Santorum: 'There Is No Palestine'
Submitted by Douglas Bloomfield on Mon, 01/02/2012 - 07:29
UPDATE -- The Washington Post Fact Checker reporter, Glenn Frankel, saw The Jewish Week's blog item about Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum saying "All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis. They are not Palestinians," and he decided to check out the former senator's accuracy. Quoting the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the CIA Fact Book and other sources he awarded Santorum Four Pinocchios for telling a big "Whopper." In other words, Santorum is totally wrong.
GOP Presidential contender Rick Santorum, who appears likely to come from far behind to finish in the top 3 in Tuesday's Iowa Caucuses, is trying to out-do his former Congressional colleague Newt Gingrich when it comes to insulting Palestinians.
Gingrich called the Palestinians an "invented" people who didn't exist until sometime in the 20th century. Santorum criticized Gingrich’s widely-reported remarks as “provocative,” but his own more extreme views got little attention at the time because he was considered a hopeless back-of-the-pack candidate and not being taken very seriously.
But now that he is rising rapidly in the polls, his comments deserve a second look.
As far as Santorum is concerned, Palestinians don’t exist.
“There are no Palestinians,” he told a questioner at a campaign event in Iowa. You can see the video here.
"All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis. There are no Palestinians. This is Israeli land," the former Pennsylvania senator said.
"The West Bank is part of Israel," which won it as "part of an aggressive attack by Jordan and others" in 1967. Israel doesn't have to give it back any more than the United States has to give New Mexico and Texas to Mexico, which were gotten "through a war," he said.
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I'm looking forward to seeing Hanan Ashrawis head explode over all this
He is absolutely right. Palestinians are an invented people from a time in which the Romans renamed Jewish lands. The rest wandered in at various points in history when it suited them.
Great, then Israel just have to give all the "non-existing Palestinians" Israeli citizenship! Otherwise it can't be anything but apartheid can it?
Funny- before 1948 Palestinians were the Jews and the Arabs were - well, just Arabs - Syrians. How times change.
Newsspeak!!
As usual the modern version of history has been twisted beyond belief (well except by Zionism).
In fact the land in question has been populated by all the three believers of the book (and others)
way back to the beginning of human life. We are all brothers and sisters, human first of all, everything else
comes after that fact.
However, if you really knew your history you would be forced to admit that the Palestinians which yes, grew
into a unique nation in 20th century still still came before the ethnic cleansing of its people by the new
and illegal creation of the so called "state of Israel". it seems you are not interested in the truth but rather
to make excuses for race hatred.
And, oh yes, where does your knowledge lie in relation to the Palestinian Christians? Do you hate them as Arabs?
or do you just hate Muslims.
One final comment, there a thousands of Jewish and Israeli Jews who do not recognise or support the apartheid
dealt out to a whole race of innocents. Ahhhh do I hear the cry of anti Semitism????????????
That's the typical response when you are proven wrong.
So, does this mean everyone currently residing in the West Bank can be given Israeli citizenship and voting rights?
Shomo Sand : Invented people could be Jews / Khazars/, but not semitic Palestiniens. The more establishment pushes lies, more people awake to TRUTH peter czech
So what's the standard for "invented people" now? "People on this land we want to take" I guess. Did we call the Native Americans invented people too?
so is santorum justifying declaring war on israel as the only way to achieve the right to be called palestine?
What the people who live in the West Bank are called is of little importance. On average, their ancestors have been living on that land for longer then Americans have been living in North America. Their right to want to remain there and have a nation of their own should be respected.
By such logic, almost all nations are invented, including Jews and Americans. This is truly horrific and evil logic used to de-legitimize one's opponent in order that they not be treated as human.
Arabs were the majority in Palestine, now Israel & the Occupied Territories, for either 1,300 or 2,000 years until 1948 expulsion of them after illegal UN Partition. Irish didn't have a state until 1921 but does that mean there were no Irish there for a thousand years before that ?
There was no German State until 1871, so does that mean there were no Germans before that ?
There was no Jewish State until 1948 so does that mean that there were no Jews before that ?
Santorum is a moron . PERIOD. He won't be President. EVER. Nor will Gingrich.
Non-believers in the Palestinian people are advised to read M.J. Rosenberg:
http://aljazeera.co.uk/indepth/opinion/2011/12/2011122495928144388.html
there was no Israel either until the British gave up their Colony named Palestine so who are you kidding ? Palestinians were living there for thousands of Years before the English stole it. Israel is build on a shaky Foundation because the Land was never England's to give away in the first Place.
Hey genius! I guess all the history books are wrong! If only I'd had someone like you to teach me at school I wouldn't have had all these crazy ideas about international law and justice clouding my thoughts. Thanks so much for enlightened me, and every other serious student of history!
