Posted on 12/10/2011 9:40:02 AM PST by Scanian
JERUSALEM - Palestinian officials are reacting with dismay to Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich's statement that they are an "invented" people.
The Jewish Channel on Friday released excerpts of an interview in which the former House Speaker said Palestinians were not a people because - unlike Israelis - they never had a state.
"Remember, there was no Palestine as a state," Gingrich said. "It was part of the Ottoman Empire.
"I think we have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and who are historically part of the Arab community, and they had a chance to go to many places, and for a variety of political reasons, we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s. It's tragic."
Palestinian official Nabil Abu Rdeneh on Saturday described Gingrich's comments as "unfortunate" and called him "ignorant".
The Palestinian prime minister, Salam Fayyad, demanded Gingrich "review history."
"From the beginning, our people have been determined to stay on their land," Fayyad said in comments carried by the Palestinian news agency Wafa. "This, certainly, is denying historical truths."
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
That sort of thing was true throughout the multi-national empires -- Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian. Many people described themselves merely as "local" or by religion. It's like that in places where nationalism hasn't yet taken root. After it has, you find people who are ready to kill and die for a concept of peoplehood or nationhood. That's regrettable, but you can't decide to freeze some groups in the state prevailing before national consciousness develops and grant national consciousness to others.
In both cases, the populations were historically very small as can be attested from numerous sources, most famously Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad. Written just 80 years before the founding of the state of Israel, Twains pilgrimage account describes a land appallingly desolate and depopulated.
Not the most informed or objective observer. Twain also saw Greece and Syria as desolate and depopulated. He was comparing ancient or desert lands to the America he knew and finding them uncultivated and underpopulated. He would have said the same thing about Ireland or Norway if he'd visited there. That doesn't mean he was right.
If you attempt to go further back in time, you find no evidence at all that there was any homogeneous constant settlement in the land, except for the pitifully poor and oft persecuted Jewish communities which stayed on throughout the centuries going back to the days of the Temple.
So they were all transients and nomads? That seems quite unlikely, certainly in terms of what you yourself write about the two groups. Perhaps you're putting too much importance on homogeneity or defining homogeneity in some perverse way.
But my point is, once national consciousness develops it takes on a life of its own. The argument that, say, Ukranians or East Timoreans or Bosnians or Kosovars, aren't legitimately a people doesn't carry much weight once consciousness of nationhood or peoplehood develops.
In so far as there is a sovereign Palestinian state in Jordan, the issue is not whether there should be A Palestinian state, but whether there should be 1, 2, or 3 and what the borders should be. It also creates a new perspective. There are plenty of landless peoples, the Palestinians are not one of these.
Noot's "things to do" list:
1) Review history.
Oh wait, he's a history professor.
They're so stupid, they think the Kentucky Derby is a hat.
They're so stupid, they think the English Channel is a British T.V. station.
They're so stupid, they think the St. Louis Cardinals are appointed by the Pope.
They're so stupid, they won't let their daughters go to college because they heard that the students have to show their professors their thesis.
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Palestinians are the trash of the trash of the trash. They are arabs...which means trash. Even the trash does not want them. The trash does not want them in their trash pile, they want them to create a new trash pile. Send them to Jordan and Egypt, trash trash trash trash trash and a child raping turd called alla will make it complete.
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