Palestinians slam Gingrich as "ignorant"

CBS News ^ | 12/10/2011 | Staff

[x]

One, town and village dwellers who defined themselves nationally, if at all, as subjects of the Ottoman empire and religiously, culturally and ethnically as Arab, primarily muslim.

That sort of thing was true throughout the multi-national empires -- Ottoman, Russian, Austro-Hungarian. Many people described themselves merely as "local" or by religion. It's like that in places where nationalism hasn't yet taken root. After it has, you find people who are ready to kill and die for a concept of peoplehood or nationhood. That's regrettable, but you can't decide to freeze some groups in the state prevailing before national consciousness develops and grant national consciousness to others.

In both cases, the populations were historically very small as can be attested from numerous sources, most famously Mark Twain in “Innocents Abroad”. Written just 80 years before the founding of the state of Israel, Twain’s pilgrimage account describes a land appallingly desolate and depopulated.

Not the most informed or objective observer. Twain also saw Greece and Syria as desolate and depopulated. He was comparing ancient or desert lands to the America he knew and finding them uncultivated and underpopulated. He would have said the same thing about Ireland or Norway if he'd visited there. That doesn't mean he was right.

If you attempt to go further back in time, you find no evidence at all that there was any homogeneous constant settlement in the land, except for the pitifully poor and oft persecuted Jewish communities which stayed on throughout the centuries going back to the days of the Temple.

So they were all transients and nomads? That seems quite unlikely, certainly in terms of what you yourself write about the two groups. Perhaps you're putting too much importance on homogeneity or defining homogeneity in some perverse way.

But my point is, once national consciousness develops it takes on a life of its own. The argument that, say, Ukranians or East Timoreans or Bosnians or Kosovars, aren't legitimately a people doesn't carry much weight once consciousness of nationhood or peoplehood develops.

[rmlew]

The division between "Palestinian" and Jordanian is entirely fictitious. Until the 1920's, Palestinians and Jordanians thought of themselves as "Sham", that is to say part of Greater Syria. It was only when the French and British divided up the area, that the Palestinian Arab identity was created as opposition to Jewish settlement. And even then, until the 1970s, there was no real difference between Palestinians and Jordanians. Remember that in the late 1970s, the PLO tried to take over Jordan on the grounds that everyone there except for the Hashemites and other Hijaz migrants from the 1920s were Palestinian.

In so far as there is a sovereign Palestinian state in Jordan, the issue is not whether there should be A Palestinian state, but whether there should be 1, 2, or 3 and what the borders should be. It also creates a new perspective. There are plenty of landless peoples, the Palestinians are not one of these.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

The Palestinian prime minister, Salami Faygad, demanded Gingrich "review history."

Noot's "things to do" list:

1) Review history.

Oh wait, he's a history professor.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

These ignorant Philistines use a map that does not have the country of Israel on it.

They're so stupid, they think the Kentucky Derby is a hat.

They're so stupid, they think the English Channel is a British T.V. station.

They're so stupid, they think the St. Louis Cardinals are appointed by the Pope.

They're so stupid, they won't let their daughters go to college because they heard that the students have to show their professors their thesis.

[SJackson]

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[coon2000]

Palestinians are the trash of the trash of the trash. They are arabs...which means trash. Even the trash does not want them. The trash does not want them in their trash pile, they want them to create a new trash pile. Send them to Jordan and Egypt, trash trash trash trash trash and a child raping turd called alla will make it complete.