Questions and Answers
Questions and AnswersiStock

On their own initiative, two internationally well-known authors and publicists, veteran op-ed writers for Arutz Sheva, decided to get to know one another's thoughts on crucial current issues from across the ocean. Here is the result.

Meotti: Question 1) Taliban is said to have just beheaded a volleyball player. Two months after its defeat, is the West already accommodating this horror?

Chesler Response:: Some of us, myself included, will never accept or remain indifferent to the Taliban’s sadistic barbarism. This particular innocent victim was both a girl, an athlete, and a Hazara, a Shii’a Muslim, whom the Sunni Muslim Afghans have persecuted for a long time. Even now, they are hunting for such girls and women, going house to house. We will soon be hearing about the be-heading, stoning, amputations, burqas, child marriages.

The individual Westerners who are involved in the digital Dunkirk are working to evacuate the innocent—anyone who is too “western,” gay, Christian, Sikh, etc. Doing so is an uphill battle. European countries have taken many Afghans but may not be able to absorb many more. America and Canada have also sponsored endangered Afghans for humanitarian asylum or as students. There is a limit. And when that limit is reached—all those who remain trapped will suffer a terrible, ongoing fate.

But it is not only Western leaders who are apparently quite indifferent to the plight of Afghans. Iran is a Shii’a Muslim country but does not come to the aid of Afghan Hazaras. Sunni Arabs do not come to the aid of Sunni Afghans. Indians do not feel they can risk more Muslims within their borders.

The United Nations has done nothing substantive. They never have stopped a genocide in progress. All they do is legalize Jew hatred. As we know, evil triumphs as long as good people Do Nothing. But today I have been told that Pakistan may just have opened its doors to Afghans.

Meotti: Question 2) In the UK, a Tory MP was just murdered. A year ago, a French teacher…and the llist goes on. Will the West pay dearly for its appeasement?

Chesler Response: Absolutely. The West has a choice. Build walls up to the very skies and guard them well —or monitor and root out radical Islamic terrorists from afar. Both propositions are hugely expensive. Europe genocidally exterminated their peaceful “Semites,” the Jews, and has reaped a terrible karmic destiny.

They subsequently welcomed millions of non-peaceful other “Semites,” the Muslims, within their borders, without demanding proof that they will become Europeans, without subjecting them to a rigorous Western education and linking all benefits to that program, and without deporting them when they fail to Westernize.

Meotti: Question 3) Joe Biden, Kamala and the others don’t seem much impressed by the news coming from Afghanistan. Is their woke gender women's agenda just a dog whistle?

Chesler Response: President Biden seems to be half-comatose or at least cognitively impaired. The Anyone But Trump crowd found the least qualified candidate, one who could be controlled by the increasingly “left” Democratic Party. Biden and Harris are not paying attention to the consequences of America’s shameful retreat from Afghanistan.

Or to the immigrants entering the United States through our southern border. No one is checking to see if they have COVID or any other communicable disease. No one is checking to see whether they are Jihadists or criminal cartel members.

God help us all.

Meotti Quesiton 4) .Is wokeism a sign of moral decline? Isn’t it strange that America was humiliated in Kabul in the woke years?

Chesler Response: Those who play the part of an aggrieved victim are quite aggressive and persecutory. In the name of “progress,” they behave like fascists, totalitarians. They enforce conformity and self-censoring via mob bullying, shaming, and punishing. The media and the academy have been destroyed by their intolerance and illiberalism. One dare not say the truth, or venture one’s own opinion, in such times.

Are you asking me whether “wokeness” is a sign of disintegration?

Wokeism demands that we stand with the endangered—yes? But in this case, the Biden administration did not do that. And his women of color squad, which includes two Muslims, did not hold his feet to the fire. Yes, we live in very strange times.

But Biden humiliated America, his own generals, and we, the People.

Giulio Meotti
Giulio Meottiצילום: עצמי

Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler is a Senior Fellow at the Investigative Project on Terrorism, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award, authored 20 books, including “Women and Madness” (1972) and “The New Anti-Semitism” (2003, 2014) and four studies about honor killing. Her latest books are “An American Bride in Kabul,” “A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing,” “A Politically Incorrect Feminist,” and “Requiem for a Female Serial Killer.” She is also a Fellow at the Middle East Forum (MEF) and at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), and a founding member of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME).