An Invented People?

S

Satchel

2,500+ Posts
Invented? Really? Newt The Bomb Thrower was in rare form in last night's GOP debate. Going against established US policy, he took to smearing all Palestinians and vowed to add more to it before taking anything back. From the Guardian:

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the comments were an incitement to terror. "These statements of Gingrich's will be the ammunitions and weapons of the Bin Ladens and the extremists for a long, long time," he told CNN.

Speaking from Ramallah on Sunday, Ghassan Khatib, a senior Palestinian Authority official, said Gingrich's position indicated an alarming swing towards extremism among Republicans and revealed a trend within American politics towards partisan posturing on the Middle East that could only damage the peace process. "America is already suffering from criticism of not being impartial. Such an extreme position from a presidential candidate only adds to this perception," Khatib said. "This incident has seriously damaged the credibility of the United States."

While the US Congress has raised alarm among Palestinians by threatening to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority if it pursues a reconciliation with Hamas, Gingrich is swimming against the tide of official US policy, which advocates a two-state solution. He is also at odds with the opinion of all but the most extreme elements of Israeli society.

While the Israeli prime minister's office refused to issue a formal position on Gingrich's comments, which it claims are a matter of internal US politics, Binyamin Netanyahu, who leads a rightwing coalition government, has recognised the Palestinian people. Netanyahu advocates a peace agreement that would see the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel and has recently insisted he will not annex Palestinian territory in the West Bank.
The Link
 
Leading Palestinian officials have rounded on the Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich for his description of Palestinians as an "invented" people and "terrorists". The Republican frontrunner insisted at a candidate debate on Saturday – to warm applause from the audience – that "these people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They have textbooks that say, if there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left? We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. "It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, enough lying about the Middle East."
 
Yes, calling a spade a spade can be harsh.

Keep in mind that if you sympathize with the cause of the terrorists just a bit or if you don't, they still want you dead.
 
Newt's view of history is distorted, as always, by political considerations.

There were no nation states in the area until after WW I, when the europeans carved the Ottoman empire up to suit their needs.

The area we call Palestine was not passed out to any of the warlords and the Brits kept it as a mandate. NObody could figure out what to do with it and zionists kept moving in with an aim towards creating a jewish national home, which was promised to them by the brits, who were also promising it to the arabs.

Palestine was not part of egypt or the kingdom of jordan or syria or lebanon.

To say the arab residents of palestine were egyptians, jordanians, etc. is less true than to say the israelis are germans, poles, russians, americans, ethiopians or french, which is where a goodly number of them were living before
ww II.

Arabs were living in Palestine throughout the Ottoman period and a lot of them got thrown out after 1948.

Newt is sucking up to the protestant fundamentalists and american jews.

And he is prejudicing our government's ability to maneuver in the area. He probably doesn't know it and for sure doesn't care. When is somebody going to call these guys for their near treasonous behaviour?

They are nothing but mouthpieces for Netanyahu's party and throw over their own country's interest to toe his line in order to garner votes from lunatics like John Hagee.
 
I lived and worked in Abu Dhabi for a year in the mid 90's. I still remember the attitude of utter disregard the local emirates people had for "palestinians". They were even below the pakistanis, indians and bangladeshis who were on the lower rungs of social structure. The order was:

1. citizens of UAE (you had to be born there or both of your parents had to be UAE born citizens)
2. saudis, qataris, bahrainis, omanis
3. americans, europeans
4. yemenis, libyans
5.a. pakis, indians - doctors, engineers, managers
5.b. rest of the pakis, indians, bangladeshis, sri lankans
5.c.Lebanes, palestinians
6. philipino female workers

So much for islam being a "tolerant" religion and of equality. (my @$$).

just my 2 cents.
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I am not interested in carving up Israel, I am interested in coming to an agreement that will make all sides equally angry but willing to live with it.

By zionists, I was referring to the european movement to return european jews to the land where they originated and were thrown out of a couple of thousand years ago. I am aware that there were jewish people living in what is now Israel for centuries.

The area we call Palestine has been occupied by lots of different peoples over the centuries and the ones who were living there in the 1940s are the ones with the grievance. A lot of them got kicked out, just as a lot of jews got kicked out of Poland and Germany and France and Russia and are now being run out of arab/muslim lands.

Aint fair to them, is it? Wasn't fair to the arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 either.

For Giingrich to single them out as an invented people is about as legit as calling the european jews who have migrated to Israel since 1945 as an invented people. Austrian jews from 1945 were not citizens of Israel and most had never been there. They are Israelis now. Are they an invented people?

Why should the grandkids of arabs who lived in Palestine in 1948 or on the west bank in 1967 not be considered citizens of the land where they were residing?

Are Comanches no longer Americans, just because the land they lived on is now in Texas?

As for my historical view being shaped by my politics, I would suggest it is rather the reverse. Over the decades my politics has been roiled considerably by reading an enormous amount of history, and not just the junk on the best sellers lists. Most of the history I read is recommended by historians with specialties in their fields and not by demogoguic politicians like Newt or the Kennedy manufacturing entities.

I admire Israel more than any other country in the world except my own and Costa Rica; I want it to survive and to continue serving as an example of how a desert can bloom if tended to properly. There are a lot of arabs/muslims who, silently, feel the same way.

Israel has been lucky so far in its wars but it can win all of them but one and still be destroyed. Israel needs peace worse than anybody over there. It has accomplished that with Egypt and Jordan and depending on who is running the place, Lebanon.

It faces huge obstacles in Syria and Iran and they are not assisted when American pols who would be president swish around claiming the palestinians don't even exist.

It may sound good to the Likudniks and the Pastor Hagees but is hugely counterproductive in dealing with people we need to be convincing that we are not their enemies.
 
I applaud Newt for what he said- but, perhaps it was said in bad forum. Newt would make a decent History professor at a mid-tier University- he would be entertaining and frank about the past.

History is full of uncomfortable events- from our country's treatment of the Native Americans to certainly the Middle East. A historian has a duty to be direct and honest about it. A potential world leader however may want to add some tact and modesty should he want to broker treaties with the same parties.

It would be as if we wanted to sign a trade deal with Angela Merkel of Germany and then brought up that her country was a real dick 70 years ago. Technically we're correct, but perhaps ineffective at achieving results today.

Views on Newt as a job creator, a trustworthy person, and someone able to work with Democrats are very different than one comment he made in a historical context. While I applaud him for this- he did it in the wrong forum- and I don't want him as a leader for many other reasons not related to this topic.
 
Newt as mid tier college prof? I doubt any would hire him if this expressed view ... which is pretty simplistic and shallow and doesn't reveal much understanding of modern nation state building .... is symbolic of his view of the things. Not even Aggie.
 
Nothing new about Newt's statement or position.

Standard Neo-con fare as concocted by the Israeli lobby and their friends such a Fieth and Pearl.

This is a tact for people who want to cloud the history of the area for particular purposes, namely manipulating the ignorant and the stupid.
 
Are the Iraqis an invented people, too? (Since the modern nation of Iraq didn't existing prior to WWI and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire).
 
Aren't we all pretty much "invented" people?

Anybody with half a functioning brain running for President wouldn't have said anything close to what Newt said. The man is a loose cannon.
 
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