As part of a weekly radio broadcast - “Middle East Radio Forum” - which I host on alternate Sundays on Patriot Radio, available also as a podcast via the Internet, I asked a series of questions this past week, most of them not new, and many certainly heard elsewhere. And, because most remain unanswered, never mind that the rhetorical nature of many qualify as “asked, and answered”, it seemed an imperative that they be catalogued together, and asked again. Because inquiring minds want to know.
So, let’s ask a few fundamental questions. The unwillingness to be offered a clear or cogent response - by Israel’s foes, its detractors, or even those who simply pretend to be Israel’s friends - reinforces what we already know to be true: when it comes to the matter of Israel, the truth seems to be irrelevant.
Question:
The Palestinian Arabs were manufactured, quite fraudulently, as a people in 1964, separate and apart from the greater Arab world - the brainchild of Muslim strategists working collaboratively with Moscow. They established the PLO - the “Palestine Liberation Organization” - that same year. (This is documented, ed.)
What were they trying to “liberate” in 1964 - if the State of Israel did not “occupy” the "territories" - until 3 years later, in June 1967?
Question:
Just what lands is Israel expected to relinquish because they are seen as “occupied”? Is it the post-1967 territories, or, if one accepts the Arab narrative that is purposefully ignored by the West - is it all the land that Israel holds, post-May 14, 1948, when it was recognized as a state by the UN?
Question:
From 1948 until 1967, Gaza was occupied by Egypt, and Judea & Samaria (aka the West Bank) was occupied by Jordan - each for 19 years, until the Six Day War.
During that time, neither Egypt nor Jordan did anything to advance a concept of a Palestinian Arab state in those territories, nor did the inhabitants of those areas petition the world to establish a sovereign nation they might call their own. Why not?
Question:
Let’s bring this up to date. In October 2023 - when Hamas attacked Israel - the Arabs claimed there were 2 million Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza. In February 2025, the Arab world protested that President Donald Trump’s declaration of an intent to relocate the residents of Gaza elsewhere would subjugate its 2.2 million Palestinian Arabs to an injustice, insisting that they deserved a state of their own. This past month, they listed their numbers as 2.3 million, and in several Arab social media sites, 2.4 million. If their population grew by a rather remarkable 15% or 20 % in just 22 months - where is the genocide?
Question:
Let's ask two simple interrelated questions that will answer this insane call for a “2-state delusion”.
Let's ask this of France, England, and all others that have announced that they will recognize "Palestine" in September at a UN summit.
First question: Will Jews be allowed to live in this state called "Palestine"?
Second question: Will Arabs be allowed to continue to live in Israel?
That ought to end the discussion right there, because we know the answer to both. But, we move on.
Question:
If the Palestinian Arabs are allowed to establish a state, and actually have an election - the first vote since 2006 when Hamas was elected overwhelmingly by the Palestinian Arab civilian population - and if they vote again overwhelmingly for Hamas, will France and England dispute the outcome? Or celebrate it?
Question:
Will "Palestine", if established as is the declared wish of France, England, and others, be a confederation that includes both Gaza and the 'West Bank'? How will they be linked? Where will the borders be? Who will define them? What if there isn't an agreed-upon answer? Who exactly will govern Gaza? What if the Arabs of Palestine don't agree? Who then decides?
We have more.
Question:
The Day After. The Palestinian Authority appears to be one choice - sometimes it seems the consensus - to be tasked with some form of sovereign governance of Gaza, particularly by those nations who oppose Israel’s presence there. Well, if the PA gets to decide the future administration of a Palestinian Arab state, does it have to abandon its “pay for slay” program that rewards Arab terrorists for murdering Jews? What if it refuses to do that?
(Since Netanyahu has nixed PA rule in Gaza, hopefully the question is now irrelevant).
Another question:
Will "Palestine" be de-militarized? What if it objects? What if it refuses? What if it agrees, and then reneges, or defaults?
Is there a consequence that they suffer or can they just decide one day to lob rockets at the Jewish State?
And yet more questions:
Given the atrocities of October 7 - at a time when 18,500 Gazans entered Israel daily for work, a number that was about to be increased to 22,000 - can Israel tell the Palestinian Arabs of a future "Palestinian state" that - given the history, and the possible liability - that they can no longer work in Israel? Will the world honor that request? If not, why not?
What if the new state of Palestine invites the Islamic Republic of Iran to come in and set up an infrastructure, or a superstructure? What if Palestine wants to accumulate a military arsenal - the way Egypt has - you know, in case of an impending threat from Chad?
Can Israel target and retaliate against the new state of "Palestine" if rockets rain down on Israel? Who would determine when enough is enough? Is Israel limited by mistaken definitions of proportionality?
Question:
What happens to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad? Are they governed by the same ‘limitations’ placed on the new Palestinian Arab regime. What if they demur? Can Israel respond? To what degree?
Next logical line of questions, a potpourri of sorts:
Have the leaders of France, England, and a growing number of other nations that are lining up in support of the creation of a state of "Palestine" - those who are readily losing their own districts and neighborhoods to Islam, whose Muslim votes they need -- bothered to ask any of the aforementioned questions themselves? Or, been asked to answer them? Of course not; but why not? Will France and England - who deny Israel its right to extend sovereignty over its own Biblical and historic lands - give up their own claims of sovereignty to territories they hold (France with thirteen such territories, and England with fourteen) in various parts of the world? And why not? After all, the Falkland Islands are only 7900 miles from England, and French Guiana only 4,450 miles from Paris. Why can't Judea and Samaria and Gaza become protectorates like those territories have?
Question.
Are Tucker Carlson, Piers Morgan, Joe Rogan, and Candace Owens simply antisemites or just especially stupid? Can one be both?
Question:
What if Hamas announces that it will never give up all the hostages it still holds - wanting to maintain some leverage, a deterrent, over any future attack by Israel - could Israel then get everyone’s blessing to destroy Hamas, in Gaza?
Question:
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is going to die. Soon. Some, on both sides of this conflict, might rightly argue “not soon enough”. The architect of much of the generations-old terrorist policy vis-à-vis Israel will be 90 years old in November. Who will replace him when he croaks? What if it is some radical hardliner, more radical than he - and he, we remind you, is a murderer and Holocaust denier?
What if his successor continues to call for jihad against Israel, and for the liberation of "occupied" lands including Western Jerusalem (and we all remember “all” they consider to be “occupied”)? Will the European Union support "Palestine"’s right to an unapologetic and genocidal ideology, beyond parroting a mere lip service tongue-in-cheek disapproval? Or will they ignore it the way the world chooses to ignore, completely, both the Hamas Charter and the PLO Covenant?
Inquiring minds want to know!!
A final question, leaving dozens more unasked:
Would any of this be different if political leaders, diplomats, analysts, and commentators in the Western world would ever took the time to read a translation of Arab social media, replete with its genocidal ideology - the version which is geared for a domestic Arab audience - and, in doing so, they discover that they are very different than the cunningly-crafted statements made for foreign consumption to the BBC, CNN, the New York Times, or Le Monde?
Or, if they discover what has been readily available to those who bothered to look, for almost three generations now; or, that the comments made by the Palestinian Authority, or by the new-and-improved terrorist running the Syrian machine - both of which the West foolishly wants to believe are more “moderate” than that of Hamas or Assad - are really not less genocidal in content? What would happen then?
Finally - if they decided not to trample on the truth with their pseudo-intellectual jackboots - would the nations of the Western world then be more understanding, and perhaps more empathetic, to Israel’s struggle? The way they were for a few hours on October 7, 2023.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.