The Professor likes to cast himself as a “Historian”. When you listen to his views on the events of the past and their meanings it becomes quite clear that his idea of history is as a tool for telling stories that support his political goals, please his patrons and line his pockets. For Newt, History is just a grift.
Now there are plenty who agree with the notion that all history is political and represents a narrative of the powerful and that these narratives are used to keep the masses in line. There is some truth to the notion that history is propaganda for the elites, but that is not always the case. Real Historians–unlike Newt–review original sources and competing narratives to try and find facts and any truth that can be verified and proven by the record. This process is informed by every generation and their issues of the day, but over time the truth ekes out. The last sixty years have been a Golden Age of History where more and more facts, sources and source narratives have come to the surface for review and consideration. Certain things can be called Historical Facts. It is the very idea that there are Historical Facts that The Professor works to oppose and undermine. In their place he wishes a return to the days of a Century ago when all History was controlled by the propagandists of the British Empire and the Lost Cause disciples of America. The common thread in both narratives was White Male greatness and the weakness of all other races and cultures.
And this brings us to Newt’s line that Palestinians are an “invented” people. It is predictable that Newt would say this, but not because of his understanding of the Middle East or any aspect of the I/P conflict. That stuff really does not matter to The Professor. Rather, he sees Israel as an outpost of White Male European Civilization and in Newt’s view of history that makes Israel part of the proof of the white supremacy narrative.
Now we could, at this point, spend time to point out how factually challenged The Professor is about Middle East History, the Palestinian People and history in general. We could point to the maps and documents used by White Males over the centuries as they refer to the land in question as “Palestine” (and these white guys never called it “Israel” on a map until some time after 1948). We might point out that even before there was an Ottoman Empire there were original maps and documents calling the place Palestine. You could point out that for most of that time Jews and Palestinians lived in peaceful coexistence on the land in question. You could even mention that it was Newt’s romanticized British Empire that laid the groundwork for today’s conflict in a cynical colonialist exercise designed to divide the region and steal its resources. One could spend time pointing out these and other historical facts, but it would not matter to The Professor or Wingnutopia. For them, the myth of the superior White Male Civilization is the root narrative that they want to believe and Israel’s only functions is to serve as a data point in support of that fable.
It is all a dog whistle. The Professor says similar outrageous things about non-white peoples all the time. He belittles their legitimacy and their ability–or even their right–to be part of the History of Civilization. When Newt discusses non-White people and cultures he likes to place thier impact on History in the context of Colonialism and White Male Civilization. A major plank in Newt’s critique of Barack Obama is his non-Whiteness. Newt’s claim about the “invented” Palestinian people is a way to reinforce that dog whistle. The Professor likes to suggest that Barack Obama is also “invented” by the same multi-cultural forces that hold White Male Civilization under siege. This is a major meme of Wingnutopia and very close to the core of their hatred of the President. And every Republican running for the White House (and most other offices as well) is compelled to embrace some aspect of the “invented”-Obama-as-a-sign-that-White-Civilization-is-under-siege meme. Their trouble is that Newt is just better at this racist dog whistle shit than all of them put together.
The Professor is on the move. He will be the Republican nominee and he will cast the 2012 Election as a battle to save White Male Civilization from Obama’s multi-cultural hordes. He will cast it an epic battle. And there will be some truth to that as many will march to the tune of his dog whistles to fight for a racist historical fantasy over reality.
I hope that Newt and his world view are completely crushed. It is long past time for his cherished narrative of White Male Supremacy to be cast onto the ash pile of failed ideas. And I’ll work like hell to ensure that outcome.
Cheers
ps: the above map is from an old world atlas, circa 1865.
srv
As always, complete and coherent. Everything else is noise.
*edit, well, except for one thing. Is the “invented” term something the millinealist Xtians invented or is it from a Jewish strain? Always wondered.
terry
this idea that the Palestinians don’t exist is rather common among our awful christian fundamentalist set. It’s just yet another thing their various churches lie to them about.
