Gingrich: Palestinians an ‘invented’ people with no right to a state

[TomClash]

In an interview with The Jewish Channel released on Friday, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called the Palestinians an “invented” people and suggested they have no right to a state of their own.

“I believe that the Jewish people have a right to a state,” Gingrich told the interviewer. “Remember, there was no Palestine existing as a state. Part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs … 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.”

Reuters points out that Gingrich’s remarks run counter to official United States policy, which does view the Palestinians as a people with the right to a state of their own.

Gingrich, who said his worldview was “pretty close” to that of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also described the Obama administration’s Middle East diplomacy as “out of touch with reality.” He inisted that Obama and his aides “lie to themselves” about the conflict, which he portrayed as one “between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/12/09/gingrich-palestinians-an-invented-people-with-no-right-to-a-state/

Britain. The Mandatory. Jewish immigration. Plan D. The Bunch Plan. The Israeli Declaration. These facts and many others never existed. :rofl:

"We have sustained this war against Israel." :rofl:

[Scuba]

1. Scuba: Gingrich is an asshat.

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[dash_bannon]

3. No, not all Jews believe this...

Seriously, not all Jews support Israel. Israel mostly gets support from right wing zealots who are chomping at the bit for the End of Times.

[MH1]

16. delete - wrong place

sorry bout that!, I moved it to reply to the same one you were replying to.

[Mosby]

20. most jews are liberals

And most jews support israel.

The jews that don't support israel are a tiny minority from the far left and far right.

[TomClash]

4. I don't believe that

Some members of AIPAC, CAMERA, Middle East Forum and other right wing groups buy into some of this, but most jews don't.

[cali]

5. ridiculous. and your stereotyping is typical of people who say things like

blacks are lazy. A major thumbs down to that kind of wingnut "thinking".

[in_cog_ni_to]

7. How are you feeling?

Better, I hope? :hi:

[cali]

13. hey, thanks for asking

better for sure, but man what a long haul this is. Physical therapy three times a week and I'm still on crutches. Almost three months on and the bone still hasn't fully healed- and I evidently have strong bones according to the tests. Still I feel lucky. That fall could have left me in much worse shape- or dead. It's the pain and swelling that's the still the real bugaboo though. I'm at this place where I feel good and strong enough though to just try and do what I want to do. And people have been so kind and giving. Can't wait though until I can walk unassisted and hope I'll be able to get in some x-country skiing.

[lunatica]

31. I'm glad to hear you're doing better and to know you're back

Best of luck

[DCKit]

6. Only the Likudniks...

and they don't really believe it either... it's convenient.

[coalition_unwilling]

11. Plese don't conflate Judaism (and "the Jews") with the policies

of the Likudnik kooks (and those even further to the right who favor a 'Greater Israel'). The two (Jews and Likud Party) are not the same thing and your use of the phrase 'the Jews' has some anti-semitic overtones to it.

[MH1]

17. What do you mean, 'the Jews'?

As if there is some homogenous, monolithic group that calls itself 'The Jews' and has this as a written policy? What, is 'The Jews' something like 'The Vatican'? How come I've never heard of 'The Jews' except when someone is making a racist, anti-Semitic statement?

And I think what Gingrich said is ridiculous but typical spew from that asshat.

[azurnoir]

23. No "Jews" do not believe that

really its bigoted to make sweeping remarks about any religious/ethnic group

[BiggJawn]

8. No Palestine? That's odd, I've seen it on old maps.

I thought the Passionate Cheater was a History professor?

Really digging for the Zionist vote, isn't he?

[customerserviceguy]

28. Oddly enough

that Zionist vote includes reich-wing fundies who support Israel, even though they'd never let a Jew into their country club, willingly. Newt's going in for the kill on Romney, who has no chance with the fundies.

If Newt can convince the snake-handlers that he supports their goals, even if he's a serial adulterer, then he wins the nomination on the first ballot and can focus all his attention on Obama.

[BiggJawn]

33. The Fundies LOVE themselves some Israel, but not because they care for it.

The only reason the RW Fundie Dominionists and Reconstructionists love Israel so much is because that's where Jeebus is supposed to make his reappearance. Oh, Joy, Armageddon gives them woodies. They could care less about the Jewish people, they just want to see their "prophecy" fulfilled.

