The Tale of the Cow

Ever read "The Cow", second and longest book (sura) of the Qur'an?

This book is called "The Cow" because it begins with an extended account of when Moses gave to the children of Israel, the law concerning sacrifice of the Red Heifer--from the first 19 verses of Numbers, chapter 19 in the Jewish Torah. Only trouble is, as always with the Qur'an, it's a complete distortion of what is textually to be found in that Book of Moses.

It's actually rather brilliant in its own way, as it demonstrates the incredible legerdemain of the Muslim "Prophet", in the way he makes use of the Jews' own scriptures against them. All you find in Numbers is exposition of the law, how the sacrifice is to be performed, what's to be done with the ashes in preparing and preserving them with herbally treated, ritually blessed water to be used in a cleansing ceremony for any Hebrew who had been exposed to 'uncleanness'.

As the Qur'an presents its totally bowdlerized version of those passages, the Muslim "Prophet" by what he calls a "similitude" (parable) symbolically, but clearly casts himself in the role of Moses being resisted by the Jews in the giving of this law. They question every aspect of it, like "Whose cow must it be? How old? What color?" As to the latter, the "Prophet" also gets that wrong: in the Koran, it's a yellow cow. He has "Moses" demanding of the Jews, "What? Are you trying to make a fool of me? What do you mean, 'what color, how old?'

Following upon this comes many verses meant to establish that Moses, called an "apostle of Allah," was sent to the Jews in vain: they ridiculed him, contested everything he got from God; they had no understanding of what was being commanded: in short, they didn't deserve having Moses sent to them in the first place.

Mohammad creates this fictional Moses to portray his own actual experience of being rejected by the Jews of Medina--whose community he, with his band of caravan robbers and slave merchants from Mecca, had invaded.

That's the truth of the matter, but the fiction runs all the further to this: Here, the latest, greatest and last of all "apostles" of Allah, Mohammad is providing himself all the excuses he will now need for genocide to be wreaked upon those Jews, during course of robbing from them their homes, wives, girl children, wells, flocks, camels and date plantations. But really? How may one know that? Because the next thing to follow upon the Tale of the Cow, in this book of the Koran, is a retelling (also bowdlerized) of how Adam and Eve came to be chased out of the Garden.

What Difference Does It Make?

Our then Secretary of State: "Was it a protest or some guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans?"

"What difference does it make?" she shrieks, but then, very next moment: "It is our job to figure out what happened!"

Well--wait a minute, which is it, then? If it makes no difference who it was, it can only be a fool's errand to be figuring out what it was. Without knowing who it was, you can't figure out what it was. What it was is entirely explained by who it was, and it makes all the difference in the world. What difference does it make--who did it, she asks?

Is it really her job to be figuring out what happened? What has "figuring out" got to do with it? Why didn't she say, *finding out* what happened? If you're finding out what happened, you're coming up with facts. If you're figuring out what happened you're coming up with lame explanations, excuses and ruses; coming out with anything but what happened: you're coming out with Susan Rice's talking points to the press.

Truly, the last thing Hillary wants to do is *find out* what happened, because she already knows exactly what happened. And if she should come out with it, this would (or surely ought) bury any chance she may yet have for a presidential bid in 2016.

Charles Krauthammer, bless his brilliant soul, has it wrong: it's got nothing to do with a cover-up for Obama's boasts, his false claims that he's got al Qaeda on the run--lest this should have looked bad for him in the upcoming election. No. It's purely a cover-up of Hillary's incompetence and her neglect of duty; a lack of concern for the people under her watch. A cover-up for all those frequent flier miles she logged (more than any predecessor), partying at 30,000 feet while Benghazi and all the world burns. Nothing more complicated than that.

So long as they could get away with hiding behind the Susan Rice talking points (not long at all), here is the spin they could put on it:  As usual, it is the extremists on the Right who are to blame. The degree of security we had in place at Benghazi, relying on domestic Libyan personnel, was doing just fine and would have continued to be perfectly adequate but for a freak outbreak of Islamophobia from the Right--by which we were blindsided. Who can prepare for a thing like that? Stinky stuff happens.

That's the Obama Administration's party line, the unstated (but obvious) talking points on Benghazi. The issue that must be dealt with now, from this recent Intelligence Committee report is the claim that the Ambassador himself was turning down offers for increased security. Really? But doesn't this conflict with earlier reports that he and/or his staffers had put in requests for it? If there's truth to this recent revelation, then for his own good and that of his staff, Hillary, had she the modicum of good sense it takes to be the leader of an executive department of our government, should have removed him from his post before 'some bunch of guys out for a walk one night' on 9/11 should decide to tie him to it and light a match to him and the rest of his staff.