Santorum is a true hero - he has the courage to speak truth to the world! America will be truly blessed if he becomes president. The futures of Israel and America are in safe hands at last - think how much safer Israelis would be if there were only Israelis in Samaria and Judea!
Seems that Rick Santorum is advocating for the one state solution by calling everyone in the West Bank "Israelis"
"" He is absolutely right. Americans are an invented people from a time in which the Europeans renamed Native American lands. The rest wandered in at various points in history when it suited them. ""
Fixed that for you.
The Jews wandered into Canaan too. Who cares. Some 3000 year old book is not a land registry for the 20th century. Of course, if the West Bank Arabs are Israelis they should be given fiull civil rights. That includes, of course, as Jews were so active in promoting in MS a generationa go, the right to vote.
Just ask any Israeli Jew that was born before 1948 what does it say
On his birth certificate, born in Israel or Palestine.
Just Check the DNA. If DNA is from there, than there are from the Palestine/Israel/Whatever name land. If DNA is European than pack up and Paris/London/Moscow bound. He He He
According to the UN census of 2007 (10.5 million christian and moslem palestinians, 5.5 million jewish palestinians), Palestinian christians and moslems are NOW and always have been the majority in Palestine.
What a stupid viewpoint, anonymous. An totally irrelevant as well. Do you think the Palestinians care what kind of label you find appropriate for them?
It's up to a people to identify itself. When a sizeable group - several millions - sees itself as a people, what right do outsiders have to challenge that? What higher moralitity is there than the will a people?
Historically, all Arab peoples have periodically been part of different empires or outright colonized. The Palestinian history is no less different in that respect than that of the people of Iraq or Tunisia. Are Tunisians and Iraqis invented as well?
The Arabs have a common history, just as the English speaking nationalities in the world. In their case, the common history ended many centuries before the English speaking ones. It's absurd to deny them the right a nationality because of that history.
If you still look at history, Palestine has been a geographical and periodically political entity for more that two millenia.
But more important: ask any Arab speaking person in Palestine what is her/his nationality and she/he would answer Palestinian.
While, a new live joke about two fools here who seriously need some basic sense about RIGHT or WRONG. we have seen such fools dominate the media before, and we are expecting to see them again.
I will listen to the father of Israel over your opinion:
Who are these Palestinians? About a hundred years ago, two young students in Istanbul, David Ben-Gurion and Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and President (respectively) of Israel, wrote a treatise about the Palestinians. The population of this country, they said, has never changed. Only small elites were sometimes deported. The towns and villages never moved, as their names prove. Canaanites became Israelites, then Jews and Samaritans, then Christian Byzantines. With the Arab conquest, they slowly adopted the religion of Islam and the Arabic Culture. These are today’s Palestinians. I tend to agree with them.
Lets get the facts correct. If I am wrong then post something other than the opinion of goldie who grew up in New Haven and did not leave the USA till she was not young.
Israeli citizenship and voting rights'
How do you not give them citizenship if you the expulsion does not work? The first actions of the zionist was the creation of the transfer committees. They had stated goals of getting the jewish population to a certain percentage so they could control the nation of Israel. It worked and now it is time to either expel the arabs or give the citizenship.
BTW the jewish population of Israel apparently has been dropping and by large numbers. It would appear that dual citizenship allows for many who actually have not been in Israel for over a year and still be counted as being in the Israel population.
Are you going to deny citizenship to those that actually live in a place and give citizenship to those that do not?
So, according to Rick Sanitarium, ummm, Santorum, it is okay to take Palestine and give it back to the Israelis, who lost it in a war back in 70AD, but not okay to take Palestine and give it back to the Palestinians who lost it in a war in 1967?
Is this man allowed to operate motor vehicles?
When Abraham came into the region, there were in Gaza, the Phillistines, which when translated to Greek was called Palestine, The Phillistines ruled the area then before Israel was a twinkle in Moses' eyes, the Palestinians existed then.
It was Palestinian land originally over 5000 years ago and the Talmud says so!
Furthermore the official currency for Israel between 1948 and 1952 was in fact the Palestinian Pound, it was the official currency in Jerusalem as well as Tel Aviv and Gaza. It existed before 1948.
Ron Paul is the only candidate who has not promised in front of God, G_d, Allah, Krishna and everyone else to commit premeditated mass murder in the interests of a foreign nation.
Yes, foreign. A foreign nation. That's exactly correct. A foreign nation.
Does that mean Americans are an invented people too
..."part of an aggressive attack by Jordan and others"...
I like that. When you haven't got a clue, just make it up and embellish to prove your radical point.
