I take back the Finger I gave you

There is – giving someone a finger; and there is – giving someone a finger. The first saying means giving someone the middle finger as if to say “up your---.” As to the second, it is short for: I gave you my finger to please you, but now you want the whole arm. So I take back my finger because you don't deserve it.

When it comes to many Jews, you can be certain they'll do what it takes to earn both sayings being thrown at them. You see an example of that when you look at the Jewish responses to what President Obama is doing for them and for Israel. The more he gives them, the more they believe they deserve still more, and so they ask for more and more and still more. And you feel he should say to them: I take back everything nice I said about you, and wish you'd just get out of my line of sight. But you know he won't do that because he is a nice guy.

And there is another example you can look at. It is an article that came under the title: “Reinventing Egypt's Jews,” written by Steven A. Cook and published on June 29 on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations. The author begins his dissertation with a grotesque exaggeration not realizing that everything he'll say to elaborate will contradict the introduction.

Here is how he starts: “After two millennia, it seems Jews are 'in' in the Middle East.” From this point on, he focuses the discussion on the Jews of Egypt. He tells how bad their lot had been for a while before turning good again. But lest he sound like he says “thank you,” he writes what follows: “This should make well-meaning people feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but what is happening in Egypt is actually less rediscovery than reinvention.” Ah, that double-faced guy, equipped with a forked tongue!

But why is he saying this? Because he wants to end the discussion – well, you guessed it – by doing the Jewish thing of asking for more and more and still more. And so, he ends the article like this: “That is not enough. To build that representative society, they [the Egyptians] will have to revise a history that only has a vague resemblance to what they have been telling about their Jewish brothers and sisters.”

Between the introduction and the epilogue, Cook highlights the things that demolish what he said at the start about the Jews not being “in” for two millennia. Here is an example of that: “Egypt's Jewish community never experienced pogrom-like violence. Cairo's synagogues were always well protected.” He goes on to bite the hand that feeds him: “This may have been a cynical effort to draw a distinction between hostility to Israel and Judaism...” And here is how he begins to demolish his own thesis about nothing good happening to Jews for two millennia: “...but importantly, those houses of worship remain as a testament to Judaism's past presence in Egypt.”

He tells in brief the history of the difficult moments that were generated when the relationships became somewhat frayed after 1956 and 1967 when Israel attacked Egypt. The first happened when Israel collaborated with the two colonial powers, France and Britain. The second happened when Israel launched a Pearl Harbor style blitz on the Sinai. Both attacks were repelled, and things returned to normal again.

Other than that, Cook admits: “Jews did play important roles in Egyptian commerce, culture, and politics in the first half of the twentieth century.” But he claws back this “warm and fuzzy” feeling by adding the following: “This Ramadan, Jews are portrayed sympathetically, as authentic Egyptians … [they] are a perfect device through which Egyptians create a tolerant past if only to give the audience hope of a more just and open future.”

Note his use of that “if only”. He means to convey the notion that there is an element of insincerity in what the Egyptians are doing. Well, I have a personal story to tell in this regard. I, my brothers and sisters, grew up during the early stages of our lives, immersed in the French culture. It was the one for which we developed an affinity. We also appreciated the Italian culture which is closely related to the French. And we liked the American because it is universal by its nature.

We could not care less for the Egyptian culture at the time, about which we knew very little. But there was an exception. It is that my mother loved that culture, and at times used to sing to herself the songs of Leila Murad, a Jewish Egyptian movie star who had a brother that wrote the lyrics she sang, and the movie scripts in which she acted. And so, when we went to Egypt, my mother continued to sing the Murad songs while we took to Egypt's own Dalida who performed in French and in Italian.