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Fighting an Empire Isn’t Terrorism — But Intentionally Targeting and Murdering Civilians Is
The aftermath of the suicide bombing at the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem on Aug. 9, 2001, that killed 15 people, including two Americans, and wounded around 130 others. Photo: Flash90.
A few days ago, I watched Haviv Rettig Gur respond on Instagram to a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count: “Didn’t the Jews use terrorism to drive out the British?”
Every pro-Israel advocate — and likely every proud Jew — has faced this question, usually delivered with a smirk. That little “gotcha” glint that implies moral equivalence: Your state was born out of terror, how dare you complain about buses being blown up and babies being murdered.
But the moral chasm between the Jewish fight against the British and Palestinian terrorism is not a matter of opinion or spin. It is moral and historical fact. The refusal to recognize that difference says far more about the questioner’s bias or ignorance than about Israel and how it gained independence.
Imperial Subjects and Stateless Refugees
When the British Empire seized control of the region called Palestine from the Ottomans in 1917, Jewish leaders saw them not as occupiers but as potential partners in restoring Jewish sovereignty. The Balfour Declaration had promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in part of what was then called Palestine — the historical Land of Israel — and the San Remo Conference of 1920 enshrined that promise in binding international law.
But within a few short years, Britain retreated from its commitments. London carved away three-quarters of the land that was meant for the Mandate to create a new Arab-only country called Transjordan, appointed the radical Haj Amin al-Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem — a man who would later collaborate with the Nazis — and, in 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, issued its infamous White Paper, sealing the gates of the remaining quarter of Mandatory Palestine to Jewish immigration.
At the very moment Jews in Europe were facing extermination, Britain blocked their only escape route. The United States had already closed its doors; Canada, Argentina, Australia, and nearly every other nation followed suit. As Hitler’s armies advanced, Jews had nowhere to go.
Fighting an Empire With Nowhere to Go
By 1945, roughly 250,000 Jewish survivors remained trapped on German soil, living in displaced-person camps — many in former concentration camps. The world by then largely knew about the horror of the Holocaust and still left them stateless. Only in May 1948, when Israel declared independence, did those camps finally begin to empty.
People often say the Jews “kicked the British out.” The truth is more complex. Britain’s empire was already collapsing; the loss of India made Palestine an even more expensive burden. But the Jewish undergrounds — particularly the Irgun and Lehi — hastened Britain’s withdrawal.
Their campaign was fierce but targeted. They targeted railways, communications, and military installations — not civilians. Their message was simple: Go home.
The King David Hotel bombing in 1946 — endlessly cited by Israel’s detractors — was aimed at the British military and intelligence headquarters for all of Palestine and Transjordan. Civilians tragically died, including Jews and Arabs, but the target was military. Crucially, the Irgun phoned in a warning to evacuate. The British ignored it.
Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun, was devastated by the civilian deaths. That reaction matters. It shows the moral line the Jewish fighters recognized — a line no Palestinian faction, from the PLO to Hamas, has ever cared to draw.
The Lesson the Palestinians Haven’t Learned
Imagine if Palestinians had followed that same model — if their fight had been confined to soldiers and military targets. Instead, since the 1950s, Palestinian terrorism has centered on murdering civilians as a deliberate strategy: to terrorize, to try and make Jewish life unbearable, and to drive Jews from their homeland.
From the Ma’ale Akrabim massacre in 1954 to the airline hijackings of the 1970s, from suicide bombings in the 1990s to the atrocities of October 7, the goal has remained constant — not self-determination but the mass murder of civilians to break a people’s will.
During the Second Intifada, 140+ suicide bombings ripped through Israeli buses, cafés, and markets. These attacks weren’t meant to change borders; they were meant to destroy coexistence itself.
The Moral Core — and the Fatal Misreading
As Haviv Rettig Gur observed, the Jews who fought the British never sought Britain’s destruction; they sought Israel’s rebirth. That distinction — between fighting for freedom and fighting for annihilation — is the essential moral divide.
It’s why Israel built a democracy while Gaza’s rulers built a cult of death. It’s why Jewish leaders accepted the 1937 and 1947 partition plans, choosing half a loaf over endless war, while the Mandate’s Arab leaders — led by the Mufti who sided with Hitler — rejected both.
When the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas gained control of territory, they didn’t try to build a state; they built repression, corruption, and terror infrastructure. Jewish leaders, by contrast, used the small strip of land they held after the War of Independence in 1948 to build a thriving democracy.
The Zionist militias before 1948 understood something Palestinian leaders never have: the British were foreign rulers who could leave. The Jews are indigenous and will not. Israelis are not “colonizers” in any part of the historic Land of Israel. They are a people who reclaimed sovereignty and self-determination in their ancestral home.
Any Palestinian leadership that continues to see Jews as the British in 1939 — as temporary outsiders to be expelled — guarantees only endless conflict. Israel’s founders fought not merely for survival, but to restore moral agency and national self-respect after 2,000 years of exile and persecution – in both Arab and European controlled lands. That is the revolution Palestinians have never attempted — the decision to undertake nation-building instead of defining it by someone else’s destruction.
