h/t Gates of Vienna
US presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich (whose Lazarus-like trajectory to the Republican nomination I flagged up here a month ago) has recently demonstrated yet again Melanie’s First Rule of Modern Political Discourse – the more obvious the truth that you utter, the more explosive and abusive the reaction.
...So just what did he say? This:
‘ “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state — (it was) part of the Ottoman Empire. I think we have an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and historically part of the Arab community and they had the chance to go many places...” ’
But of course, he is absolutely correct. As Elder of Ziyon pointed out, the Arabs who lived in Palestine were a disconnected bunch of tribes who had nothing in common with each other except that they were Arabs. They never were, are not and never will be a Palestinian people (the claim that they are now just because they say they are is risible and would be dismissed out of hand if applied to any other self-defined grouping). There is not and never has been any ‘Palestinian’ Arab culture, language, religion or national identity separate from that of the wider Arab nation. ‘Palestinianism’ was invented solely to destroy Israel. The one and only characteristic of this spurious ‘national’ identity is the aim of destroying another -- authentic -- national identity.
One that makes Europeans, and all properly credentialed Americans, sick to their stomachs |