And some Jews, like Debbie Schussel, and other likudniks.
kansi
I saw the President on 60Minutes tonight and he said, no matter who the nominee of the GOP is, there will be a stark choice between competing visions for the kind if country we want to be. I also think the difference between Obama and Gingrich will be stark, whether you look at their appearance (one slim and handsome, one old and paunchy) or their demeanor (one charming and bright and one scowling and crazy).
lawguy
You may be completely right, but in the end will the policies of either a Newt or Obama be all that much different as they at least apply toward Isael and the rest of the middle east?
Guster
What intrigues me is the idea that some ethnicities aren’t invented. They’re assigned from on high, I guess.
wilfred
No worries. I’m sure Obama will leap to the defense of the Palestinian people when Newt says the same things in their debate.
Talk is cheap. Whatever Gingrich says about Palestinians hasn’t affected the actions of Israelis against them. Obama, on the other hand, can actually do something. Instead, he says and does nothing.
“And I’ll work like hell to ensure that outcome.”
Yeah? You mean in regards to Palestinians?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Didn’t TNC the other day have an article about whites (I am one) rewriting history so that they will feel comfortable and in charge?
No one of importance
Quoted for truth. Excellent post, as always, Dennis.
Baud
I see the “we can’t judge Republicans until the Democrats are perfect” crowd is out tonight.
RossInDetroit
Well that’s half the ticket. Who will be the VP nominee? Someone to balance the ticket, presumably. Balancing could mean picking a TP-er to bring the radicals into the fold. Or a non-Southerner, since Newt’s from Georgia. Or a woman. Or someone with homespun appeal to contrast with Newt’s ‘intellectualism’. Or a female Tea Partier from the North, which is a terrible thought.
amk
@lawguy: The difference will be an Iran war. How’s that pumpkins ?
JCT
@lawguy: The limiting factor is whether the US has any influence whatsoever with Israel. At present we clearly have little. The obvious difference is that with Newt we would return to full-scale facilitation of the Likudniks.
Again, it is not like Obama has had much effect on Bibi and his pals, but I would at least be “happier” if we are not overly egging them on.
And as an academic, just referring to Gingrich as “Professor” makes me grind my teeth. If I ran around giving talks where I just “made shit up” my career would have been over long ago. Gingrich is a fucking hack.
Baud
@RossInDetroit:
The problem Newt will have that Mitt would not (as much) is finding someone who’ll want to share a ticket with him.
amk
@wilfred: Ah, the whiny wilfred, who wants obama to walk on water and if he did, would complain obama couldn’t swim.
wilfred
“The limiting factor is whether the US has any influence whatsoever with Israel. At present we clearly have little”
Complete bullshit. Obama can support the Palestinian bid for statehood at the UN, for one thing. That is total leverage over the Israelis.
smintheus
The United States is ‘invented’ as well…as are all nation states.
Veritas
I think the Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews in Israel might object to Israel as a “white male European” country. The former look very much like Palestinians, and the latter are darker than them.
RealityCheck
JPL
@smintheus: Saudi Arabians didn’t attack us on 9/11 either. It was just a group of invented people.
Chris
@terry:
You don’t even need to be a fundie. I first heard the claim from PJM megafuckwad Bill Whittle, who self-describes as an atheist. The entire GOP shares Gingrich’s deep passion for the supremacy of Western Civilization (read: White, Conservative, Male and Christianish), and they’ll go along with anything that demeans or belittles the unruly multicultural hordes’ claim to, well, anything.
lawguy
@amk: Perhaps, sweet meat.
carpeduum
By writing this long winded blog post you are basically doing exactly what Newt wants you to do. Everything he says is designed to outrage the left and tell the right what they want to hear. You people fall for it every single time.
Congratulations on announcing you have become Newt’s bitch with this self absorbed post of yours.
Veritas
BTW, the whole $10,000 bet thing is overblown and a media created frenzy. Even the NY Times admits that despite being a businessman’s and governor’s son, Mitt Romney has always been thrifty and responsible with his money, unlike Newt who has had several, um, “issues” (Tiffany’s, anyone?) with his household budget.
I think any reasonable man would trust Mitt with their money before Newt.
RealityCheck
Chris
@Guster:
Being “white” definitely fits that bill.
A hundred years ago, if you were an Arab and you went through Ellis Island, you were considered “white,” and if you were Jewish, you weren’t. Today, it’s the other way around. And of course, you’ve got all these other immigrants (the Irish, the Italians, the Greeks, the East Europeans) who’re considered white now but sure as hell weren’t back then.
