BY ELAD BENARI, ARUTZ 7—
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday said that Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich’s remarks about Palestinian Authority Arabs were “unhelpful.”
Gingrich told The Jewish Channel last week that the claim of Palestinian Authority Arabs to be “a people” is not legitimate.
The former Speaker of the House of Representatives said in the interview, “Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century.
“I think that we’ve invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community,” he said. “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 remarks angered the Palestinian Authority, with PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad having told reporters in response the remarks were “extremely trivial, demeaning and ridiculous.”
“Even the most extremist settlers of Israel wouldn’t talk in such a ridiculous way,” Fayyad said. “Our people have been here from the beginning, and they are determined to remain on their land until the end.”
The Arab League also condemned the comments, saying they were “irresponsible and dangerous” and accusing Gingrich of sacrificing U.S. interests for votes.
PBS’s Jim Lehrer asked Clinton in an interview if Gingrich’s statements were helpful, to which she replied, “No, no and I think he recognized that from what I read.”
Clinton added that Gingrich’s statements were “one of those innovated moments that happens in politics.”
In a debate Saturday night in Iowa, Gingrich refused to back down from his remarks and said, “Is what I said factually true? Yes. Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists. It’s fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, ‘Enough lying about the Middle East.”
He added, “When the president keeps talking about a peace process while Hamas keeps firing missiles into Israel, if we had a country next to us firing missiles, how eager would we be to sit down and negotiate?”
Clinton angered Israelis when she recently compared Israel to Iran after the incident in which religious soldiers asked to be exempt from a performance including halakhically forbidden women’s singing. She also criticized, in the same comparison, some hareidi buses in which women and men sit separately, omitting the fact that buses with separate seating are a regular feature of New York State travel between hareidi areas.
God gets the last word. Thanks to Newt Gingrich for his remarks based on the word of God and historical studies. Makes us want to pay more attention in searching out the facts.
Thank God, that Gingrich has spoken the TRUTH* about the Palestinians. And the PLO/PA, Hamas et al, who have sworn, time and time again, that their sole, ultimate agenda IS* the annihilation of the State of Israel; how can Israel ever negiotiate peace with such vehement enemies?
Every time an U.S. President forces Israel to give up their rightful, Covenanted, God-given land, within 24 hours, some terrible disaster hits America! Speak some more historic, Biblical truth about Israel, vis-a-vis Palestine and the ancient enemies of of the Jews, Gingrich, for God’s sake, tell the truth some more! One of the reasons for America’s perilous demise, IS* the stance that its President(s) have taken against Israel. Wake up America, wake up, or your End is nigh!
TO Carlos: Could you be a little more specific about these so-called events you are referring to? Every President that I know of has supported the continued existence of Israel since Harry Truman. If it wasen’t for the US, Great Britiain, and the UN, the new country of Israel would not even exist. Our soldiers saved the Jews from the Holacost. True, the Palestinians need to change their attitude, but so too must some of the Israelie politicians. From Bob in Lima, Ohio.