And if they can goad some poor dumb country into taking a swat at Israel, thus igniting a possible Nuclear response, so much the better. Hot Damn! Jeebus is coming REAL SOON!!!

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. Previous Similar Post

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x5085754

[PFunk]

10. I think it's about time folks start seperating "Jews" from "Zionists" and " Jews" from "Isreal"

Cause IMO it's the Zionist Israeli's NOT jews that many folks have problems with.

[coalition_unwilling]

12. Even historical Zionism itself has multiple threads, many of them

very progressive in nature and scope, among them democratic socialism and a single-state one-man, one vote society, i.e., a state where Jews did not enjoy a special privilege merely by virtue of their religio\ethnic identity.

It's way past time that educated folks start distinguishing between "The Jews," "Israel," and "The Likud Party".

[athenasatanjesus]

14. I think he was watching star trek,and confused Bajorans with Palestinians.

In fact I would be willing to bet that many of Newts political understandings come from one TV show or another.

[LiberalArkie]

15. Before Abraham was Palestine, plain and simple.

The European Zioniest just want to do what the European settlers did to the American Indians.

[Mosby]

19. what are you talking about?

Jews have lived in what is now Israel for thousands of years.

Palestinian nationalism started about 100 years ago.

[azurnoir]

26. you mean about 90 years ago with the Nabi Musa riots?

but thanks for pointing that out sort of speaks for it self

[Mosby]

30. links

Historian James L. Gelvin argues that Palestinian nationalism was a direct reaction to Zionism. In his book The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War he states that "Palestinian nationalism emerged during the interwar period in response to Zionist immigration and settlement."<12> Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate:

"The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other." Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose."<12>

Bernard Lewis argues it was not as a Palestinian nation that the Palestinian Arabs of the Ottoman empire objected to Zionists, since the very concept of such a nation was unknown to the Arabs of the area at the time and did not come into being until later. Even the concept of Arab nationalism in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire, "had not reached significant proportions before the outbreak of World War I."<13>

(Rashid) Khalidi argues that a Palestinian national consciousness probably had it origins in the late nineteenth century but had coalesced more fully near the beginning of the twentieth century.<14> Khalidi describes the Arab population of British Mandatory Palestine as having "overlapping identities," with some or many expressing loyalties to villages, regions, a projected nation of Palestine, an alternative of inclusion in a Greater Syria, an Arab national project, as well as to Islam.<15> Although his book was the first to demonstrate substantive Palestinian nationalism in the early Mandatory period, Khalidi writes that," Local patriotism could not yet be described as nation-state nationalism."<16>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_nationalism


Palestinian nationalism has its roots in the early 20th century, when it was widely viewed as a form of Arab nationalism. Reeling from 400 years of regressive Ottoman rule, Palestinians identified with the Arab goal of liberation from the Ottomans and their backwardness. Hence, it was not uncommon during World War I for Arab nationalists to ally themselves with the British who were fighting the Ottomans.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daoud-kuttab/palestinian-nationalism-r_b_277143.html

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

18. Just because they were previously part of an empire they cannot now be a state?

America was part of the British empire before it was a state. It's the people themselves who decide what they are.

[Arkana]

21. Oh, Newt.

I really hope you never become President because the sight of you sucking the Israeli PM's dick on TV might be too much to bear.

[coalition_unwilling]

25. The dark truth and irony behind the evangelical base for Newt's 'Greater

Israel' fantasies is that that evangelical base nurtures a deep and historically situated anti-semitism.

Specifically, the 'End Times' eschatology envisions only 144,000 Jews ascending to Heaven. The remainder are left on earth as non-believers to suffer deaths of excruciating agony.

[Boojatta]

34. Is it irony?

He seems to be encouraging armed conflict, not peace. Israel would be involved in the armed conflict, so some Israelis would be killed, and some Israelis would be injured.

If a person encouraged both sides of some conflict to fight and sold weapons to both sides, then would you call that person "even-handed"?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. "Americans" are also an invented people.

Newt the "historian", apparently believes that history began in 1948.

[Viva_Daddy]

27. and so are Corporations

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

29. LOL! And, they are the true "Chosen People".

[azurnoir]

24. Newt's version of the Jordan option n/t

[treestar]

32. Americans are an invented people too

Patched together as it were.

I really hate that concept that the Palestinians could simply have moved to neighboring countries. Countries don't have to take anyone. And the Palestinians had a right to stay where they were.