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Gingrich Tells Jewish Channel Palestinians Are “Invented” People

Republicans this year are courting Jewish voters by out-Israel-ing American Jews. They are playing up the fact that President Obama told the Israelis that they need to create a “continuous” Palestinian state that starts with the pre-1967 borders. Everyone remembers that. Very few remember that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the same thing the next day while addressing Congress.

 In an interview with the Jewish Channel, Newt Gingrich took the support of Israel one step further than anyone else – he denounced the legitimacy of the Palestinian people. He told his audience “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s and it’s tragic.”

Well, he got part of that right. There was no Palestinian state. There was also no Israel, no Jordan, no Iraq, no Syria….pretty much all of the region was part of the Ottoman Empire and the countries we know today were created on a huge map on the floor of a room in the Versailles Palace outside Paris in 1919 by the French and British. None of these were countries. So, what’s his point. Of all of the states now existing in the Greater Middle East, Israel is the youngest, having been created by United Nations fiat in 1948. But calling the Palestinians an “invented people” – that is seriously going too far.

For an historian, Gingrich is a disgrace. He’s written far too many “alternative history” novels.  For years, the people of the Middle East have been the subject of the genetic analysis conducted by, among others, the National Geographic Society. The project has tracked the genetic history of the region – where the people come from, where they went to, who remained instead of participating in migrations. It is the same project that tracked genetic trails from present-day Lebanon to Tunisia to the east coast of Spain. These studies have proven that the Palestinians are descendents of Christians and Jews and a pagan core population that lived in the region during prehistoric times. Though most of the people of the region converted to Islam in the 7^th century, there are still Christian Palestinians. The genetic studies largely refute the Israelis claim to the land, since most of those who settled in the region before World War II were from Europe. The Palestinians became culturally Arab after the conquest of the region by the armies of Islam, who came out of Saudi Arabia. That doesn’t make them Arabs. It makes them a people conquered and occupied for the past 1300 years.

Gingrich is also wrong in saying that “they had a chance to go many places…” They didn’t. Most of the non-Jewish residents of the Palestine fled when Israel became a country and survived the first war in 1948. There is an anecdote about an incident that convinced the Palestinians that the Jews had nuclear weapons. It involves a howitzer packed with debris instead of shells, the noise that debris made when shot out and the fact that it rained that night. The surrounding countries refused to allow them to spread out and assimilate. Instead, they were put in “refugee camps.” The present Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza were two of those camps. There is another one at Latakia, Syria. Yes, there was a political reason for the camps. They created the terror organizations that have harassed Israel for the past 63 years. The camps were pressure cookers for hate. Their existence was very intentional. The conditions of those camps fed the power of the surrounding dictators and gave rise to multiple terror groups. But don’t try to tell that fact to the Palestinians or any of the people who surround Israel or even the men of al Qaida. If the surrounding nations take responsibility for what has happened to the Palestinians over the last 60 years, the whole structure of the region destabilizes more than it already has.

And never, ever tell a pro-Israeli fanatic that the Palestinians were there first, both in pre-history and in modern history. Don’t even point out that the Bible does not say the Jews belonged there first, just that it was theirs by right of conquest.

Gingrich put out the usual stuff about the Palestinians existing to destroy Israel, but he went way beyond that with a statement about the American who is serving life in prison for spying for Israel. He said of Jonathan Jay Pollard, “If we can get to the point where I’m satisfied that there’s no national security threat, and if he’s in fact served within the range of people who’ve had a similar problem, then I’d be inclined to consider clemency.” Similar problem? What “problem”? The man stole American secrets and sold them to Israel. While working for the National Intelligence Service, he not only sold information to Israel, he sold it to South Africa and tried to sell it to Pakistan. He received $10,000 and a very expensive ring as a down payment for his services and $1,500 a month. He went to prison in 1987 and Israel granted him citizenship in 1995.

Gingrich criticized the Obama administration, saying it is “so out of touch with reality that it would be like taking your child to the zoo and explaining that a lion was a bunny rabbit.” Here’s the reality, Mr. Gingrich -

Every Islamic terror group uses the Palestinian people to recruit “soldiers” for their cause. Osama bin Laden said specifically that our support of Israel was the primary cause for 9-11. The Netanyahu administration is even less likely to negotiate with the Palestinians than any administration that has preceded it. Their settlements and designation of land within the West Bank as archeologically sensitive or environmentally sensitive or needed for military purposes has pushed the Palestinian people onto a third of the land they have occupied for 63 years.

The dynamic of the situation in the Middle East is so much in flux right now that only an idiot would make absolute statements about what will or should be done there. It is fairly usual for candidates to make generalizations about situations, make promises of actions, but when they actually get into office, they learn that nothing is as simple as it looks from the outside. There is not one candidate for the Republican nomination who does not know that. All of them have gone from candidate to office. All of them understand that a leader must be flexible about the promises they make, because the reality is seldom what they think it is. All of them are participating in the game of calling President Obama a liar based on his campaign promises not being fulfilled, campaign promises he made before he knew the full scope of the problems he would take on and before so many things went left instead of right.

One of the things we should have learned from Osama bin Laden is that the world hears every word said by our politicians and candidates. The Republican candidates this week have spoon fed buckets of anti-American propaganda to the terrorists – from calling for nuking Iran to calling the Palestinians an “invented” people. Republicans like to claim that only they can make us safe, but the truth is only they are going out of their way to provoke another attack with their threats of unilateral action against nations and people who have not attacked us.  There was a slogan used in World War II – Loose Lips Sink Ships….they also sink nations.

 

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