I guess he’s historically correct. But what will it portend? At this point, the Palestinians exist. Someone mentioned that “they” got booted out of Kuwait for supporting Saddam. “They” means Palestinians.
The same UN that gave Israel international political legitimacy has given the Palestinians political legitimacy. It’s a scholarly matter but how does it break in terms of Real Politik?
How much of the world was shaped by the Brits (and other colonists)? For example, how man artificial African countries often encompassing warring tribes were pressed into states? Or what the hell was Yugoslavia? What’s a European? From a cultural standpoint they are inventions. Okay, they were invented, but now what?
Is Newt scoring easy rhetorical points with the Jews and Evangelicals?
And if you really want to start going down that road, you can just as easily claim that "American" is an invention, a group of disparate immigrant groups amalgamated by sole virtue of a piece of paper (or a couple of pieces of paper) out of whole cloth in territory seized from Britain or from the native population, for which there is no historical basis before 1776.
You make good points, Youaskedfor it.
If Newt claims the Palis are an ‘invented’ people, does he also say who invented them?
I would say, as contained in your post, a great deal of credit could be given to the British. In fact, most of what we see as ‘countries’ in the Middle East were invented by the British, including Israel.
The British ruled the Palestinian region by mandate of the U.N. before the Jewish settlers won and established the state of Israel. The Jews themselves referred to the land as Palestine before they settled on the name Israel.
I don’t recall how far back the Arabic people lived in Palestine, but they were there in 1948.
Arabs reside IN Israel also. However, their citizenship status is different from Jews.
I’m sure that Newt, being the college professor he is, is aware of the history but he knows evangelicals are not. They have invented Israel in their own romanticized way. Israelis are more realistic and most -— even the most Zionist -— would not agree with Gingrich.