At present, New York state’s policy for dealing with the coronavirus involves identifying specific areas as “red zones,” where particularly strict lockdown regulations must be applied. While there might be good reason that a number of these red zones overlap with Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish enclaves, the actions and public statements of the municipal and state authorities have given Jewish inhabitants there reason to think that they have been singled out, and the zealous enforcement of social-distancing measures has caused resentment. It has also led to a lawsuit. Michael A. Helfand explains the underlying problem:

[I]mposing restrictions on those communities based upon scientific metrics is certainly not anti-Semitic. Indeed, the state has clearly communicated its commitment that decisions must employ a “science-based approach . . . to stop any further spread of the virus.” But while the principle is sound, criticism—and legal challenge—has almost exclusively been based on the manner in which Governor Andrew Cuomo identified the hot spots.

Parsing out Cuomo’s intent may be an impossible task, although his continuing call-outs of religious Jews specifically certainly provides fodder for trying. One can certainly imagine, given the public-health stakes, granting him the benefit of the doubt. But maybe more curious than his word choice is the relative opacity of the actual new restrictions—an opacity that runs counter to the state’s [supposed] commitment to making decisions based upon public-health metrics.

Cuomo’s executive order is quite clear that “red zones,” “orange zones,” and “yellow zones” will be subject to heightened restrictions, including significant limitations on houses of worship. But the executive order is silent on how the state identifies which neighborhoods fall into these color-coded categories.

This failure [to make clear the criteria] certainly makes it hard to determine whether the state is applying the same restrictions to other neighborhoods that it is applying to predominantly ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. Failure to apply these same restrictions to all neighborhoods with comparable positivity rates—to engage in something akin to religious gerrymandering—would raise serious concerns as to whether the state is singling out particular Jewish communities for discriminatory treatment.

As this newsletter noted last week, Gaza is not suffering from famine, and the efforts to suggest that it is—which have been going on since at least the beginning of last year—are based on deliberate manipulation of the data. Nor, as Shany Mor explains, does international law require Israel to feed its enemies:

Article 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention does oblige High Contracting Parties to allow for the free passage of medical and religious supplies along with “essential foodstuff, clothing, and tonics intended for children under fifteen” for the civilians of another High Contracting Party, as long as there is no serious reason for fearing that “the consignments may be diverted from their destination,” or “that a definite advantage may accrue to the military efforts or economy of the enemy” by the provision.

The Hamas regime in Gaza is, of course, not a High Contracting Party, and, more importantly, Israel has reason to fear both that aid provisions are diverted by Hamas and that a direct advantage is accrued to it by such diversions. Not only does Hamas take provisions for its own forces, but its authorities sell provisions donated by foreign bodies and use the money to finance its war. It’s notable that the first reports of Hamas’s financial difficulties emerged only in the past few weeks, once provisions were blocked.

Yet, since the war began, even European states considered friendly to Israel have repeatedly demanded that Israel “allow unhindered passage of humanitarian aid” and refrain from seizing territory or imposing “demographic change”—which means, in practice, that Gazan civilians can’t seek refuge abroad. These principles don’t merely constitute a separate system of international law that applies only to Israel, but prolong the suffering of the people they are ostensibly meant to protect:

By insisting that Hamas can’t lose any territory in the war it launched, the international community has invented a norm that never before existed and removed one of the few levers Israel has to pressure it to end the war and release the hostages.

These commitments have . . . made the plight of the hostages much worse and much longer. They made the war much longer than necessary and much deadlier for both sides. And they locked a large civilian population in a war zone where the de-facto governing authority was not only indifferent to civilian losses on its own side, but actually had much to gain by it.