Questions, Only Questions

By Phyllis Chesler

Question #1: Have my hopes for Israel to be able to live in relative peace been utterly naive? If the surrounding countries have all been bred to hate, fight, kill, and die—how could one, small, light-bearing country hope to avoid the fate of both hundreds of millions and the weight of history? Well, the Jews never had an IDF in Europe or in all the countries of Islam and we were therefore exiled, massacred, and exterminated. Israel has a fine fighting force. I just did not expect us to be reduced to a life of permanent self-defense, endless warfare. Silly me.

Question #2: Talking about self-defense. What exactly are New York Jews ready to do in terms of defending themselves/ourselves from angry and aggressive mobs of pro-Palestine Jew haters from besieging us on the streets, outside our synagogues, Jewish schools, Jewish centers, and at all our universities? The tsunami of Jew hatred is almost fully upon us. So many valiant and courageous souls kept predicting, warning about this and for so long; our voices were carried away on the wind and are no longer even remembered. The important and welcome blizzard of books and articles by newcomers, and by those born fifty years after many of us first arrived here on earth, rarely cite our work. But really, what difference does that make? Our work did not lead to an Iron Dome against the propaganda, something that I called for about eighteen years ago. And now, it is far too late for the large Jewish organizations to make up for their past failures (their refusal as well) to see what was coming, not only in Europe but also in the United States, and in my own “once fair” city and to plan accordingly. What will they do now?

Question #3: The Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the West from top to bottom. This includes the United States. Thank you Steve Emerson and Daniel Pipes for your pioneering work about this. As I wrote: Top to bottom. Just the other day, the National Book Award was given to Omar El Akkad for his book “One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This,” a critique of the West’s involvement in the war in Gaza. El Akkad was quoted as saying “It’s very difficult to think in celebratory terms about a book that was written in response to a genocide.” And, while I am no fan of female-only beauty contests (I am actually a fan of male beauty), there’s now a “Miss Palestine,” Nadeen Ayoub, competing in the 2025 contest. She is both a U.S. and a Canadian citizen and lives in Dubai (where IS Palestine anyway? Is it merely an idea that is everywhere?). According to the NY Post, she was also married to Marwan Barghouti’s son—Barghouti is Hamas’s most wanted terrorist prisoner—and Nadeen has been quoted as saying that the issue of Gaza needs to appear on every possible platform. Is the fix in? Will she actually win?

As to beauty contests: Why don’t transwomen as well as heterosexual men sue to be included? Alas, it has been done. More’s the pity.

Question #4: How long, how long my God, will America continue to fund the United Nations? They have never stopped a single genocide, helped womankind (or anyone else other than themselves), nor have they accomplished anything other than the demonization of Israel. And why is Reem Alsalem still employed there? As the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, she has been quoted as saying: “No independent investigation found that rape took place on the 7th of October.” Has she not seen Hamas’s own videoed record? Has she refused to listen to the testionies of Israeli hostages who’ve been returned from Hell?

Question #5: The great Douglas Murray has, in today’s pages of the New York Post, just discussed the Trump administration’s “peace” plan for Ukraine and Russia. In his view, and correctly so, the deal essentially rewards Russia for its aggression and further punishes Ukraine for having been attacked. It in no way guarantees a permanent peace. Oh, does this sounds familiar! It reminds me of the various deals that the Obama, Biden, and now the Trump administrations have been offering to Israel. (Is Russia a branch of Hamas?)

Question #6: When will the IDF be allowed to destroy the remaining 60% of Hamas’s terror tunnels? When will other Arab countries begin to accept Hamas and their both brainwashed and oppressed (by them and them alone) inhabitants? When will the world understand that the reason other Arab countries refuse them entry has to do with how odious and dangerous Hamas and their Palestinian inhabitants truly are? Interestingly enough, when I looked at Parashat Toldot, this weeks’ Sabbath’s reading, I was amazed to see that Abimelech, the King of Gerar, which is now where Gaza exists (no he was not a “Palestinian”), actually destroyed all the wells that Yitzhak had dug and, instead of using them as a common source of water, filled them with earth time after time. (Anyone remember what the Gazans did to the greenhouses Israel built there?) Abimelech finally feared Yitzhak’s success and wanted to exile him. Finally, finally, Abimelech saw that God was with Yitzhak and made a covenant with him. What a reminder of the future!

Question #7: A minor quibble with the powerful and informative documentary about the American Revolution. As I have written before, the film exposes and condemns the horrors of both African slavery and the genocidal extermination of native American Indians. The betrayals of both groups will now live in my memory forever. The time is long overdue to acknowlege this plus much else, for example, how long and how hard the Americans had to fight to be free of Britain’s yoke. While I believe that understanding historical evil is important, I also fear that it will be used to condemn and punish white folk, who were not alive and not in America in the 18th and 19th centuries. I hope we may someday achieve a better balance. Yes, many of our founding fathers owned and used slaves in the war against Britain—and yet, like so many others, they also committed both noble and heroic deeds. How do we justly measure their worth? And as to women—we were not and are still not really included in the Constitution. Don’t even get me started on this. As Abigail Adams famously wrote in a March 31, 1776 letter to her husband John, “Remember the ladies… (protect them from) the unlimited power of husbands.”

Alas, the film does not dwell overly much on the history of women during America’s fight for liberty. Yes, we are told that some women followed the male armies in order to feed, nurse, comfort, and prepare the dead for burial. The documentary mentions that women were raped only in passing. Unlike all the past atrocities, this particular war crime continues everywhere today, even in America. Further, it allows one of the wondrously excellent actors to speak the lines of a Native woman about the white male rapes on Native women. As if white male rape on white women is only to be expected, nothing much to see here, but white male rape on women of color—women “belong” to their men, is that it?—leaves much to be desired. Will these superb filmmakers consider making another kind of film about the revolutionary era, one that focuses on women—all women—as much as they have focused here on African slaves, free Africans, and Native Indian folk? I truly hope so.

This is the best I could do given that I’m still ill, only somewhat better but also exhausted by the miraculous azithromycin and by many other drugs. Lucky me. Revolutionary-era combatants died like flies of smallpox, typhoid, typhus, dysentery, malaria, starvation, the cold, the heat, contaminated food and water, and from terrifying wounds for which there was no or little treatment.

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter

Illustration, Portrait of Miss Sinclair by William Orpen