Definitely a case of “assigned from on high,” IMO.
Quaker in a Basement
Newt’s “invented people” claim is especially galling in that it implies that Palestinians hold no legitimate claim to ground under their own feet, not now or ever.
Argue all you like that there’s nothing to distinguish Palestinians from Jordanians. It doesn’t change the fact that the place we now call Israel was somebody’s home before the partition.
RossInDetroit
Maybe Newt would like to fill us in on the history of Georgia and the background of the first Georgians? Think he will? I don’t.
JCT
@wilfred: Right, that would magically fix everything. Keep looking for that pony, it has to be there somewhere. Wait, I forgot, Obama shot the pony, after he touched you. Just point the spot out on the doll.
Ross Lincoln
Seconded comment #2. This is a very old fundie meme finally making it mainstream. I stopped talking to certain family members about this very issue right after 9/11 because every conversation came back to this argument.
Dennis, where did you grow up/where does your family live? Genuinely curious. You appear to be fortunate enough not to have a ton of evangelical fascists in your family. Thanksgiving must be a much more pleasant experience. :P
Dennis G.
@Veritas: True, but these facts do not matter at all in The Professor’s view of things. Israel’s only function is to support Newt’s view of civilization and in his POV it is classified as a white male country. The complexity of reality knocks that view down in a flash, but Wingnuts do not do reality.
Dennis G.
@lawguy: Like night and day…
amk
@Veritas: yeah, grey lady giving a blowjob to willard is just what he needs right now to win over the rethug base.
wilfred
@JCT:
Right:
“There’s nothing we can do.”
“Let’s try this.”
“Look, a pony.”
Hasbera.
gnomedad
As usual, when the Right calls libruls “relativists”, it’s projection.
dedc79
I would think that a case for the existence of a palestinian people could conceivably have little to do with the land being called, for periods of history, Palestine.
To be clear, I’m not siding with Newt, I just think if you choose to take this on, you should come back with something more than this.
For one thing, Palestine itself is an assigned Roman name isn’t it?
Dennis G.
@Ross Lincoln: Detroit. I grew up on the lower East Side of Motown, along the river with a view of the seven brothers and two sisters smokestacks and near the Jefferson Avenue assembly plant…
Chris
@Ross Lincoln:
Aside from the “invented people” meme, there’s also the meme Ayn Rand was fond of, that even though Israel was fucked up (socialist cooties + God cooties = EW EW EW!!!!!) it was still important to support them because the point was it was all about “civilized men fighting savages” – or as Nixon would put it, “we admire people who can scratch a desert and find a garden” (never mind if it’s someone else’s desert, property rights don’t apply if you’re not One Of Us).
I wonder why that particular meme doesn’t surface more when talking about this. Is it too racist even for them in this day and age?
Veritas
@Dennis G.:
Yes but the American Left does the same thing with the IP conflict, viewing it through American racial lenses (making the Israelis “white” and referring to the Palestinians as “brown people”, when color isn’t the issue here, it’s religion, language, and ethnicity. There are very white looking Palestinians and brown and black Israelis).
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Under Newtie’s standards, Israelis are an even more invented people than Palestinians. But you’ll never hear that said. Regardless, the standard he’s trying to propose is utter bullshit, but it doesn’t matter. Like said, it’s a dog whistle trying to delegitimize the idea that Palestinians deserve anything other than what all them other swarthy brown folk deserve. After all, we’ve already learned this week that trying to say that Muslims can be American is just a conspiracy to ignore the true purpose of Monolithic Muslim Jihad.
I just wish I was convinced this stupidity actually hurt anyone except the people it was meant to. There still doesn’t seem to be any price for this kind of bullshit mendacity and bigotry ever.
Chris
@Ross Lincoln:
Aside from the “invented people” meme, there’s also the meme Ayn Rand was fond of, that even though Israel was fucked up (soshulist cooties + God cooties = EW EW EW!!) it was still important to support them because the point was it was all about “civilized men fighting savages” – or as Nixon would put it, “we admire people who can scratch a desert and find a garden” (never mind if it’s someone else’s desert, property rights don’t apply if you’re not One Of Us).
