December 11, 2011, - 1:44 pm
Newt Gingrich Absolutely Right About Invented “Palestinians” But. . .: The Debate & Grover
The outrage over Newt Gingrich’s spot-on comments about the Palestinians being an invented people is enlightening. At last night’s Republican debate, it was revealing that both Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum took issue with those comments. It shows that they are either completely ignorant or total cowards. And that Gingrich is not. And I can say the same for the fraud, Liz Cheney, who today, on FOX News Sunday took issue with Gingrich over the comments. While she tries to portray herself as an anti-jihadist hawk today, in the Bush State Department working on Mid-East issues, Liz Cheney was tough on Israel, demanding an end to settlements, and pushing Israel to negotiate, just like the Obama State Department. She is an ignoramus, too (and in the past year, she also incorrectly called Afghanistan an Arab country).
There’s This . . .
But Then There’s This . . .
In fact, if you look at who the “Palestinians” were on the 1926 “Palestinian Chess Team,” they were men with Jewish Hebrew names, like Shlomo and Yitzchak and Yaakov. If you look at who the members of the Palestinian forces that helped the Allied forces fight the Nazis in World War II, they were also men with Jewish Hebrew names, like Avraham and Ze’ev and Zvi. I have a large collection of “Palestinian” memorabilia from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and on all of it, the term “Palestinian” referred to Jews, and Jews only. Not Arabs. Not Muslims. No one named Mohammed or Ahmed or Faisal. There simply were no so-called “Palestinians” who were Arab and/or Muslim in those days because those who call themselves “Palestinian today” were largely nomadic Arabs from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and elsewhere looking for work. And when Jews made the mistake of providing it (instead of doing the work themselves), they came to what is now Israel to take the work and get paid. Additionally, the majority of those who can even make a quasi-legitimate claim to being “Palestinian” live in the real “Palestine,” Jordan, which refuses to give them power.
The Liz Cheneys and Mitt Romneys of the world are either grossly ignorant of these facts, or, worse, choose deliberately to ignore them. And I’m glad Gingrich had the courage to double down on this at last night’s debate and speak about how it’s time a Western leader had the courage to point out the real history. The BS argument now put forth by detractors–that there was no Syria, Jordan, etc. at the time of the Ottoman empire–is hardly an argument, because it’s yet another fact underlining the state of Arabs: that there was one Arab people artificially created into some Arab states, though they really had no cultural or linguistic differences, and the same goes for the so-called modern “Palestinian” people.
But, before you give him a giant pat on the back for all of this, remember that this wasn’t as much about being courageous as it was about getting Evangelical Christian votes. Evangelicals–a large part of Iowa Caucuses participation–look suspiciously upon Gingrich for his multiple wives and cheating and for his conversion away from them to Catholicism, not to mention his flip-flops on key core issues of conservatism, such as statist healthcare and global warming. But they care a lot about Israel–far more, sadly, than most American Jews do. It’s a key issue for them. And with Gingrich’s statements, he scored a homerun with them and underscored Mitt Romney’s wishy-washiness on the issue.
And, while Israel is the one issue on which Gingrich has never flip-flopped, can you trust him not to do the same on Israel? No, you can’t. And here’s why:
To date, Gingrich maintains his tight friendship with the largest force for Muslims in the Republican Party, Grover Norquist, who supports and took a ton of money from jihadists and front-groups for HAMAS and Al-Qaeda. Gingrich and Norquist were so close that, when Newt was speaker, Norquist joined him on his daily early morning walk up and down the Capitol Mall. This is a relationship solidified for decades. We already saw the damage the relationship between Norquist and Karl Rove caused in bringing jihadists into the Bush White House (including a Bush White House position for Suhail Khan, son of an Al-Qaeda fundraiser who brought Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri into the U.S. to raise money at mosques). Imagine the damage when the President, himself, is a Grover acolyte.
