Jennifer Hanin . com

Decem­ber 24, 2011 • BigPeace.com

Some­how, left-leaning jour­nal­ists just can’t twist the truth enough to put a dent in the cam­paign of pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Newt Gin­grich. All polls show Gin­grich gain­ing. Yet some are des­per­ately try­ing to change that. Now, self-professed Pales­tin­ian jour­nal­ist Daoud Kut­tab is recap­ping anti-Israel New York Times jour­nal­ist Thomas Friedman’s hate in the Huff­in­g­ton Post at Israel’s expense, and fail­ing to turn the tide against Gingrich’s campaign.

Gin­grich deliv­ered some bold com­ments about Pales­tini­ans being “invented peo­ple”. Low and below the belt? Absolutely not. Let’s be hon­est, Gin­grich had the courage to refute the Pales­tin­ian nar­ra­tive and tell the truth. His­tory shows there has never been a “Pales­tin­ian peo­ple” and the notion of one only gained pop­u­lar­ity around 1967 — nearly two decades after Jews re-inhabited their home­land of Judea and Samaria (now Israel) in 1948. More facts Fried­man and Kut­tab will likely ignore is that in 1947 the UN already par­ti­tioned the same land in ques­tion into two states: one Arab and one Jew­ish.

Gin­grich also knows his­tor­i­cal evi­dence con­firms Israel existed as nation as early as1300 BCE, some two thou­sand years before Islam. Yet there has never been ANY evi­dence of a Pales­tin­ian nation. Sim­ply put, if there is no his­tor­i­cal evi­dence to sep­a­rate Pales­tini­ans from Arabs then Pales­tini­ans ARE Arabs. The fact is there has never been an authen­tic Pales­tin­ian lan­guage, a dis­tinct Pales­tin­ian cul­ture, Pales­tin­ian cur­rency (except while under British Man­date) or even land once ruled by Pales­tini­ans. These facts would give any his­to­rian pause, and it did with Gin­grich, who used it as an oppor­tu­nity to set the record straight. Gin­grich had to address the Pales­tin­ian nar­ra­tive head-on. For that he should be applauded not ridiculed.

While Kut­tab pro­filed a response from PLO exec­u­tive com­mit­tee mem­ber, Hanan Ashrawi, who called Newt’s state­ment “igno­rant and racist,” it appears Ashrawi and Kut­tab have no basis for these vile and defam­a­tory com­ments. The only peo­ple being igno­rant about whether Pales­tini­ans his­tory is “real” ver­sus “invented” are Pales­tini­ans and their sup­port­ers, includ­ing those keep­ing lies alive like Fried­man and Kut­tab. There is noth­ing racist about call­ing Pales­tini­ans Arabs.

Kut­tab tries his best to con­vince read­ers that Gin­grich con­tra­dicts the Israeli government’s posi­tion by pro­fil­ing Gingrich’s com­ment that Pales­tini­ans are “invented peo­ple.” He even cuts and pastes a let­ter signed by then Prime Min­is­ter of Israel, Yitzhak Rabin as his “proof,” which laid the ground­work for mutual recog­ni­tion between Israel and the PLO (these became the Oslo Accords in Sep­tem­ber 13, 1993).

But let’s be real about this, too. These self-proclaimed “Pales­tini­ans” upset about Gingrich’s com­ments are the same group that has repeat­edly denounced the Oslo Accords and tried to make it null and void. They are also the same group that is respon­si­ble for launch­ing a global boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) cam­paign against Israel, and an ongo­ing ter­ror cam­paign that has blan­keted the Jew­ish State with well over 12,000 mis­siles from Gaza. They are the same group that has refused mak­ing peace with seven Israeli admin­is­tra­tions. The Oslo Accords, much like Camp David, came about with Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion to end Arab (Pales­tin­ian) vio­lence towards Israelis. It was an attempt to end the mis­siles and sui­cide bomb­ings tar­get­ing Israelis while help­ing Arabs (Pales­tini­ans) lead more pro­duc­tive lives.