From Wikipedia:
The name and borders of Palestine have varied throughout history. Palestine originally denoted only the seacoast of the land of Canaan inhabited by the Philistines. It is in this sense exclusively that the Hebrew name Pelesheth (translated "Philistia" in the King James Version Bible) occurs in the Old Testament.
In the year 68 B.C. what would later be called the land of Palestine was reduced by Pompey the Great to a Roman province.
The name Palestine itself was given to these lands by the Romans around 135 A.D. when the emperor Hadrian brutally suppressed the Jewish Resistance movement and occupied Judea. They called it the Province of 'Syria Palaestina.'
Sources: Wikipedia, Easton's Bible Dictionary
Thank you, Mr. Hardesty, for your eloquent and effective rebuttal to Mr. Santorum's non-sense, whose comments serve no purpose but to further inflame and aggravate an already volatile situation here and abroad.
Have you considered running for office?
The term 'Palestinian' was first used in 1922 to describe citizens of the proposed new Jewish Homeland (the League of Nations' 'Mandate for Palestine'). As such, Jews were also 'Palestinians'.
When the Jewish state changed its name from Palestine to Israel in 1948, the new name for inhabitants of the territory formerly called Palestine were now called 'Israeli'. 'Palestinian' became defunct. Those living in the West Bank and Gaza (including any refugees living in camps in other Arab nations) are actually Israeli!
The term 'Palestinian' wouldn't be seen again until the early 1960s when Arab governments co-opted the term to fit the new long-range strategy it formulated against Israel: Instead of having the the big bad Arabs beating up on the little Israel, the Arab governments turned the tables on Israel where Israel is the big bad bully beating up on the little 'Palestinians'. It was at the first Arab League summit in Cairo (1964) that the Arab governments created the PLO.
The Arab governments then, with the assistance of the USSR, needed Israel to acquire the West Bank and Gaza for their new long-range strategy to work, so they (again with USSR help) concocted the 1967 war. The rest is history....with Israel being progressively isolated in the world, and lashing out like a wounded animal (the recent Israeli attack on the Gaza bound ship comes to mind. An act of irrational piracy).
The Arab governments co-opted the defunct term 'Palestinian', claiming that the distinct 'Palestinian People' had lost their land to the Jews! What nerve. The territory Arab governments say they lost was the League of Nations' mandated Jewish Homeland (which includes the West Bank and Gaza), so those Arab refugees 'as a group' can't claim they lost their land because it didn't belong to them in the first place. It belonged to all the Israeli people.
The League of Nations in the 1920s had already created six states for the Arabs, so any Israeli Arab refugees from the 1948 war could have lived in any of the four surviving Arab states IF the Arab governments hadn't been intent in destroying Israel.
Let's all determine what we are by going back 1000 or more years and then say "we are whatever dominated a region at the time". Baloney!!
Would present day French and Germans living in the lands belonging to Charlemagne now be "Franks"? Could the people in the eastern part of Charlemagne's realm now claim present-day France as theirs or vice versa?
As one reader said:"Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman empire was not Britain's to give away; she was merely asked to administer the land".
Santorum's 'through a war' comment is historically ignorant. Though wars certainly forced the issue, the states he mentioned officially became part of the US through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with Mexico. Had Mexico not officially agreed to give up it's claims, war alone would have settled nothing.
By contrast, Jordan's peace treaty with Israel explicitly declared that it did not settle the status of the West Bank. That treaty was made with an understanding that the West Bank would become part of a Palestinian state.
Furthermore, Israel and the PLO agreed (in the Oslo accords) that there would be a Palestinian state.
The fact that Santorum is so ignorant of both US and Middle East history, and of the way that agreements happen between nations, should scare any rational person.
I can't believe so many people in Iowa voted for this bozo.
What Santorum or Gingrich or any US/Canadian politician say, should not be dissected. They are pandering to the Jewish voters. The Jews know that; these politicians know that the jews know that. And the jews know that the politicians know that they know that. And furthermore everyone knows that these politicians have little love for the Jews or for the palestinians. If the shoe were on the other foot, they would just as readily and easily pander for the palestinian vote and say the same thoughts against Israel what they say against the palestinians today. And everyone knows that too.
It is a hypocrisy at a grand scale. So it is the job of the American jews to keep these two bit jerks in line and on their side. And so far with the help of money and media, they have succeeded. But for how long can one keep hiding the truth? For how much longer can the israeli injustices and cruelties be kept hidden from an increasingly cognisant American public? That is the question. Another fifty years? Hundred? two hundred?
'Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.' - Albert Einstein
No exceptions, all products of imagining. DNA, histories, Palestine, Israel, Canada, Mexico, UK, apples, peers etc., etc., etc. ...'products of imagining.'
The senses, for one, filter, ineludible.
So no matter what, reality is filtered and incomplete as are languages which are filtered and incomplete.
