A view of Jericho, the \u201cCity of Palm Trees,\u201d in the heart of the Palestinian territory known as the \u201cWest Bank\u201d \u00a0\u00a0(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
This special column for the Deseret News<\/em> was published on 13 December 2011, and the comment to which I took exception back then is long and justly forgotten. \u00a0Still, it\u2019s conceivable that some will find the historical information in this little essay interesting and\/or helpful. \u00a0So I share it here:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Newt Gingrich presents himself as a thoughtful statesman distinguished from his rivals by his deep historical learning.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cRemember, there was no Palestine as a state,\u201d Gingrich told the Jewish Channel last week. \u201cIt was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we\u2019ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nChallenged during Saturday\u2019s Republican debate, Gingrich insisted that his comments were \u201cfactually correct\u201d and \u201chistorically true,\u201d declaring that \u201c\u2018Palestinian\u2019 did not become a common term until after 1977.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nPredictably, Palestinians and liberals have objected to his remarks. And, also predictably, many conservatives, staunch friends of Israel, have applauded what he himself has called his \u201ccourage to tell the truth.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nThere are, I think, relatively few politically conservative American Arabists. But I\u2019m one, and I reject Mr. Gingrich\u2019s declaration that Palestinians are merely an \u201cinvented people.\u201d His claim is not only needlessly provocative and inflammatory (in a region that scarcely needs inflaming) but false.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFirst of all, Arabs aren\u2019t fungible, as Gingrich implies. That is, they aren\u2019t interchangeable in the way one bushel of corn or bottle of Coke can easily be substituted for another. Morocco, Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt, Yemen, Iraq\u2014each differs from the others in cuisine, dialect, traditions, social structure, and political practices. There is no monolithic, undifferentiated \u201cArab community.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFew Americans would be comforted, if the United States were conquered by foreign invaders, to be told that they could just \u201cgo home\u201d to Johannesburg, Brisbane, or London. Americans aren\u2019t New Zealanders, nor are they Scots. Likewise, though they\u2019re all Arabs, Palestinians aren\u2019t Saudis, who aren\u2019t Algerians, who aren\u2019t Lebanese. They have separate histories and cultures.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u201cModern Standard Arabic\u201d is taught in schools and is the language of formal speech and almost all publishing. But the dialects spoken on Arab streets and in Arab homes\u2014unlike Brooklyn or Mississippi accents, and unlike Australian, North American, and British English\u2014constitute virtually separate languages. Moroccan Arabic, for instance, is almost incomprehensible to Iraqis (and, for that matter, to Egyptians and Palestinians). A quick on-line search will find many published books on the distinct grammars and vocabularies of Egyptian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Levantine Arabic, and Iraqi Arabic.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nSecond, while it\u2019s true that there was no Palestinian state under the Ottoman Empire, which officially fell only in late 1923, that signifies little. There was also no truly independent Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, or Jordan. The Ottoman Empire wasn\u2019t particularly supportive of nationalist sentiments among its subjects.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nArab nationalism emerged in the late nineteenth century, paralleling the Ottomans\u2019 long, slow decline. (The term nationalism<\/em> itself had been invented in Europe, where nationalistic movements first arose, only in the late eighteenth century.) It was part of the same broad trend that, in Europe, resulted in the unification of Italy and the creation of Germany (both in 1871) and inspired the Czechs Smetana (b. 1824) and Dvorak (b. 1841)) and the Norwegian Grieg (b. 1843) and the Finn Sibelius (b. 1865) to base great classical compositions upon the folk songs and tales of their homelands. (Early Arab nationalism from the time of the First World War is brilliantly depicted in David Lean\u2019s 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia<\/em>.) Zionism itself\u2014Jewish nationalism\u2014can be said to have been born with the publication of Theodor Herzl\u2019s The Jewish State<\/em> in 1896.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nThird, it\u2019s true that a specifically Palestinian identity is a relatively recent development. But it\u2019s false to suggest that this only became current \u201cafter 1977.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nThe name Palestine<\/em> stems from the ancient Philistines, who formed an independent state alongside the ancient biblical kingdom of Israel. Greeks and Romans regularly used the term, and the Romans officially gave the name Palestine<\/em> to the province of Judea around 135 C.E., after the second Jewish revolt. The name survived throughout the Middle Ages under both Arab and Ottoman rulers, who routinely referred to Palestine\u2019s residents as \u201cPalestinians.\u201d Medieval and early modern Jewish writers also often called the Holy Land \u201cPalestine.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nA sense of Palestinian identity is clearly evident in the Arab-organized Syrian-Palestinian Congress of 1921 and was fostered by the establishment, under the League of Nations, of the \u201cBritish Mandate for Palestine\u201d in 1922. In 1927, more than twenty years before the founding of Israel, Palestinian coins were issued bearing the name Palestine<\/em>. Even the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was created in 1964, thirteen years before Newt Gingrich\u2019s \u201c1977.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFourth, it\u2019s false to say that Palestinians were \u201cinvented\u201d as propaganda. Palestinians have had a distinct and quite depressing history of their own for at least a century. It would be inexplicably bizarre if they had failed to develop a separate sense of identity. Moreover, their Arabic dialect is recognizably unique.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFifth, it\u2019s misleading to suggest that Palestinian identity is merely a tool used by \u201cthe Arabs\u201d to manipulate the West. Arabs themselves, though universally sympathetic to Palestinian grievances, perceive Palestinians as distinct. In fact, though this is seldom openly discussed, displaced Palestinians living in their \u201cdiaspora\u201d have often been felt, and resented, as a foreign presence in the Gulf and elsewhere in the Arab world\u2014including, even, in Jordan.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nNewt Gingrich may or may not be a solid historian of America. With his dismissal of the Palestinians as an \u201cinvented people,\u201d however, he hasn\u2019t established his credibility on the Middle East. And Israel isn\u2019t helped by bad history.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 This special column for the Deseret News was published on 13 December 2011, and the comment to which I took exception back then is long and justly forgotten. \u00a0Still, it\u2019s conceivable that some will find the historical information in this little essay interesting and\/or helpful. \u00a0So I share it here: \u00a0 Newt Gingrich […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,2328,2334,1561,2331],"class_list":["post-65409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-arab-israeli-conflict","tag-arabs","tag-gingrich","tag-israel","tag-palestinians"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Jericho](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2017\/05\/Jericho2.jpg\")
<\/a>