I wonder why that particular meme doesn’t surface more when talking about this. Is it too racist even for them in this day and age?
Veritas
I’m pretty amazed at the number of people on the right who don’t realize Israel was originally a soc1alist and leftist experiment, actually. IIRC the left was largely supportive of Zionism until the 1967 war.
Trakker
@Veritas:
My money…and my daughter.
Yutsano
Which is amazingly curious to me, since not even 30 years ago Newt would have never considered the Jews as part of the White Male European Civilization. In fact there are still elements in his party that do not see that, since they support Israel for their own doom time scenario purposes. I know there’s a supposed difference in those that went to Israel as compared to those that stayed in country (part of the justification for Israel was to rid Europe of its “Jewish Problem”) but still the full-throated support of Israel uber alles is inconsistent.
And half of Bibi’s popularity is he talks English pretty.
Lyrebird
You are doing a great professing job, and all Newt is professing is malice. I usually duck anytime the I/P conflict comes up on this blog — but that was fantastic!!!
(random nit: you don’t want “eeks” and I don’t actually think you want “ekes” either bc that’s not what it means… leaks? seeps?)
I may go back to ducking… maybe give some monneh to Rabbis for Human Rights again…
Citizen_X
Mainly by stealing the West Bank’s groundwater.
JCT
@wilfred: That’s Hasbara and I am *sure* that there is no Palestinian arabic term for systematic anti-israeli propaganda. Yup, that’s a real binary, black-white conflict right there. As a matter of fact, all Israelis and Jews for that matter see 100% eye-to-eye on this issue. Schmuck.
terry
@27, yeah, the fundies attribute Israel’s success to their god (who apparently will destroy Israel when it destroys the world or whatever. I tune out a great deal of my family because of this.) Stuff like they magically turned a desert into a garden blah blah blah god did it. Meanwhile, they want the family with sense to send them to Israel to get baptized in the Jordan, which you can’t do anymore because all the water’s been taken to turn that desert into a garden, and the water that’s left is super toxic.
People who don’t have these folks as family members, I’m forever jealous of.
RossInDetroit
@Yutsano:
I think nineeleven changed the Conservative view of things in the Middle East. Suddenly there were much clearer lines between Good Guys and Bad Guys and reasons to exploit the differences.
Chris
@Citizen_X:
Stealing the Nonwhite Hordes’ stuff, building an empire out of them and then getting morally indignant when they want to see some return on what was stolen from them. Par for the course in GOPistan.
some guy
3.5 billion in direct military aid, billions more in loan guarantees, and of course veto after veto, year in and year out, at the UN Security Council. yet we have absolutely no power or influence over this rogue terrorist nuclear-armed state, at all. there is nothing we can do.
who the fuck actually believes this tripe?
Litlebritdifrnt
Scuse me but wasn’t the baby jeebus a palistinian, in that his Mom and Pop were born there and Bethlehem was there? Is Newt telling us that the baby jeebus was an “invented person?” That is really gonna fuck up their narative.
Yutsano
@Litlebritdifrnt: Really blow their brains: tell them Jeebus was a citizen of Rome. Well, a citizen in a semi-self-governing Roman province called Palestine but still…
Brian S
@Trakker: Given Newt’s desire to appoint John Bolton to a senior government position, I’d say “child of military service age.”
Chris
@some guy:
Which begs the question, how the fuck is a country that’s so completely dependent on patronage from a foreign power sustainable? It’s not. Which in turn should beg a few more questions. But I suppose they just think it’s all in God’s hands and when Israel collapses, YAY because RAPTURE!!!
JasonF
Newt is an asshole, but the fact that the name “Palestine” has been showing up on maps since Roman times has little to do with the historical pedigree of the people we today refer to as Palestinians. Newt is correct that until relatively recently, Palestinians were not thought of as a distinct group from, e.g. Jordanians. All of that has, of course, nothing to do with the legitimacy of the modern Palestinians’ right to self governance, but I’m not sure it’s helpful to combat Newt’s bad moral philosophy with bad history.
Dennis G.
@dedc79: The notion of “invented people” is a failed concept. It is a slur and nothing more.
