman, an Egyptian national on an expired tourist visa. After his arrest, he reportedly told agents that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead.” (NYT)

ICE detained his wife and five children and announced they could be deported within days. On Wednesday, a judge temporarily blocked the deportation. (Al Jazeera)

A leaked DHS intelligence report attributes the DC embassy shooting not to antisemitism, but to anger over the Gaza war, warning of enduring public outrage and noting the suspect cited Israel, the U.S., and the futility of protest as his motives. (Ken Klippenstein)

“When the blowback comes, it won’t distinguish the finer points of your identity.” -Yasha Levine, A Letter to My Fellow Jewish Americans

Europe

Courage and Cowardice

Under U.S. and Israeli pressure, the UK and France have dropped plans to recognize a Palestinian state at this month’s UN conference. (ME Eye)

Federal police in Canada launched a war crimes probe into Israel’s Gaza assault, gathering evidence under a program designed to deny safe haven to perpetrators of crimes against humanity. (Haaretz)

French and Italian dockworkers refused to load weapons onto Israel-linked ships, and Italian unions called a June 20 general strike under the slogan Disarmiamoli (“Disarm them”). (New Arab)

The French grandmother of two children killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza has filed a genocide and murder complaint in Paris against the Israeli government and military. (New Arab)

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The team behind Infinite Jaz is proud to endorse Zohran Mamdani for mayor of New York.

Welcome your thoughts in the comments.