To Shape-Shift The Fox Into A Dove

When the fox cannot get himself appointed guardian of the chicken coop, he tries to do what the wolf does; he tries to wear different clothing. The wolf whose preferred meal is sheep can wear sheep's clothing because the two have the same size and the same physical design. But can the fox whose preferred meal is chicken wear chicken clothing when the two are so different in size and in physical design? The answer is probably not but the fox is foxy as we all know, and he will try many tricks before giving up if he fails the first time or fails ten times in a row.

Likewise, some people are foxy and so are the organizations that they form. They forever try to acquire what does not belong to them by presenting themselves as something different from what they really are. We call these people mercurial because they have the ability to shift their shape in ways that are impossible for the rest of us to duplicate. However, like mercury which is a metal that ought to be in a solid form but remains a fluid at room temperature, these people have the facility to take any shape they want -- looking like something one moment and a different thing another moment. They are the fox that can be a chicken or a hawk or a dove depending on the requirements of the moment.

All sorts of people in all sorts of cultures engage in this sort of thing but no one engages in it as a matter of religious duty but the people who adhere to the Judeo-Yiddish culture. They say they are an ethno-religious group, and they operate under the banner of organizations they put together for one purpose or another. These people will look peaceful, benevolent and vulnerable as they approach you but turn rapacious when they get close enough to bite you. And when they have you securely in their grip, they will not stop devouring you till they have gulped the last morsel of your being. But if you fight back, do it well and remain alive despite their effort, they will see they cannot get much further making a feast out of you and will be peaceful, benevolent and vulnerable again. And they will muster the chutzpah to ask that you pity them, forgive them and make yourself vulnerable like they are.

When it comes to feasting on America – which is what the Jewish organizations do to reach out and take a bite out of the Middle East -- you see them do tricks at the height of their foxy performance. They turn themselves into the peaceful, benevolent and vulnerable dove they want you to think they are, having looked like the hawk they wanted you to think they were not long before that. And you can clearly see this level of performance in an article that was written by Rueuel Marc Gerecht. It was published in the Wall Street Journal on April 23, 2012 under the title: “The Islamist Road to Democracy” and the subtitle: “Muslims cannot be dragged to an embrace of secularism and the liberal values that spring from it. They have to arrive voluntarily at this understanding.”

A neocon to the core, Gerecht minces no words presenting his foxy ideas in the first paragraph of the article. But unlike his previous posture when he used to write with a hawkish beak and a pair of sharp claws, he now knocks very gently at the door of both the “American left and right” to tell them about the Arab Spring that has become an Arab Winter. How does he do it, you ask? Well, are you ready for the answer, my friend? Make sure you are sitting before you continue reading. Here comes the answer: “In Egypt, where Arab liberalism was once strong.” Pow, kaboom, explosion, fireworks. Can you believe it? Can you believe what you just read? It used to be that to a Jew, having the words Egypt, Arab and liberalism in the same sentence was like having TNT, a fuse and a match in the same box. And to admit on top of this that liberalism was “strong” in Egypt is to suggest that the size of the TNT was measured in the kilotons or even megatons. And this is enough to blow up a Hiroshima or a Tokyo. We're talking some serious stuff, my friend; some very serious stuff.

But why does he write in this style now? Because he can see that “religious parties” as he calls them, have “overwhelmed secularists in recent parliamentary elections” in Egypt. And he predicts that “An Islamist is now certain to be elected president … and a referendum that would likely down the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty is probably in the future.” And so he needs to adapt to the new realities by shape-shifting his appearance. What was anathema to the Jews and to Israel, they now make it look like they accept it, even love it. And they will remain in this state till they find themselves in a position to bite again at which time they will change back to their normal selves.

In the meantime, Gerecht performs an act of mental gymnastics of the most dizzying kind to communicate his new posture. He comes up with the following conclusion: “As counterintuitive as it seems, they [Muslim fundamentalists] are the key to more democratic, liberal politics in the region.” But how powerful can a conclusion be without contrasting it against something else? And so, he serves you with that something else: “The case for separation of mosque and state has been harder to make … because most Muslims have not been burned by internecine strife. The West has become … liberal … because its past savagery was so intense … Christian forefathers killed each other zealously over religious differences.” Wow! A Jew saying this? How do you say halleluiah in Arabic? Never mind because guess what, halleluiah is said to be a Hebrew word that some Arabs even claim was borrowed from them.

The development in Egypt being sufficient to shape-shift our author from having the look of a hawk to that of a dove, foxy Gerecht wastes no time preparing for the eventual return back to the look of a hawk, an appearance he will want to reacquire when the circumstances will have changed anew. He does this by praising Islam one more time to tranquilize the readers, but it is something he does while injecting a dose of the venom that will again distort the image of the Arabs and the Muslims and help him get things back to the old normal. To this end, he writes the following: “Islam hasn't seen the sustained barbarism … Reform-minded Muslims have usually critiqued their faith with an eye to the West … without appreciating both the highs and lows of Occidental history.” Islam is good, he says, but the Muslims are not good enough to fully appreciate the Occident. Call it the head of a hawk fixed to the body of a dove.