Perhaps it is as you suggest and that the even though the land has been called Palestine for centuries, the people who lived there for generations with families tracing their roots to before the fall of Rome never identified themselves by the common name of the land that they lived on. That is an interesting idea, but if true then I think that Palestine would be the only place on Earth over the last 2,000 years where such a thing happened.
Most folks tend to identify themselves by the common name of the geographic area they live in. Over time some of these names become the names of political districts, Countries and occasionally Empires. And from time to time these geographic names become embraced by the people from that area as their identity as a tribe or people. In that sense we are all invented, but over time these “inventions” have become the names by which Nations and peoples identify themselves.
A lot of people around the world are free to name themselves and celebrate their heritage, but some folks are denied this right. Usually it is because they are on the losing side of this or that conflict. In the past, the name and identity of these people on the losing side have been erased from history. White European Civilization was very, very good at this and over the last 600 years took the names and cultures away from millions. It is the routine process of deciding which names and cultures get to stay or go that Newt celebrates with his “invented” peoples quip.
Cheers
Benjamin Franklin
Substitute ‘invented’ for ‘created’ and you have the perfect juxtaposition for
End Timers. It’s a crying shame he wasn’t a Python seeking the Holy Grail.
wilfred
@JCT:
“That’s Hasbara”
There you go.
MikeJ
@dedc79:
That guy David threw rocks at was a Palestinian.
wilfred
Juan Cole, who actually cares about the Palestinians, has a great post up on this, btw:
http://www.juancole.com/
some guy
@JasonF:
if by “relatively recent times” you mean since 1834, then sure, only in the last two centuries have the people of Palestine thought of themselves as Palestinians.
remind me again when, exactly, Herzl came up with the concept of Zionism?
Veritas
Interesting question: why was the question of Greece and Turkey solved pretty quickly despite centuries of hatred (the resolution was based on partition followed by a transfer of populations), when the I/P question hasn’t been solved even after 60+ years?
Even religion doesn’t answer this fully, since Greeks are Orthodox Christian and Turks are Muslim. Nor does the question of a sacred city, since the status of Istanbul (Constantinople, if you prefer) was almost as sticky as that of Jerusalem.
Bruce S
So, uh, Newt wants to see the Palestinians’ birth certificates?
nancydarling
I took my KJV Bible down from the shelf to consult its maps. This Bible was given to me by the 1st Methodist Church of Sabetha, KS in 1952. Among the maps are one titled “Modern Palestine” and another titled “Palestine in the Time of Christ”. Nuff said!
Dennis G.
@wilfred: It is another fine post by Cole and I agree with him on most of his points. America’s willingness to support the slow, but relentless erasure of the Palestinians from history is a policy doomed to failure and the Obama Administration inability and/or unwillingness to change this policy is their biggest foreign policy plunder.
Benjamin Franklin
What’s your definition of ‘pretty quickly’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypriot_intercommunal_violence
Violet
“Americans” are just as much of an “invented people” as Palestinians. Editing Newt’s words for clarity:
Has no one called him on this issue?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Yeah, Dennis, but you’ve got to ask, “Who are the Palestinian people?” and “Where did the name come from?”
After the Romans threw (most of the) Jews out of the Roman province of Judea following the Bar Kokhba uprising, the Romans played the cultural imperialism game by renaming the province Syria Palaestina, after the Syriac (culturally Assyrian) peoples and the Philistines- whose short-lived, loose confederation of city-states was along the southern coast of the later Palestine, a thin strip running from just south of Gaza to just north of Ashod.
The Romans could have devolved that name back to Canaan, but seeing that Abraham’s tribe- the Semites, from whom the language group takes its name- believed that Canaan was their promised land…Well, there’s a lot of power in words.
Which leads us to 1865, when Westerners viewed Palestine- with its large, native population of Christians- as the Christian Holy Land; not necessarily as the Holy Land of the Hebrews, who were still subject to pretty strong anti-Semitism (again, the tribe, not the language group) and pogroms in the West. It should then come as no surprise that those maps say Palestine rather than Israel, Judea or Canaan.