And that’s not even mentioning Gingrich’s tight friendship with Al Sharpton, who isn’t just anti-Israel, but caused two different riots against the Jews–one at which he called Jews, “Zionist interlopers” and caused the deaths of seven people at Freddy’s Fashion Mart, and another at which Sharpton caused the murder of Yankel Rosenbaum, a Chassidic Jew, in Crown Heights. After 9/11, Al Sharpton–with the help of his publicity-seeking, sell-out court Jew friends, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and Rabbi Mark Schneier–convinced the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations that he had changed, now understood Israel’s fight against terrorism, and got them to bankroll a first-class trip for Al and his entourage to Israel, complete with suites at the King David Hotel. On Sharpton’s first day in Israel, when he was scheduled to meet with Jewish victims of the Palestinian terrorist attack at the Dolphinarium Disco, Sharpton canceled that and instead met with terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat and alleged “Palestinian victims of terrorism.” That’s Newt’s friends, with whom he remains so close that he called Sharpton on his MSNBC show to wish him a happy birthday. This is in addition to amnesty for illegal alien Muslims who’ve been here for 25 years, something Newt announced he wants to do. (He spoke of people going to the same church for 25 years, but there’s no way he can exclude people who went the same extremist mosque (repetitive phrase) for 25 years.)
Sometimes–most of the time–people will say anything to get elected. And Newt is no exception. Both he and Michele Bachmann told the Republican Jewish Coalition (an organization that has shamefully embraced the most anti-Israel, anti-Semitic Republicans it can find) that they’d move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. You know who else said that? George H.W. Bush, who went on to make James “F-ck the Jews” Baker his Secretary of State. Bill Clinton, who also promised his White House would have the first kosher kitchen (more BS that never happened). Al Gore. George W. Bush. But none of them moved the embassy, nor will Newt. Only Bachmann might have the courage to actually do it.
Will Newt Gingrich pledge to sever ties with Grover Norquist and Al Sharpton in a Gingrich White House? No, he won’t. And that’s why his talk on the Palestinians is just like all talk: cheap. You have to connect the dots here. And a man who is really tough on the Palestinians and genuinely pro-Israel is not a man who is tight with Norquist and Sharpton helping them empower Muslims and Jew-haters on U.S. soil.
So, will Newt Gingrich in a Gingrich White House be as tough as he says he will on the Palestinians? Despite my cheering his comments about the issue while I watched last night’s debate, I don’t count on it. And neither should you.
***
And, for the record, Mitt Romney’s comments in response, last night, telegraphed to us, he definitely won’t be good on the issue, either. He’s as trustworthy as Gingrich, as in not very. Yes, both candidates are better than Obama (and I will vote for whichever one is the nominee, though I will still vote for Bachmann in the Michigan Primary), but not by nearly enough. Plus the U.S. position on record is for a Palestinian state, and unless the new occupant of the White House reverses course, there isn’t a lot of wiggle room to veer away from Obama. The only person who has been consistent on Israel and the issue of jihad on all fronts is Michele Bachmann, and she missed an opportunity, last night, to say she agrees with Gingrich’s statement (she stayed away from saying so) and pointing out his dangerous friendships with Grover Norquist and Al Sharpton.
Additionally, there is no way to unring the bell and undo the damage that 12 years of Bush-Obama “democracy for the Muslim world BS” did. That is everlasting and has undone the stability of the Middle East and the safety and security of Israel forever.
Tags: Al Sharpton, Barack Obama, Evangelical Christians, GOP debate, Grover Norquist, invented Palestinians, invented people, Iowa Caucauses, Israel, Jewish, Jews, Liz Cheney, Middle East, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Palestine, Palestinian, Palestinians, Palestinians an invented people, The Jewish Channel, video
Debbie I thought MB did really well last nite with her ‘Newt Romney’ line of attack. But she doesn’t seem presidential to me and I thought it was odd that her husband brought his boyfriend to sit with him at the debate. Santorum seems like a righteous, philosemitic Gentile but he just isn’t that good on TV.
A1 on December 11, 2011 at 2:03 pm