The Palestinians have hit a rough patch lately. Their
unilateral-statehood bid at the UN has collapsed. The United States
firmly opposed it, and even European powers on the Security Council
were lukewarm. Both the U.S. Congress and Israel — albeit
temporarily — have held up funding to the Palestinian Authority in
protest of its antics.
The Europeans, traditionally the Palestinians’ most avid
backers, are now so immersed in their own economic problems that
the psychological and ideological élan of Palestinian empowerment
may have weakened. Meanwhile, violent upheaval has beset Egypt,
Libya, Syria, Yemen, and other Arab countries — none of it
impelled in any way by the Palestinian issue. To continue claiming
that this issue is the crux of the region’s severe troubles — even
that it’s the reason Iran is building nukes — has been exposed as
starkly delusional. The fact that the Obama administration — as
indicated by
recent statements by Defense Secretary Leon
Panetta — still clings to the fantasy is one of the
reasons defeating it in the 2012 elections is an
imperative.
Speaking of which, Republican candidate Newt Gingrich has
now made waves by
calling the Palestinians an “invented” people. He
said as well that “it’s delusional to call it a peace process” and
that both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas “represent an
enormous desire to destroy Israel.” And,
further:
Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These
people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools. They
have textbooks that say “if there are 13 Jews and 9 Jews are
killed, how many Jews are left?” We pay for those textbooks through
our aid money. Time for somebody to say enough lying about the
Middle East.
Gingrich’s spokesman R.C. Hammond, however, said that
“Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and
the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between
Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian
state.”
It seemed a strange brew to speak of a negotiated peace
leading to statehood for an “invented,” “terrorist” people out to
destroy Israel. Is there any way to disentangle this?
One way could be not to put too much emphasis on the
“invented” notion. As Gingrich explained: “Remember there was no
Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire.” The
“Palestinian people,” he said, “are in fact Arabs, and were
historically part of the Arab community.”
All of which is true enough; while it is also true that
there are Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza, in cynically
sustained “refugee camps” in Syria and Lebanon, and in Jordan —
some in “camps,” some outside of them — who are called
Palestinians because it’s the most politically and demographically
accurate term for them. Something that has been invented — even
cynically invented — can exist.
More to the point is whether Gingrich’s words on the
Palestinians’ goals and nature are accurate. As for Hamas, an
“enormous desire to destroy Israel” is undeniable. Its charter says
that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will
obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,” and much
else in the same vein. In recent days Israelis have endured yet
another rocket
barrage from Hamas-run Gaza.
And as for the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, this
latest
video showing Israel as a loathsome, existentially
abhorred scorpion is only one of a constant
stream of such anti-Israeli, anti-Semitic, often
Nazi-style incitement flowing from the allegedly moderate entity.
Its leader, Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, in his UN speech last September
associated what he called the “Holy Land” with the
Prophet Muhammad and Jesus while obliterating any Jewish
connection. A
poll last July of both West Bank and Gaza Palestinians
found 73 percent favoring a genocidal anti-Jewish
hadith.
Teaching terrorism in schools? It’s
well documented, too.
Gingrich’s stark realism about the Palestinians, then,
doesn’t jibe with his spokesman’s disclaimer. Gingrich has also
pledged to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to
Jerusalem; as James Taranto points
out, other presidential candidates (namely Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush) have done the same without following
through.
Still, even if one can’t know to what extent a President
Gingrich would toe the line of candidate Gingrich, his tough
language on the Palestinians is unprecedented for a presidential
aspirant. At a time when the perverse Palestinian hold over the
Western mind may finally be weakening, that’s all to the
good.
