United Gives Palestinian Passenger A Choice: Change His ‘Bombing Kids Is Not Self Defense’ Shirt Or Don’t Fly

A United Airlines passenger was forced to remove his shirt on an Atlanta – Newark flight because it read “Bombing kids is not self defense.” The man is Palestinian American.

He arrived at Atlanta airport around 4:45 p.m. wearing the shirt and passed through TSA. He contends a shirt that says bomb is surely fine if it gets through TSA, though employees working United 1152 begged to differ.

The man boarded the Airbus A319 and a flight attendant asked what his shirt said. He let her read it. About five minutes before doors close, a supervisor asked him to step off the aircraft. He says the supervisor told him that the flight attendant was offended and specifically objected to the word “bomb.” He was allegedly offered two choices:

1. change the shirt
   
2. not fly that day.

He changed and traveled as scheduled, departing at approximately 7:30 p.m. and arriving at 9:46 p.m. After landing in Newark, he pressed the case. He says another United representative told him that people had complained, considered it offensive and felt unsafe. He reports filing a Department of Transportation complaint says he’s consulting lawyers. Neither avenue is likely to bear fruit.

The incident was not publicized immediately. The passenger emailed the source of the shirt – Wear The Peace – on July 9. They went online with it July 10 and it’s been picked up in the media this week.

According to United,

“This customer flew as scheduled after changing his shirt. That’s all we’ll have to share.”

Airline Dress Codes Are Ambiguous At Best

It’s not so much controversial shirts that seem to be a trigger. Vulgar language often is. Revealing clothing often is. And the word ‘bomb’ in any context at an airport.

Dear United Airlines, there is context behind the word “bombing.” The shirt did not say, “I have a bomb.” It said, “Bombing kids is not self defense.” By that logic, someone couldn’t wear a TNT Wrestling shirt because it contains the word “TNT,” or a shirt from the brand Killer…

— WearThePeace (@WearThePeaceCo) July 13, 2026

But the truth is it’s not clear, and difficult to know ex ante what clothing is going to get you kicked off a plane! You can be pretty sure jeans and a basic button down are fine! But if you want to wear a political message of any kind, you’re in somewhat uncertain territory and subject to the interpretations of other passengers who might complain and to airline employees who are interpreting their airline’s rules on the spot.

United’s Contract of Carriage permits refusal or removal of:

“Passengers who are barefoot, not properly clothed, or whose clothing is lewd, obscene or offensive;”

The shirt wasn’t barefootness, insufficient clothing, lewdness or obscenity. It comes down to whether or not it was “offensive.” And that leads to vague and uncertain interpretations.

• It’s administered across the airline’s roughly 100,000 employees (and sometimes contractors) with different political views, cultural assumptions, tolerances and levels of training.

• Employees have minutes to decide. If they allow a passenger to fly there can be complaints, confrontations, and even diversions. Making someone change usually imposes the immediate and much lower potential cost on the passenger.

• If a single passenger objects it’s not just expression it’s possible disruption. And once the word safety is invoked that’s usually the ball game. If a passenger argues, that can become “failure to comply” which becomes a reason on its own for removal.

Sure, the shirt was fine on a different day, flight and with a different crew but that doesn’t mean it’ll be fine in the future. And there’s really very little recourse against the airline except in very narrow circumstances (generally related to discrimination on the basis of a protected class, but even there there’s tremendous deference to a captain’s determination regarding potential safety issues).

People Are Split Over This Shirt

I’m 100% unbothered by the shirt.

It’s expressing a view, in a fairly reductionist way, and taking sides in any issue that invokes passion while boarding a metal tube that is going to trap everyone inside while hurtling at over 500 miles per hour 30,000 feet above the earth may be inadvisable but flying has become a very small-d democratic activity bringing together people of all different backgrounds and experiences and we just need to learn to live with each other.

Generally people seem to think:

• The shirt is expressly anti-violence and shouldn’t be viewed as a threat. Taken literally it’s the opposite of violent threats. However, to the extent it’s seen as taking sides against Israel in their war on Hamas, context matters that Hamas has killed Americans in suicide bombings and shootings (including 40 Americans in the October 7 attack and taking and even murdering American hostages).

  The Palestine Liberation Organization and its factions (including the Fatah party, which controls the West Bank) have hijacked El Al; TWA: Swiss; Sabena; Pan Am and Air France flights and Abu Nidal was responsible for Gulf Air 771, EgyptAir 648, Pan Am 73 and the 1986 bombing of TWA 840.

• Wearing anything containing “bomb” in an airport is needlessly provocative.

• The real objection was the shirt’s implied condemnation of Israel, rather than aviation safety.

• Speech can be curtailed aboard an aircraft if employees reasonably expect a confrontation.

War Is Horrible

I don’t know how anyone can look at war and the collateral damage against non-combatants, especially children, and not be affected by it. That’s true for all wars, and it’s especially difficult to root out an enemy like Hamas who uses its own people as human shields and operates out of schools and hospitals.

The response to October 7th has been highly destructive. Israel has generally notified civilians where it will be attacking, which makes rooting out combatants harder. Targets are reviewed by a legal team that cannot itself be overruled by top officers. And yet approximately 20,000 children have likely died in the war. That’s crushing.

There have been perhaps twice as many civilians killed in Gaza as combatants. That takes Hamas’s own number of 73,000 Palestinian deaths, and backs out about 23,000 combatants killed. The ratio is closer to 1:1 if you treat their reported number of adult male deaths as representing combatants. Women and children are a minority of deaths reported now by Hamas itself.