Santorum reminds us of a German who was interviewed after WWII. One of his comments was "Camps? What camps? There were no camps."
google: "the curse of canaan" pdf written by Eustace Mullins if you want to know who is who in this farce.
Actually Santorum has it backwards according to the Israeli Jew Shlomo Sand who wrote the book titled "The Invention Of The Jewish People".
http://www.amazon.ca/dp/1844674223/?tag=pubden09-20
Here's a 3 page review of Shlomo Sand's book. The review is titled "Controversial Bestseller Shakes the Foundation of the Israeli State", subtitled "What if the entire tale of the Jewish Diaspora is historically wrong?"
http://www.alternet.org/story/122810/?page=1
How sick are you of being told that if some politician gets in, you will be "blessed"? I'm at a loss to discover how the electorate can be the voice of G-d and decide who will then be blessed. It seems blasphemous to suggest that one character like Santorum has the blessing to spread around and someone else doesn't. Plus, it's vulgar. There isn't a single officeholder who can coast on that kind of divinity.
If what has happened to America since recognizing the zionist occupation in 1948 is a "blessing", it's obvious that we should opt for the curse.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
So I guess based on the author's reasoning. If by war, Israel loses the land gained in the 1967 war, they won't give it back? Ok sounds good to me.
The term 'Palestinian' was first used in 1922 to describe citizens of the proposed new Jewish Homeland (the League of Nations' 'Mandate for Palestine'). As such, Jews were also 'Palestinians'.
When the Jewish state changed its name from Palestine to Israel in 1948, the new name for inhabitants of the territory formerly called Palestine were now called 'Israeli'. 'Palestinian' became defunct. Those living in the West Bank and Gaza (including any refugees living in camps in other Arab nations) are actually Israeli!
The term 'Palestinian' wouldn't be seen again until the early 1960s when Arab governments co-opted the term to fit the new long-range strategy it formulated against Israel: Instead of having the the big bad Arabs beating up on the little Israel, the Arab governments turned the tables on Israel where Israel is the big bad bully beating up on the little 'Palestinians'. It was at the first Arab League summit in Cairo (1964) that the Arab governments created the PLO.
Looks like Rick Sentorum is so dumb he has no idea of UNSC Resolution 446, adopted on March 22, 1979, concerning the issue of Israelis settlements in Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967, including the Gaza, West bank and Jerusalem.
Resolution 446 determined "that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East"
The Resolution was adopted by 12 votes to none, with 3 abstentions from Norway, UK and the USA.
If Palestine does not exist, then why was UN Resolution 446 adopted?
I think Jonathan Stanczak (and Rick Sanctorum) are right. There is only one functional government and one country,whatever you call it, from the river to the sea. It includes 'the West Bank'. And everyone living there is entitled to the same civil rights and privileges.
"Palestinians are an invented people" - "Palestine is just the Roman name"
What a RIDICULOUS belief by Far Right Zionists..
Every place, and every nationality is "Invented" if you want to call it that. France was invented when Franks took Gaul, and made it France.
Using that logic, USA isnt even a nation at all.
New York is 'invented' by the British. Only 400 years ago. So there is no NewYorkers. Its an illusion. (???) Muslims have been living in Whatever-You-Wanted-To-Call it since 700's AD. I dont know about you, but jews living in a New york apartment would fight to the death to avoid being removed, without compensation... by native american tribes....from Algonquins.... Who lost the land to Iroquis.
The only moral justification for holding West Bank is "MIght makes Right" - we had the better airforce, blew up Syria, Egypt and Jordans airforce on the ground, proceeded to eliminate their tanks, rolled in, won in 6 days...and so those Arabs living on land we want better just leave or accept no human rights or citizenship. We won, you lost, we take your land, we put settlers on it, it was wrong when Americans did it to Indians, and its wrong now. Are we enlightened? Or still no better than Genghis Khan?
The difference in JUSTIFICATION between Right wing Israeli ideas concerning West Bank, and Nazi ideas of invading East Europe for lebenstraum, or even Genghis Khan, is the degree of barbarity toward the conquered people. What makes Hitler wrong, and Israel since 1967 Right? In the eyes of objective observers....its that Hitler lost, and we didnt. Do we actually believe Hitler was wrong because we believe in Humanity, or was Hitler wrong because of WHO he victimized?
Would he even be hated by us if he was a champion of Zionism and all his victims were Muslims and Arabs, and he ethnically cleansing the entire Levant, creating an Israel bigger than King David's? Do you realize why thinking people around the world, Liberal Jews included, feel this is the height of hypocrisy? The Lessons of WW2 - For the Right - Is that if your going to take over nations by force, treat the people like slaves... make sure you win.
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