Strange Bedfellows

The problem in dealing with such attitudes and opinions as are faced daily in all the Internet Israel bashing is this:  How unlikely is it to find a dogma-impassioned mind that is capable to react dispassionately and rationally to facts and reason? As Jonathan Swift has so aptly said, "It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."

When one's opinions come by indoctrination from agenda-driven, teachers and professors, biased reporting in the media, or bigoted instruction of parents, the effect is the same: you wind up with a person who thinks he or she knows something. But no, they are simply parroting some manner of rubbish they have been told or taught. These angry, thought-conformed sorts then go on in life to restrict any further political input from books, film and media commentary, to carefully cherry picked materials meant only to buttress an opinion already set in cement (or emotional slop) of their former indoctrinations.

As one takes note of the tone in all these execrable screeds from misinformed (or *disinformed*) Israel bashers here and all over the Web, one cannot escape an impression exactly like one used to get from the dogma-ridden, indoctrinated-from-birth minds of white segregationists of the American South. It sounds just the same.

Self-professed "liberal-progressives" with a seething hatred for Israel will be insulted out of their knickers, right down to their Adidas sneakers, to be so compared, of course--and that can't be helped. But it is most odd, isn't it, to be informed that preoccupation with the defense and success of Israel throughout the 1950s was a cause célèbre for liberals, leftist progressives, socialists and communists, right up until the turn of the decade, when official Soviet support abruptly switched from Israel to the Arabs.

So, what was it with this sudden burst of compassion from the international Communist revolution for the plight of Arabs both in and outside Israel--not just those in the refugee camps of Lebanon and Gaza, but for the entire UAR (United Arab Republic)?

The change in Soviet policy toward Israel came as Israel changed, or let us say, 'as she matured' from the early, dominantly socialist and communist culture of the kibbutz movement into the more grown-up, buxom, free market oriented moshavim with their privately owned tracts, families living in their own homes.  At last, there were moderate to conservative elements coming into a share of the political power. 

And that was all it took: seeing this change in the political ferment of Israel, a Soviet interest in the success of the new nation was seen to be betrayed! The former Soviet support and assistance was no longer of advantage in the quest for worldwide communist influence and/or domination.

As socialists and communists have always worked to have influence on the rank and file of liberals and 'progressives' all over the world, so also they have had their measure of success in that effort--in exploiting or creating popular causes. This is Communist Method & Strategy 101. 

The propaganda machine goes into high gear, pumping out anti-Zionist disinformation, to make those militant, murdering, raping, pillaging bands of Arab guerrillas refusing to live at peace with Israel--a new people! An oppressed minority! A pariah with a new name invented to the purpose. They shall no longer be "Fatah", but "the Palestinians" or which is the same, a "liberation army", the Soviet sponsored PLO.

Now an image transformation is made to take place: make the victims (refugees from Russian and Polish pogroms, survivors of Hitler and the British naval blockade, a persecuted people who had been ganged up on by every Arab nation on their borders and beyond) appear to be the aggressor, while the Soviet backed Arab guerrillas and their supporters are made to look like victims!

But one might say the same of the defeated German Reich--were they not victims of the Jews in cahoots with the Allied forces of the US and Europe who came to their liberation? Surely those defeated Nazis are no different than those Arabs who were defeated in their plans to drive every Jew from the land of Judah into the sea. Victims, surely!

Now, with all this Soviet help of propaganda and disinformation, the same underdog status formerly accorded to the Jews of Europe and Israel, is now conferred upon their defeated enemies.  And it works. As the Soviets turned their backs on Israel, American and European liberals and leftists turned their coats to join ranks with the USSR in the genocidal aims of the Arab states surrounding Israel.

Today, the only thing missing from the picture since the turn of the millennium, is the name "Soviet" or "Communist" from the mix of forces allied against Israel. Whether its the USSR/UAR confederation of aggression or that of Russia/China/Iran/Syria--there is no difference. 

The propaganda and disinformation that disseminates against Israel today has changed only insofar as it has become all the more thoroughly entrenched in the so-called "liberal" mind, now to be found in a very sexy alliance of strange bedfellows with the Arian Brotherhood, Neo-Nazis and the KKK. How perverted could anything ever get?

You can't reason such people out of the madness they weren't reasoned into, but you can hold a mirror up to them while they are raving in it, that they may be shocked and ashamed, and enraged to the point of apoplexy to see what they see. Then somebody should call for an ambulance.