Monday, December 12, 2011

Thank you, Newt Gingrich

Dr. Haim Shine

Leading Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich recently said that the Palestinians were an "invented" people. Some say that the "invention" of the Palestinians is more dangerous than the explosives invented by Alfred Nobel. It blows up buses, murders entire families while they celebrate Passover and slays youngsters waiting to enter a nightclub. Ironically, it is for this invention that Yasser Arafat, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres won the Nobel Peace Prize. Gingrich is not the first person to express this simple truth. Golda Meir said it before him, sparking a deluge of contempt from the Left, accusing her of arrogance and superficial thinking. I am convinced that Gingrich too will not be spared the contempt of Democratic liberal Jews who always seem to know better than Israelis what is best for Israel.

The Morning Song by Amir Gilboa that states, "Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning, he feels he is a nation, and he begins to walk," is wrong. Certainly in reference to a group of people that calls out "Allahu Akbar" every time they see a Jew. A feeling is not enough to constitute a nation. Several other objective conditions need to be met.

The Palestinians are not a nation, they never were, nor will they be in the future. They have one collective objective: to destroy the Jewish state and reclaim its land for the Arabs, who have more than 20 countries between them. All through modern history the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected any deal that would recognize Israel as a Jewish state or provide two states for two peoples. So it was with the Camp David autonomy plan, with the Oslo Accords and in response to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan speech [in which he endorsed a two-state solution].

It is important that the world be made aware, as Israel's citizens are aware, that the Arabs known as Palestinians have no unique characteristics that could unite them ethnically, historically, religiously or linguistically. The people known as Palestinians are in no way different from the Arab people inhabiting the entire Middle East. Their religion is Islam, their language is Arabic and their ancestry is the same. The people who call themselves Palestinian are descendants of Bedouin tribes that migrated to Israel mainly in the 18th and 19th centuries and settled in different areas of the land.

Between the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and up until the 1967 Six-Day War the Palestinians showed no real interest in founding a sovereign Palestinian nation. In Judea and Samaria they viewed themselves as loyal citizens of Jordan and in Gaza they saw themselves as Egyptians. In 1964, when the Palestinian Liberation Organization was established, none of the founders spoke about a Palestinian state. The organization's only goal was to annihilate the state of Israel.

On November 15, 1988, when PLO leaders announced the establishment of a Palestinian state, their declaration of independence said "The state of Palestine is an Arab state, an integral and indivisible part of the Arab nation, at one with that nation in heritage and civilization, with it also in its aspiration for liberation, progress, democracy and unity." This serves as the most reliable proof that there is no such thing as a Palestinian people.

Even after the Oslo Accords in 1993, PLO leaders insisted on a two-phase objective: removal of the Zionist enemy and Arab reunification – at the expense of the state of Israel.

Thank you Newt Gingrich for the concise and informative lesson in modern history. Fortunately, nowadays, more and more people are recognizing the link between leadership and truth.

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