The Moral Ledger of History
Today, when many Western academics and activists equate Jewish efforts to end British imperial rule with Hamas’ slaughter of civilians, they expose their own moral illiteracy. They flatten history until those who targeted soldiers are equated with those who butcher children in pizza parlors and buses.
But history keeps receipts.
One side sought life. The other glorified destruction.
That is the difference between a revolt and terrorism — and it’s a difference the world ignores at its peril.
For peace ever to be possible, Israelis must have real reasons to believe Palestinians no longer see them as the British of 1939 — but as a permanent, indigenous people who are not going anywhere.
Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.
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Left-wing Argentine lawmakers pledge allegiance to ‘free Palestine’ in their oaths of office
(JTA) — BUENOS AIRES — As 127 newly elected Argentine lawmakers took the oath of office in Buenos Aires last week, several departed from the standard formula to pledge allegiance to a “free Palestine.”
The demonstration by the left-wing elected officials transformed what is typically a boilerplate ceremony into a political showdown over Israel, with shouting on the floor of the legislature as well as a wave of criticism from both pro-government and opposition voices.
Argentina’s main Jewish umbrella organization filed a formal complaint over the incident, which took place on Wednesday.
At least four lawmakers participated. When left-wing deputy Nicolás del Caño was called to the podium, he used his brief time to swear on behalf of “the boys and girls massacred in Gaza.”
Another leftist lawmaker, Nestor Pitrola, took the oath wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh draped like a scarf and swore “for an end to the Zionist genocide and a free Palestine.”
Wearing a T-shirt with a large watermelon print — now used as a Palestinian symbol — Romina Del Plá took the oath declaring that she did so “for Palestine’s right to exist from the river to the sea.”
And Myriam Bregman, a Jewish socialist, swore “against the genocide in Palestine.” She also protested the U.S. threat to Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, saying, “Yankees out of Venezuela.”
All of them replaced the formula for the oath of office — “Sí, juro” (I swear) — with political statements, triggering an immediate backlash in the chamber.
Lawmakers from President Javier Milei’s right-wing and libertarian coalition interrupted with boos and shouted insults, arguing that the oath should not be used for foreign-policy slogans. Lila Lemoine, a member of Milei’s party, rebuked Bregman, to whom she was formerly close, saying, “You must swear for your country.”
While largely left-wing lawmakers in countries around the world have sought to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians or advanced legislation on their behalf, the show in Argentina represented an unusual level of intrusion for the cause into a government’s regular operations.
After these oath-taking ceremonies — broadcast nationwide by major media outlets — political analysts and journalists strongly criticized the lawmakers who departed from the established protocol. Later in the week, a legislator introduced a bill that would prevent those who do not take the oath in accordance with the chamber’s regulations from assuming their seats.
“Let’s put an end to this circus,” said the lawmaker, Sabrina Ajmechet, who is Jewish and from a right-wing political party. She added, “That there are members of parliament who have taken office swearing allegiance to another territory … it’s more than just ugly, it’s problematic.”
Whether the lawmakers who made the unusual oaths will face consequences is not clear. The Argentine government adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which defines some forms of Israel criticism as antisemitic, in 2020, adding to an anti-discrimination law that has been on the books since 1988. There is already one lawmaker facing prosecution over antisemitic posts.
Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella, DAIA, said in a statement that the oaths, particularly those using the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which many Jews interpret as a call for Israel’s destruction, were inappropriate for the occasion and amounted to discrimination.
“This expression is neither a neutral slogan nor a simple protest chant. It is a phrase of hate, used to call for the destruction of a sovereign state and the elimination of its Jewish population. It promotes violence, legitimizes terrorism, and fuels an atmosphere of hostility toward Jews everywhere,” the statement said. “By using it, one makes an openly anti-Jewish declaration, incompatible with democratic values and with respect for pluralistic coexistence.”
The pro-Palestinian lawmakers were not the only ones to depart from the standard oath, which is taken over the text of the Bible. Patricia Holzman, a newly elected Jewish deputy who has been the executive director of a Jewish community organization founded in the wake of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, adjusted her wording to say “Sí, prometo” (I promise) instead of “Sí, juro,” and she pledged her oath on a Tanakh.
The swearing-in ceremony was also derailed when a left-wing lawmaker, Juan Grabois, made what resembled a Nazi salute toward Milei, who was present. People close to Grabois said the gesture was meant to evoke the salute in “The Hunger Games,” the young-adult series about protagonists defying an oppressive regime.
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In defense of the Sarah Hurwitz we know — and the nuance we all need in this moment
(JTA) — Over the course of the Obama and Biden administrations, each of us served as the White House liaison to the American Jewish community. In that role, we were responsible for reaching out to Jewish Americans from across the political and denominational spectrum, listening to their concerns, understanding their needs, and representing their voices in the White House.