It’s pal­pa­ble to notice how Fried­man and Kut­tab never men­tion the immense vio­lence prop­a­gated by “Pales­tini­ans” against Israelis. Since 2000, 1,218 Israelis have been killed from Pales­tin­ian vio­lence and ter­ror­ism. This is another fact that respon­si­ble jour­nal­ists can’t ignore.

Instead, Ashrawi and Kut­tab have both done a lame job of sug­gest­ing Newt’s com­ments will spring­board Israelis into a new trade: eth­nic cleans­ing of Pales­tini­ans. Hmm. Per­haps we should ask the friend’s of the Fogal of fam­ily of five who were slaugh­tered in their own home by Pales­tin­ian extrem­ists on March 11, 2011. Truth be told, Pales­tini­ans have engaged in erratic forms of eth­nic cleans­ing against Jews and Israelis for decades. If their mis­siles were more pre­cise and their bomb attempts didn’t expe­ri­ence occa­sional hic­cups, Israelis would more to worry about.

Hon­estly, if dis­placed Arabs had called them­selves Tran­sjor­da­ni­ans instead of Pales­tini­ans the peace­mak­ing strat­egy on the Amer­i­can side as ally would be no dif­fer­ent. It must be noted that the 22 Arab coun­tries in the region have done noth­ing to assist “Pales­tini­ans” in any way. By refus­ing to grant them cit­i­zen­ship, they have used them as pawns to con­tinue the conflict.

Kut­tab imples that Fried­man is accu­rate when he claimed Repub­li­cans are “out-loving Israel to death.” Fried­man implies that if Pales­tini­ans were not a nation (which, BTW they aren’t), then the US nom­i­nee is either sup­port­ing an apartheid sys­tem, eth­nic cleans­ing of Pales­tini­ans or lay­ing the foun­da­tion for a bi-national state.

This is pure rub­bish. Fried­man and Kut­tab are sen­sa­tion­al­ists and are wrong on all accounts. All Gin­grich said is that the Pales­tini­ans are Arabs. Period. Fried­man did a bang-up job of fic­tion­al­iz­ing the mean­ing of Gingrich’s words, and incit­ing hatred and anti-Israel sen­ti­ment against Gin­grich, though.

For the record, Kut­tab is also wrong when he scolds Gin­grich for claim­ing the US gov­ern­ment funds text­books that teach Pales­tini­ans to hate Israel and Jews. The US is the biggest fun­der of United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNWRA sup­plies the Pales­tin­ian text­books that pur­port so much hatred towards Jews and Israelis. Gin­grich again wins the argu­ment. Sadly, that gigan­tic key at the entrance to UNWRA’s Aida Pales­tin­ian Refugee Camp near Beth­le­hem doesn’t do much to deter the false notion that all Pales­tini­ans (Arabs) hold the key to Israel (the key rep­re­sents the “right of return” and the lan­guage says “not for sale”). Instead, it just begs some­one to level with them.

So why are so many left-leaning “jour­nal­ists” upset by Gingrich’s com­ment?  Per­haps it’s because they sup­port the Pales­tin­ian nar­ra­tive that is base­less and blames big, bad Israel. No one should ever con­fuse Israel’s desire for peace with the vast fac­tual void sur­round­ing Pales­tini­ans. What group has ever needed a colos­sal key, text­books filled with hate and the huge lie that their DNA some­how grants them an eter­nal live-in-Israel-free pass? One built on lies, pro­pa­ganda and mis­aligned truths.

America’s desire for peace in the Mid­dle East is based on our com­mit­ment to help our allies end their ongo­ing vio­lence. As for the rest? Fried­man is doing what he does best: exer­cis­ing his self-loathing by pulling the anti-Israel char­iot weekly to the applause of his left-leaning audi­ence, who shun his­tory in lieu of fur­ther cement­ing the Pales­tin­ian nar­ra­tive. Kut­tab is fash­ion­ing a career after Fried­man by pay­ing trib­ute to the revi­sion­ist his­tory of Pales­tini­ans that Kut­tab inhaled his entire life until we gag. Me, I’d just like to set the record straight.

Photo credit: Rhonda Spivak

Related posts:

1. A Pales­tin­ian State: Jor­dan Anyone?