Gingrich: Palestinians are an "invented" people

Read: Washington Post 9-December-2011

Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich said in a cable television interview that Palestininans are an “invented” people with no apparent right to their own state, a rejection of a decade of bipartisan U.S. foreign policy calling for an independent Palestinian state.

“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.”

 His remarks drew much criticism from all over the world. It is certainly a line of thought against the grain of popularly held opinions but is Gingrich wrong? Not at all.

Hoover Institution's Daniel Pipes insists that Gingrich was right in what he said (read here). He commented that

Everyone from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: No Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as “Palestinian” until 1920, when, in rapid order, this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine.

Furthermore, this is supported by the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Zalman Shoval, in that even the Palestinians know this fact (read here). However, since the 1940s, the turn of events regarding the propaganda of the Palestinians have overtaken the historical truths. The "invented" Palestinians are here to stay.

Would it be surprising to say that Gingrich is the first US leader who dared tell the truth about this? In this 21st Century, even in America, being politically accepted is to avoid telling the truth like this.

Kudos to Gingrich! Hopefully, it should stir us to find out more about the Palestinians.

(To find out more about the Palestinians from a biblical perspective, check out "Who are the Palestinians?" study - coming soon!)