The Iraq war produced 2:1 civilian deaths. The Korean war was closer to 3:1. Gaza is comparable to World War II though far less than the Normandy campaign where allies bombed French civilians. More than two million civilians were killed in the Vietnam war (on both sides). War is hell.

There’s No Clear Way Forward

I think a lot about this and have no good answers. My starting point is that both Israelis and Palestinians have a right to coexist, and that there should be a Jewish state in Israel and there should be a Palestinian one in the West Bank and Gaza. And each side needs to be safe. The problem is that without this safety, none of this can happen. And the Palestinians have been too committed to the destruction of Israel this to be tenable. And certainly Israel had legitimate security concerns after the Second Intifada, after October 7th, et al.

The Palestinian side has been too committed to a single nation that they control. They haven’t been able to cleanse the Jews from ‘the river to the sea’ but this remains the goal of enough of their leadership and street that they cannot make peace.

• In 1937, Zionist leaders accepted partition as a basis for negotiation while Palestinian Arab leaders rejected it. The Jewish Agency accepted the 1947 UN partition with two states, while Palestinian Arab leaders and neighboring Arab governments rejected it. In 1978 Menachem Begin accepted ‘full autonomy’ and self-government for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza at Camp David.

• The Oslo Accords recognized the PLO and transferred substantial government power to the new Palestinian Authority. Then at Camp David in 2000 the Israelis agreed to a Palestinian state in Gaza and most of the West Bank with Jerusalem divided. The ultimate deal that year was Gaza plus 94 – 96% of the West Bank and 1 – 3% land swaps from Israel. It included Palestinian sovereignty in Arab areas of Jerusalem and Israeli sovereignty in Jewish areas. Arafat refused, and responded by launching the Second Intifada’s campaign of violence and death.

  Arafat once told Bill Clinton “You are a great man” and Clinton replied, “I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you made me one.”

  MUST WATCH: Bill Clinton on Israel & Hamas

  "Hamas is really smart. When they decide to rocket Israel, they insinuate themselves in the hospitals, in the schools, in the highly populous areas."

  “I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state. I had a deal they turned down that… pic.twitter.com/jkaLuUnib6

  — Sia Kordestani (@SiaKordestani) November 13, 2023

• In 2005 Israel removed its Gaza settlements and ground forces. Hamas has ruled Gaza since then.

• In 2008, Israel proposed: Palestine in Gaza and approximately 93.7% of the West Bank with Israel annexing approximately 6.3% and transferring Israeli territory equal to about 5.8%, plus a Gaza – West Bank connection. Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would be Palestinian and Jewish neighborhoods Israeli. Abbas rejected this.

• Even Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed a Palestinian state the next year, provided Palestinians recognized Israel as the Jewish state. During the Obama administration, Netanyahu participated in Palestinian state negotiations and accepted the 2020 American framework for a Palestinian state in Gaza and roughly 70% of the West Bank. Palestinians rejected it without negotiating.

The question is, what would be good enough for peace? And who is even looking for peace? Remember that Hamas won the last Palestinian election. It was 20 years ago and Palestinian leadership hasn’t allowed one since.

After taking power, Hamas militants tunneled into Israel, killed soldiers and took a hostage. Israel re-entered portions of Gaza. Then Hamas violently expelled Palestinian Authority forces and took exclusive control of Gaza. Israel and Egypt tightened their borders.

It’s hard to know what ordinary Palestians think. They aren’t free to express themselves without reprisal, but there are surveys such as from the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research.

• Last year they found Hamas led Fatah but without a clear majority, though a majority supported the October 7 atrocities 69% opposed Hamas disarming and more Palestinians preferred armed struggle over negotiations.

• Two years ago they found that only 40% of Palestinians supported two states.

• Last year’s INSS West Bank survey found that a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank believe Israel has no right to exist.

Hamas has a committed base, but not majority party support. It attracts one-third to the mid-40s among likely voters, but leads a very weak Fatah. Support for keeping Hamas armed and saying October 7 was “correct” is broader than preference for Hamas as a governing party. In other words, a majority want to slaughter Jews, but don’t want the killers ruling them.

Palestinians generally want their own state but appear split over whether that’s without Israel at all or alongside it. Gazans actually appear more receptive than West Bank residents to negotiations.

I don’t know how to fix any of this. Golda Meir said “Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” Netanyahu has said “If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war” and “If Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel.” There’s some truth in this.

At the same time, Israel’s own politics make this difficult. Hamas in a sense succeed on October 7, making it impossible to have peace. The American populace wouldn’t have accepted a fast peace after 9/11. We invaded Afghanistan. And without peace with Palestinians, the Arab street makes it tough for neighboring governments to have peace with Israel.

A closely divided Israeli electorate pushed the Netanyahu government to make alliances with the extreme right to retain power, and tolerate settler expansion and violence in a way that I find totally unacceptable. It’s hard to imagine that playing out another way, but it needs to stop, though that won’t lead to peace either. Israel holds elections in three months.

While I think there are real strategic errors here, overall Israeli politics are far better than in most of the region! 21% of Israel’s citizens – with full rights – are Arabs. As cruise ships keep getting turned away from Arab states because their passengers are gay, Israel is a pluralistic democracy.

I heard the gay cruise full of Americans couldn’t dock in Egypt or Turkey, so here’s a quick guide to cruising the region:

🇹🇷 Pride marches outlawed since 2015
🇪🇬 Egypt: no law against being gay — they just jail you for “debauchery” instead
🇸🇾 Syria: up to 3 years in prison for…

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) July 11, 2026

Ultimately, none of this – the good or the bad -reduces to a t-shirt! But if you want to wear a slogan, I think you should go ahead, just recognize that the world is a lot more complicated than you believe it to be.