The prime focus of political junkies, commentators and participants in tonight’s 2012 Republican Presidential contenders’ debate will be on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who continues to skyrocket in polls as the clear anti-Romney, shattering the conventional wisdom that he’s through and that Romney is the “inevitable” nominee. And now Gingrich has given a taste of how he’d dominate the headlines with his comment that the Palestians are an “invented people”:
The US Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has declared that the Palestinians are an “invented” people who want to destroy Israel.
The Jewish Channel, a cable TV station, posted online its interview with the former US House speaker, who has risen to the top of Republican nomination candidates to challenge Democratic President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.
Gingrich differed from official US policy that respects the Palestinians as a people deserving of their own state based on negotiations with Israel. “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century, Gingrich said.
“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and who were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic,” he said.
The Guardian’s story sums the rest of this up quite well:
Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment as 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.
Modern-day Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 UN plan for ethnic partition of the then-British ruled territory of Palestine. Arabs rejected the division.
Ahh, but nuance schmuance:
Gingrich and other Republican candidates are seeking to attract Jewish support by vowing to bolster US ties with Israel if elected.
Indeed. Also by using this kind of rhetoric he can paint his foes (Republican or Obama administration) who might object to it as oversimplification into being enemies of Israel. But it fits the Gingrich style: stick catchy labels on your foes.
You can already see the immediate partisan reaction to Gingrich’s comments: some Democrats say it isn’t quite that simple and Gingrich. Some Republicans and are applauding it as reality and truth suggesting that those who dare question Gingrich’s words were somehow unrealistic, or just parroting PC on Israel.
But Gingrich got what he wanted and you can see he has picked up the ball he hurled and is running with it:
His comments come days after Gingrich attended a forum sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington, D.C., and as the current crop of GOP candidates compete for the Jewish vote.
They initially seemed off the path from United States foreign policy, which supports a two-state solution in the Middle East.
But Gingrich press secretary R.C. Hammond said Saturday that the candidate backs “a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state.”
Hammond emphasized that understanding “what is being proposed and negotiated” requires a grasp of “decades of complex history — which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview. “
And the reaction from Palestinians won’t hurt Gingrich with GOPers or to highlight his support of Israel in either going into the debate:
Still, Palestinians including Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Gingrich needs to reexamine the history books.
“The Palestinian people inhabited the land since the dawn of history, and intend to remain in it until the end times,” Fayyad said Saturday at an event in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “People like Gingrich must consult history, as it seems that all what he knows about the region is the history of the Ottoman era.”
Fayyad said “despite oppression, occupation, and assaults, the Palestinian people remain steadfast in their historic land, and will achieve their legitimate rights.”
An executive committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hanan Ashrawi, said Gingrich has “lost touch with reality.”
The statements show “ignorance and bigotry” and are “a cheap way to win (the) pro-Israel vote,” Ashrawi told Voice of Palestine radio, in comments reported by the Palestinian Authority-controlled WAFA news agency.
Fatah Revolutionary Council member Dimitri Diliani said Gingrich’s remarks reflect “the ignorant, provocative, and racist nature of Mr. Gingrich,” according to WAFA.
“The Palestinian people descended from the Canaanite tribe of the Jebusites that inhabited the ancient site of Jerusalem as early as 3200 B.C.E.,” Diliani said.
Here’s the interview segment:
Gingrich would have been a prime topic — and target — at tonights ABC Yahoo debate at 9 p.m. EST time in any event but these comments will now solidify the fact that all eyes and journalistic attention will be on him, whether he “wins” and how Romney reacts to him. ABC News:
Amy Walter is the political director for ABC News and David Chalian is the Washington bureau chief for Yahoo News. Here is their analysis of what to look for when the candidates take the stage.
By David Chalian and Amy WalterDavid Chalian: With 25 days to go before Iowa Republicans brave the January cold to head to their caucuses and cast the first votes in the 2012 GOP nomination battle, Saturday night’s debate seems particularly well timed to hear the candidates’ closing arguments.
Amy Walter: And ironically these candidates have spent less time in Iowa than we’ve seen from presidential candidates in recent years. So they are here to make the case not just to Iowans—whom they have kind of ignored for the last few months—but to a national Republican electorate still trying to figure out what kind of nominee it wants to face Obama.
So, given the stakes, what should we expect to see from the newest frontrunner, Newt Gingrich?
Chalian: First and foremost, I expect to see an inherent tension within Gingrich on stage. He has had such great success trying to stay above the fray and has made his pledge to promise only positive campaigning. It seems to me that will be in direct conflict with being the frontrunner and the likely target of nearly everyone else on that stage. Watching how he navigates through that tension will be fascinating, don’t you think?
Walter: Absolutely. And, then there’s the fact that Gingrich has, in the past, been his own worst enemy. Staying on message has never been his strong suit.
But, his opponents have to be careful too. As we’ve seen in past debates, the candidate who stays above the fray—whether that’s Cain or Gingrich—has benefitted. So, I’m just as fascinated to see what Romney does. Does he try to let the other candidates take their shots at Newt or will he have to do it himself?
Chalian: A good question. And one that they have been wrestling with at his Boston campaign headquarters in recent days. I don’t recall ever seeing as aggressive and overt a launch of a contrast/comparative phase of a campaign (within a nomination fight) as we saw with the Romney campaign this week. That kind of direct attack on Gingrich’s record suggests to me Romney is prepared to do a lot of the heavy lifting himself Saturday and not simply rely on his fellow competitors. The lesson of Tim Pawlenty from June, right? If you launch a pre-debate attack, you better follow up on it when you get on the stage.
Stay tuned.
Literally.
FOOTNOTE: TMV will offer live blogging of the debate tonight.
UPDATE: The Christian Science Monitor:
By Saturday afternoon, Gingrich seemed to back-pedal or at least “clarify” his comments to the Jewish Channel cable network.
“Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said in a statement. “However, to understand what is being proposed and negotiated you have to understand decades of complex history – which is exactly what Gingrich was referencing during the recent interview with Jewish TV.”
In any case, it seemed to be one more example of the GOP front-runner saying something apparently designed to provoke or at least not fully thought-through.
In the past week, a growing list of Republican lawmakers who served with him in the House, GOP strategists, and conservative pundits have publicly said Gingrich’s personality and character make him unfit to win his party’s nomination or to serve as president.
“He’s philosophically unanchored, an unstable element,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and former Reagan speechwriter wrote this week. “There are too many storms within him, and he seeks out external storms in order to equalize his own atmosphere. He’s a trouble magnet, a starter of fights that need not be fought…. He is a human hand grenade who walks around with his hand on the pin, saying, ‘Watch this!’”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.