As for the peoples: Well, the Romans didn’t force the Jews to become Romans, but they did force most of them out of the province. But the Romans didn’t just leave it empty. They encouraged the Syriac peoples, from the north and east of the province, to settle it. Had there not been a mass exodus of native Christians from the area in the last 100 years, I’d be willing to bet that you could trace the DNA of the majority of the peoples in the area to southern Anatolia and, well, Canaan, and not nearly as much to the southern Arabian Peninsula, from where Arab culture sprung.
So why is Palestine (or Syria, for that matter) thought of as Arab? Again, cultural imperialism. With the Arab conquest of the region, the culture became dominant. Arabic became the lingua franca, and many of those non-Arab peoples adopted Islam for the legal benefits.
To me it all comes down to this: If a dominant culture can remove a minority native culture from land which the minority claims eternal ties, when do the claims of those natives lapse? Can we tell the Jews that they aren’t welcome to their claims and turn around and tell the Sioux the same thing?
Chris
@Veritas:
Never thought about it. But I can think of some differences in the wider context in which these wars occur:
The Arab/Israeli conflict, in addition to all the baggage the two sides bring to it, has also always been a proxy war. It was a Cold War battleground for decades, and more recently it’s been a battleground in the war-between-fundies. IOW, there are a lot of foreigners who’ve sunk a LOT of time, money, media attention et al into the war.
Greece and Turkey, on the other hand, are NATO members. Foreign attention usually comes in the form of America and other countries telling them “stop your silly fighting and concentrate on the REAL enemy (the Soviets, Saddam, wev) or no supper for you!”
So in the first case, the powers that be are invested in keeping the conflict going, and in the second case, they’re invested in stomping it out. Big difference.
I’ll post more if anything else occurs to me.
Chris
@Violet:
Thanks, I hadn’t seen the full quote:
“They had a chance to go many places?” CHRIST ON A POGO STICK. Hey, you, South Carolina people! All of you pack up and move to Oregon! It’s okay, you’re all Americans, you’ll be fine! So what if you were living in South Carolina and you like it there – someone else needs lebensraum! Move over, selfish people!
JasonF
@some guy: 1834 is a bit earlier than I’d place the development of Palestinian nationalism, but yeah — by relatively recently, I mean mid-to-late 19th through early 20th centuries. And yes, Zionism is no older. So what? Like I said, none of this has anything to do with the legitimacy of the state of Israel or the right of the Palestinian people to self-governance. Don’t get caught in the trap of accepting Gingrich’s premise that Palestinian self governance is contingent upon some threshold of historicity.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Dennis G.:
You are making a big error, Dennis, namely that Palestine was the division of territory that the inhabitants identified themselves with in their identity. I’m from Hennepin County, but that doesn’t mean that there is any set of people that thinks of themselves as Hennepinites. If you would like, I could go on and on listing geographical reference points where people live but that do not constitute any sort of national identity.
The claim that the “Palestinians” are an invented ethnic group has a grain of truth to it. Up until 1948, Palestine may have been found on maps, but it was not the geographic unit that drew much identification. The inhabitants, outside of Jews and British, generally thought of themselves as Arabs.
The development of a Palestinian identity is a modern development, probably beginning sometime between 1830 and 1890 in response to specific events within the Ottoman Empire. To what extent this involved deliberate invention and to what extent was a natural consequence of other events is debatable.
Your attempt to simply point at a map badly undercuts your basic point, which is that, whether invented or not, a Palestinian national identity is *now* a reality and that the nature of its origins really doesn’t matter. Aside from what people above have said pointing out that all national identities are artificial, the development of a Palestinian identity has a lot more to do with all of the surrounding nationalities rejecting them, forcing the creation of an identity for themselves.
By bothering to reject Gingrich’s claims as false, you slide right past the fact that the biggest problem with them in terms of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is their complete and total irrelevance.
Veritas
@Chris:
Very good points. Also the hatred the Turks have towards to the Russians is very real and probably didn’t need to be stirred up much by the US during the Cold War! Compared to the Russo-Turkish rivalry, the Greek-Turk hatred is small potatoes.
@Benjamin Franklin:
Good point, too, but this is pretty minor compared to the I/P Conflict.
El Cid
What do you do when you have an actual grasp of history and instead of something reasonable, you always have some worthless crop of fools spouting off about “history” in Phoenicia?
some guy
@JasonF:
I’m not caught in that trap at all, the only rhetorical point I was making was that the (19th century) notion of “invention” when applied to ethnic nationalism of a people occurs (at least half) a century earlier for the Palestinians than it does for the Israelis.
