10 Head-Scratching Questions About Israel and Hamas

Don’t you just hate it when you’re trying to record (in Arabic) an anti-Israel propaganda video from southern Lebanon and keep being interrupted by an Iranian accomplice who’s speaking too loudly on the phone in Persian next to you?

I pondered this question and several others as I continued to wrestle with why I feel so irreparably broken; why the biggest massacre of Jews after the Holocaust occurred in my lifetime; and why I keep hearing so much Persian in videos from Lebanon and Gaza. Here are 10 questions we should all be asking ourselves and others about Israel, Hamas and this previously unimaginable war:

1. Why does one hear (presumably) Iranian men speaking Persian in various videos from Gaza and Lebanon lately? I can just imagine Hamas terrorists waving their arms at their Iranian partners in war crimes and scolding, “Shh! Be quiet or the Americans will hear you!” 

I’m not surprised that Iranian fighters are in southern Lebanon, but now, it seems that members of the powerful Iranian Revolutionary Guards Force (IRGC), are in Gaza, helping Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Biden administration would be wise to watch these videos. Most of them give me the chills. But I had to laugh during one particular video posted by Hamas’s Telegram channel, because the Iranian man on a heated phone call in the background, nefarious as he is, sounded like one of my Persian uncles arguing on the phone with the cable company. 

2. Do most Americans know that Hamas met with Iranian security officials to plan the October 7 attack? In August, Hamas met Iranians to plan the attack by land, sea and air. According to The Wall Street Journal, Hamas again met with Iranian officials in Beirut on October 2nd. That’s when Iran gave Hamas the green light to proceed with its massacre a few days later. 

3. How could it be that one day after Hamas butchered Israelis en masse, nearly 40 rallies against Israel were held in these United States? Perhaps we were wrong to have expected Israel haters to wait until 1,400 Israelis were buried before marching against the world’s only Jewish state. But these racists have only doubled down, including in the U.S., where there have been standing-room crowds for “Sit-Ins for Palestine,” college student walkouts nationwide, demonstrators flooding Times Square, and thousands of open chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, an inexcusable call for Jewish genocide, however poetic. 

It’s worth asking whether those who hate Israel are currently testing the waters to see how much they can get away with, especially in America, and how much fear they can instill in Jews and Zionists (think the recent “Day of Rage”). More than ever, Israel bashers are seeing how much they can shut down streets, universities and, worst of all, endanger the safety of Jews, especially Jewish students. Last week, over 300 people (mostly young Jews) were arrested after swarming the U.S. Capitol and illegally protesting against Israel in the Cannon building rotunda. Like every other Israel basher, they were testing the waters, too. And to their delight, they discovered how well they can swim. 

4. Why, in the words of Hen Mazzig, did the world argue for a full week over whether Hamas beheaded babies, but within a matter of minutes, tens of millions worldwide swallowed the lie that Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza? I’ve seen stories that cite one American source, one Israeli source, and two terrorist organizations. What kind of Western journalist relies on balanced information from the Gaza Health Ministry (Hamas)? The Al Ahli hospital explosion was caused by a misfire of Islamic Jihad rockets. But waiting on major news outlets (as well as certain U.S. representatives) to retract their blood libel charges is like waiting for seeds to sprout in a frozen wasteland of snow. Maybe something will eventually come to the surface, but even then, it probably won’t be worth the wait. 

Remember the powerful slogan from the #MeToo movement? It was “Believe women.” The slogan for the October 7th massacre and its aftermath of war seems to be, “Believe Jew haters.” 

5. In the same vein, shouldn’t we be asking why Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D.-Mich.), an American elected official, seems to believe Hamas more than she believes President Biden (or the House Intelligence Committee)? This is not how an American leader is supposed to act, especially on social media, where her accusations may directly result in violence against Jews in America, and beyond. Something is terribly wrong when a congresswoman seems to believe a terrorist organization more than she believes the Pentagon. 

6. Why was the media so quiet when the Iraqis bombed a hospital at the corner of our neighborhood in Tehran? It happened in 1988, when I was a child in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq War. I was irreparably scarred by that attack, because I overheard my parents discuss that the Iraqis hit the children’s wing of the hospital. It turns out the hospital strike barely made the news, whether in the Middle East or beyond. Why? Was it because people understood that Iran and Iraq were at war, and there would undoubtedly be collateral damage? Or was it because when Muslims target each other, no one seems to blink an eye, especially when Jews are not involved?

Of course, when Jews are accused of bombing a hospital, worldwide rage is instantaneous and merciless. There have been four times more casualties during the Syrian Civil War than all of the people killed on both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict since the 1920s (the entire Arab-Israeli conflict, not only the Israeli-Palestinian conflict). Where are the campus marches against the Syrian regime? They’re non-existent, because all of the hatred, brainwashing and resources are being poured into “From the river to the sea.”

If the allegation that Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed by Israel is true, why were there roughly 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, and over 7 million Palestinians today? 

7. If the allegation that Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed by Israel is true, why were there roughly 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, and over 7 million Palestinians today? Something seems strange about this accusation. Doesn’t ethnic cleansing refer to a mass wiping out of communities, not an increase in them?

8. If 150,000 Jews lived in Iraq in 1948, why are there zero Jews in Iraq today? Why were there 140,000 Jews in Libya in the 1940s, but zero there today as well? Isn’t that evidence of a real ethnic cleansing? Before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, over 100,000 Jews lived in my former country. Since then, between 92-95 percent of them have escaped. How sad that Iran is home to the largest population of Jews in the Middle East after Israel, even though it has lost up to 95 percent of its Jewish population.

9. Did Vladimir Putin have the best birthday of his life? We know that Ismail Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders recently met with the Russians in Moscow. On October 7, Hamas offered Putin a deeply welcome birthday gift: a long-awaited diversion from Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

10. And finally, to the countless LGBTQ+ activists who are marching in anti-Israel rallies or displaying Palestinian flags in adult-only shops in cities such as San Francisco: If you’re gay in Gaza, they’ll throw you off the rooftop of a building. If you’re gay in Israel, they’ll throw you a parade.

You’re well aware of this, aren’t you?

Tabby Refael is an award-winning writer, speaker and weekly columnist for The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Follow her on Instagram and X/Twitter @TabbyRefael