Candidate’s claim that Palestinians are “invented” people is reprehensible and desperate ploy for political gain

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(CHICAGO 12/11/2011) – The American Muslims for Palestine, the leading national grassroots organization educating people about Palestine and its rich cultural and historical heritage, today denounce comments made Friday by Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich that Palestinians are an ‘invented' people.

Gingrich, whose own campaign has sputtered along in irrelevancy until information gaffes and allegations of sexual misconduct sidelined at least two other GOP hopefuls, is now trying to become his party’s front-runner by pandering for the extreme, far-right pro-Israel Jewish vote. In doing so, Gingrich – in opposition to stated U.S. policy that recognizes Palestinians and declares they deserve a state of their own -- trotted out a tired, age-old myth, long since disproven, that Palestinians as a national entity have never existed.

A history teacher by training, it is sadly ironic that he would summarily dismiss the existence of a people whose well-documented history in the region is thousands of years old. That he’s made these comments for political gain is both reprehensible and an affront to Palestinians and all who sincerely seek peace in the Middle East. The Torah and the Bible refer to Palestine as Philistine, which is similar to the Arabic word for the state – Falasteen. The British referred to Palestine in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which gave support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Gingrich claims Palestinians lived under the Ottoman Empire as Arabs without a unique national identity. He handily ignores the established fact that there were no Arab nation-states during this empire because they were all part of the Ottoman Muslim state. He overlooks the fact that coinciding with the decline of the Ottoman Empire was the rise in Arab nationalism, which resulted in the establishment of individual nation-states. Palestinians themselves called for their own state in the early 1900s after the treachery of Great Britain and France relegated them once more to occupation under the British.

Gingrich has shown us that he is willfully rewriting history to further his own political agenda. His comments run anathema to the mainstream Jewish American perspective. Indeed, the Jewish reporter, Steven I. Weiss, to whom Gingrich spoke, said he was surprised by the candidate’s remarks, saying he’s found similar sentiments among the “far-right” pro-Israel communities but never among mainstream American politicians. That the former Speaker of the House would also contradict stated and long-standing U.S. policy that recognizes the Palestinian people and their right for a state of their own is extremely troubling. Gingrich shows that he is more interested in his own election than he is in upholding American policy.

The Palestinians are a courageous and steadfast people, who have lived in Palestine for thousands of years. The Palestinians have been made resilient by generation upon generation of occupation. And today, as AMP denounces Gingrich for his self-serving comments, we continue to stand with the Palestinians who are currently suffering under Israeli occupation. We stand in solidarity and in honor of the thousands who have perished at the hands Israeli Occupation Forces and with those who are bravely facing the occupier with non-violent resistance.