Newt Gingrich: Palestinians are an invented people

Wingnuts • December 2011 • Views: 1,589

Palestinians don’t deserve a state because they’re an invented people

‘Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places.’

‘For a variety of political reasons,’ Gingrich continued, ‘we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and I think it’s tragic.’

Gingrich’s comments are sure to inflame Arabs but may also have repercussions among Jews who support the policy, begun by former president George W. Bush and continued by President Obama, of calling for a separate Palestinian state.

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4 comments

Buck Fri, Dec 9, 2011 9:12:26pm

There are some key differences in how George W Bush and Obama treat Israel.

I documented some of these differences here.

Although I don’t think Newts comments has anything to do with a two state solution.

SanFranciscoZionist Fri, Dec 9, 2011 9:46:22pm

Thing is, he’s technically correct, in that the idea of ‘Palestinian’ being a national and political identity is quite recent. And I do sometimes emphasize this, when people are wailing on a fake historical narrative that supposes an ancient and historical nation of Palestine.

However, the people in question are real, they have a group identity now, and no easy way out of the present situation. And they didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of places to go, as their miserable reception everywhere (except in the United States) demonstrates.

We gotta get this whole thing sorted out one of these days, and I believe that a two-state resolution is everyone’s best chance. Newt’s not helping.

Bob Levin Sun, Dec 11, 2011 1:25:55pm

re: #2 SanFranciscoZionist

I think there’s a bigger question here, and I’m not sure I know the answer. The question is to what extent is truth an effective part of diplomacy. This notion of the distinct Palestinian people entered the discourse as truth about the same time OPEC decided that oil was a weapon.

In this particular case, I think it’s safe to say that looking the other way has not been effective.

There was an interview the other day in Ha’aretz with Rashid Kahlidi. Of course he said many of the things one would expect. But he also said two things not expected. One, that no one, not even the Palestinians, thinks that shooting rockets into Israel and committing random murders, advances peace. And two, there is no reason that a Palestinian state should exclude the presence of Jews or infringe upon their rights to have property, etc.

Ah. Then why have the Palestinians, both governments, been spending so much time committing random murders, shooting rockets, writing Nuremberg laws, controlling the press, and insisting that their new land must be Judenrein? It’s almost as if Fatah and Hamas, and Kahlidi on the other hand, are talking about two different groups of people.

Kahlidi’s two points are lost under a sea of other statements and information. But those two points, those two beliefs, if widely held since 1948, would certainly have yielded a second state by now. The fiction of a distinct and separate Palestinian people, while denying the history of the Jewish people, is not a necessary tool to create Kahlidi’s vision of a state.

Buck Mon, Dec 12, 2011 5:03:30pm

Arabs in Judea and Samaria shed their Jordanian citizenship in 1967 and call themselves “Palestinians.” They adopted this new name — the name Roman conquerors gave the people of Israel’s Jews 2,000 years ago — in order to claim the lands of the Jews for themselves.

In 1947 the word “Palestinian” — if it meant anything at all — referred to Jews living in Palestine. The Palestine Post (now the Jerusalem Post) was the Jewish English-language newspaper. The Palestine Orchestra (now the Israel Philharmonic) was a Jewish orchestra, filled to overflowing with Holocaust survivors. The United Palestine Appeal, an American charity, raised money to resettle homeless Jews from Europe in Palestine — one of the things Arabs objected to the most.

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