re: "Newt Gingrich and the "Invented" Palestinian People"

Prof. Daniel Pipes at DanielPipes.Org ("the Internet's most accessed sources of specialized information on the Middle East and Islam") shares Prof. Gingrich's love of history.

Money quote(s):

"The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and current Republican presidential candidate said yesterday that "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." "

Pretty much factual, although the last bit is a little questionable, given how many Palestinian Arabs have been marooned in U.N. refugee camps for generations, as a matter of policy.

"(H)e 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."

The thing about inventions is that, successful or unsuccesful, they don't ever get un-invented.





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