Over the past couple of weeks, we were stunned to watch as our friend and former colleague, Sarah Hurwitz, became the subject of a mob attack on social media.
It is hard to watch anyone you care about be savaged online, but it was particularly painful to see this happen to Sarah. In the White House, where she served as a speechwriter first for President Barack Obama and then for First Lady Michelle Obama, Sarah was known for her kind heart, integrity and fierce loyalty to her colleagues and the leaders she served. We often marveled at the compassion she wove into the speeches she wrote for our bosses. Her empathy for the plight of Americans of every background and her commitment to social justice and equality were evident in her devotion to serving our country.
We watched with pride as she went on to write widely acclaimed books about Jewish ritual, tradition, and spirituality and about the effects of antisemitism on Jewish identity. Meticulously researched, her books are an exercise in nuance, empathy, and complexity as she articulates and wrestles with competing viewpoints. In her most recent book, for example, she both passionately defends Zionism, the national independence movement of the Jewish people, and also fiercely criticizes the current Israeli government.
So you can imagine our dismay when several far left and far right X accounts posted and retweeted a video clip of remarks she made at a recent Jewish conference that was selectively edited to cut off the actual point she was making. What followed was a torrent of outrage from people who claimed Sarah was arguing that we shouldn’t teach Holocaust education because doing so makes young people think the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is a genocide. Others claimed she was saying that genocide only matters when it’s perpetrated against Jews.
Such sentiments would obviously be obscene, and we were shocked that people would attribute them to Sarah, someone who just published a book in which she expressed profound anguish about the unbearable deaths of civilians in Gaza. And we were appalled when people began circulating more out of context videos of Sarah with the intent of portraying her as callous and cruel.
Those who took the time to track down and watch the entire original video, including the part that was cut off, would have seen the actual points Sarah was making about antisemitism education, which were as follows: Some forms of prejudice are about a majority dominating a minority whom they see as inferior — a kind of “punching down.” But as many scholars have noted, antisemitism is about “punching up.” The Holocaust happened in part because the Nazis insisted that the Jews, who were 1% of the German population, were actually the powerful ones and were using their power to harm ordinary Germans. They accused Jews of undermining Germany’s World War I efforts and destroying the German economy. The Nazis claimed that killing Jews was therefore a form of self-defense, that they were protecting themselves against a powerful, depraved enemy.
Sarah was also conveying that, contrary to the impression young people get on social media, what happened in Gaza is not analogous to the Holocaust. It was a devastating war that does not fit neatly into a simplistic frame of oppressor versus oppressed. That black and white paradigm disregards the complex challenges that continue to stymie a resolution to this heartbreaking conflict.
But just try having this kind of complex discussion on social media where algorithms are designed to prize outrage and gin up hatred and too often amplify dissension sown by foreign actors.
Sarah certainly could have been more sensitive in the language she used, but the points she was actually making are worth considering.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post In defense of the Sarah Hurwitz we know — and the nuance we all need in this moment appeared first on The Forward.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar says Stephen Miller’s comments on immigrants sound like how ‘Nazis described Jewish people’
Rep Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, on Sunday likened the Trump administration’s immigration rhetoric to Nazi depictions of Jews.
“It reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany,” Omar said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, commenting on a social media post by Stephen Miller, President Donald Trump’s senior adviser, in which he suggested that “migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” Miller, who is Jewish, is the architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policy.
Omar called Miller’s comments “white supremist rhetoric” and also drew parallels between his characterization of migrants seeking refuge in the U.S. to how Jews were demonized and treated when they fled Nazi-era Germany. “As we know, there have been many immigrants who have tried to come to the United States who have turned back, you know, one of them being Jewish immigrants,” she said.
Now serving as Trump’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Miller is central to the White House’s plans for mass deportations and expanded barriers to asylum. During Trump’s first term, Miller led the implementation of the so-called Muslim travel ban in 2017, which barred entry to the U.S. for individuals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and pushed to further reduce a longtime refugee program.
Rep. Ilhan Omar: “When I think about Stephen Miller and his white supremacist rhetoric, it reminds me of the way the Nazis described Jewish people in Germany.” pic.twitter.com/GAjIMqFq26
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 7, 2025
Miller’s comments echoed similar rhetoric by Trump after an Afghan refugee was accused of shooting two National Guard members near the White House last month, killing one.
Trump told reporters at a cabinet meeting last week that Somali immigrants are “garbage” and that he wanted them to be sent “back to where they came from.” The president also singled out Omar, a Somali native who represents Minnesota’s large Somali-American community. “She should be thrown the hell out of our country,” Trump said.
In the Sunday interview, Omar called Trump’s remarks “completely disgusting” and accused him of having “an unhealthy obsession” with her and the Somali community. “This kind of hateful rhetoric and this level of dehumanizing can lead to dangerous actions by people who listen to the president,” she said.
The post Rep. Ilhan Omar says Stephen Miller’s comments on immigrants sound like how ‘Nazis described Jewish people’ appeared first on The Forward.