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This is the Kauffman text, which I shall pick apart below(under construction) One has to constantly remind oneself that people like Kauffman are driven by two things: 1)they are part of decripit bourgeois imperialist culture which wants to bring white culture to the colonial world--this has been the situation even among workers struggling to be open-minded and revolutionary for a long long time. 2)they have a fear for themselves or for relatives and friends close to them living in Israel, and, because of (1), above, cannot conceive of living as equals with the inhabitants of the land. Kauffman cites a history which reassures himself that he can live in a colonial settler state, even though it is not an egalitarian country but has to be armed to the teeth to maintain it's colonial status as a garrison state. The function of the garrison state is to foster the dream of other one-religion states in the area, which was, until the creation of the state of Israel a region of intense tolerance. There was not a destruction of synagogues by the Jordanians in Jerusalem. In fact, the moroccan jewish quarter was not destroyed until it was destroyed by the Israeli invasion of 1967, to make an esplanade and parking lot in fromt of the wailing wall.
Below is the Kauffman text:
Don't revise history in Mideast conflict
June 9, 2001
Perhap the Free Press' Israel foreign correspondents could take a lesson in Middle East history before they continue to present false statements. Israel never "seized land from Palestinians in the wars since Israel's creation in 1948." In the first place, there were no Arabs who were "Palestinians" at that time. There were Arabs who had lived under British rule from 1920 to 1948 and under Turkish rule for 500 years before that, but never as a distinct political entity.
Furthermore, the land that Israel regained in the wars of 1948, 1967 and 1973 was from Jordan itself, created by the British as the emirate of Transjordan in 1922. The Jordanians attacked Israel immediately upon its formation in 1948. They conquered Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and East Jerusalem, and kept these territories as part of their own kingdom -- without any objection, by the way, from the local Arabs.
Then in the 1967 Six Day War, five Arab nations again attempted to destroy Israel and again were unsuccessful. It was then that Israel regained, in this defensive war, the territory that should have been part of the Jewish homeland in the first place. It was not "seized" from anybody.
I also suggest that the Free Press not obtain history lessons from Arab shopkeepers in East Jerusalem. That area happened to be predominantly Jewish until 1948, when it was seized by the Jordanians. Within its tiny borders were 58 synagogues that the conquerors immediately demolished. From 1948 to 1967, Jordan ruled the area as its own and did whatever it could to wipe out any signs of the majority Jewish presence that had been there for centuries. This thus created what uninformed correspondents now call Arab East Jerusalem.
As for the Arab "Nobel Sanctuary" (Al Aqsa Mosque) in Jerusalem. it was built in the 13th Century, deliberately covering the ruins of the Hebrew King Solomon's temple, constructed some 2,000 years earlier.
Jerome S. Kaufman
Bloomfield Hills
Journal 5, T Freidman's Op/Ed(NYT)
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Dec. 25, 2005 article in Al-Hayat