 However, you would think that the author will want to explain that idea but no, he only injects it as a small dose of his venom and moves on to the next injection. The following being that next injection: “A hundred years ago … Muslim intellectuals … tried to work out a synthesis between the West and Islam … post-World War II rulers, however, merely dictated that Muslim clergy and the faithful change their ways.” And so you ask: Was there a contradiction between the two positions? Again, he does not say but he adds the following: “Against the seductive power … which in the hands of military men ran roughshod … Islam stood as a barrier to 'progress.'” What? How does he get from here to there? He does not say because there is no link between the two. All he wanted to do was slam Islam as being a barrier to progress and he did so, period. Like they say, you don't ask where venom comes from; venom is venom and that's all there is to it.

Having begun the article by mentioning the parliamentary elections in Egypt which gave the party of the Muslim Brotherhood a big share of the seats, he now does something to try and “own” what he and those like him used to fight against like savages. That something is what he calls: “The all-purpose fundamentalist cry, 'Islam is the answer'” which he now describes as being a Muslim self-critique and a “tendentious reading of history.” But that was the “cry” they used to describe as being the modern call to a holy war against the West. Oh well, that was then and this is now – and now that he made the fundamentalist cry work for him, he reassures the readers: “What ought to be obvious now is that Muslims ...” well, the rest of this sentence is what makes the subtitle of the article.

What has prompted him to do this is the realization that any interference with the way that the Arab Revolution is progressing will have negative consequences. And so he basically says: hands off the Arabs and the Muslims for now. Is this a good thing? It should be except that he is anything but good because what he does next is inject more venom in the discussion, and he does so in large doses this time. He begins with the grandest lie that the Jewish propaganda machine ever perpetuated in America since an African American discovered that the Jews were the biggest slave traders in history and wrote a book about it. Gerecht insinuates that the Muslims did it too because the Quran authorized it – both accusations being false.

 However, he goes on to say that Islam no longer allows slavery: “because Muslims successfully grafted European ethics onto Islamic mores.” This is baloney but it is a small lie. However, he needs to tell a big lie, one that will concord with the fact that he is afflicted with the most virulent of Jewish diseases: the belief that nobody can be good unless they are forced to be good. But he knows the new lie will be easy to unmask, and he is afraid to tell it in the open lest he be called a two-bit asshole. What he does, therefore, is insinuate the lie by putting it between brackets like this (British warships also helped stop the trade.) He does not say that the British warships frightened the Arabs and forced them to stop the slave trade, but he wants the readers to conclude it on their own. Coward. Let us say he is not a two-bit asshole; he is a cowardly asshole.

Having established that you are reading the work of a cowardly asshole – it is nothing more scholarly than that, in fact -- you wonder if you should continue to waste your time reading the rest of the article. You think about it for a second and decide to continue reading in the hope of seeing something that will redeem the article, or something that will give you a new insight as to why these people did the things that have turned Western stomachs so much as to holocaust them, pogrom them, gas them and incinerate them. And all this happened when the Arabs and the Muslims never engaged in brutal practices as admitted by the author himself.

As you continue to read the piece, you bump against the usual lies, distortions and fantasies but see nothing that redeems it. However, you meet a new insight in the last paragraph that tells you it was worth the time you spent reading the thing. What you meet is this: “Fundamentalists … will be neither our friends nor allies. But their debates with each other ... will get evolution rolling. Down that path lies … less angry relations between Islam and the West.” This is a whole bunch of loaded assertions he throws into the mix without explanation. But what the heck, he's a Jew, he can do anything he wants and no one will say boo.

But you muster the courage to stop for a moment and ponder. Given that up to now, the Egyptians and a number of Arab countries were considered to be “our allies” if not “our friends”, this guy is saying that the Arab Revolution is making it impossible for these people to be our friends or allies again. But why? He does not say why, but you get a sense as to what the answer may be.

You begin to formulate the answer when you read the last sentence of the last paragraph: “Dictatorship nostalgia, on the other hand, will take us right back to the cul-de-sac where Osama bin Laden was born.” What Gerecht says here is that the choice is between democracy in which case “they” will turn against “us” through the ballot box, or it is dictatorship in which case they will turn against us in the manner of bin Laden. In other words, there is no hope of ever having a good relationship with these people.

When you contrast this with what he said earlier, mainly that Arab liberalism has proven itself capable of growing strong roots, you wonder why he does not now believe that democracy can make everything right, which is what Jewish leaders such as himself have been drumming into the heads of Americans for many years. The answer hits you when you remember that he said nobody can be good unless they are forced to be good. And this leads you to conclude that yes, the Jews are advocating democracy but it is a democracy that comes at the end of a whip.

And this, in fact, is how they rule America now. This is a place where everyone, including the journalists, the legislators and the executives of government are blackmailed into performing correctly according to Jewish norms or else. Having accomplished all this, the Jewish leaders now seek to use the power, wealth and prestige of America to rule the world like they rule America. If only Hitler had a whip!

It must be said that the people of the kibbutz, now sitting ill-at-ease in the Knesset, are the foxy wolf in sheep clothing; a wolf that is endowed with the wings and the beak -- not of a chicken – but the wings and beak of a hawk. And the world is telling them: stay away from us.