Cole’s post summarizes accurately the historicity of the “people” occupying this particular locale, and their relationships to various State apparatuses.
some guy
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
only to the extent that all ethnic groups are invented. and we call such grains of truth tautologies.
foo
The real dog whistle here is calling Israel a “white male” outpost. That’s the subtle thing the author uses as a given but that’s the real hidden point he is making.
Israel and Palestine and that entire area of the Middle East is not “white” (i.e., Indo-European). Jews are discriminated against in Europe and seen as non-white by all Europeans. In fact, the very definition of the word “Semite” applies to those who speak Semitic languages (Arabic and Hebrew) and Semites are indistinguishable, both in how they look, their facial features, skin color, language and morphology, and from a genetic/genome perspective.
So how on earth is is possible for any Semite to be considered as part of an white male outpost ?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@foo:
Common mistake, but still wrong. Both Anti-Semitism and the Semitic language group get there name from Abraham’s tribe. Had the linguists who named the categories been African rather than Western, the language group might be called “Ethiopian”. “Anti-Semitic” was coined in the 19th century with Jews, specifically, in mind.
And, BTW, there isn’t much similarity between those who speak Aramaic and those who speak a Southern Semitic language but the languages.
Friday Jones
@some guy: You’re exactly right. Israel, somehow, owns us. And it’s downright frightening how many of our elected officials’ intelligence comes from AIPAC. Additionally, if a candidate doesn’t kiss the ring, look what happens. (Who didn’t show at the Jewish Republican Convention the other day??) I agree, some very bad shit has happened to the Jews…but when do we stop looking the other way when they kill innocents in the Gaza strip?
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): This should be interesting.
Dennis G.
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Much of history is the story of the names of places, people and cultures being erased and the struggles of those people to reclaim something that has been taken. Do these rights lapse? Only when there is nobody left to fight to reclaim them. The Sioux might still put up a fight, while the Iroquois are only a memory and unlikely to make a claim. And many Nations of the First People in America are completely erased. Folks on Long Island do not need to worry about the return of any Marsapeagues to make a claim to the land.
It is no surprise that the Romans used this tactic. So did the Chinese, the Mongols, the Russians and so on and so on. It is a very old narrative of our species.
The question for our time is: should it stop?
We have condemned rape as a weapon of war. Quick and brutal examples of ethnic cleanings have also be called out as unacceptable behavior. And yet, slow, relentless and methodical erasure of the names of places, of the identity of people and their cultures is still OK for most folks–especially if powerful Nations are doing the erasing.
This discussion focuses on the Palestinians, but you could have a similar conversation about the Tibetans or the Chechens or any other number of folks large and small, known and unknown who face the erasure of their identities and cultures.
It is true that this is an old story and that it has happened forever. And history can not be unscrambled. But does that justify and/or excuse standing by and accepting the erasure of cultural identity? I think the answer is no and that this is another kind of crime against humanity that should get universal condemnation. Others will–of course–disagree…
S. cerevisiae
Romanes eunt domus!
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Dennis G.:
So does the presence of Israel erase Arab culture or Syriac culture? Both? Neither?
Dennis G.
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): I don’t disagree with you. I chose the map because I like to have an image with a post and I thought it would work. But I can see how it may distract some from my main point.
pseudonymous in nc
This is so fucking ass-backward. What, pray tell, might be a reason for a group of people to coalesce around a common identity?
The wingnut line is “…so they should fuck off to Jordan”, i.e. ethnic cleansing, a term that comes from a region where there was a lot of rapid and bloody redefining of national identity. The counter to that is “well, Israel should give them all Israeli citizenship.”
That’s an easy one: Israel is actually regarded by Americans as a cultural outpost of white Christian America. We’re talking about “Israel the American political concept” here, not “Israel the Middle East nation”, and Newtie is talking about conceptual Palestinians, and not, say, the ones who’ll be showing up at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in two weeks.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
Why is that? “Semite” derives from “Shem”, the son of Noah. Shem was (allegedly) the ancestor of Abraham. It’s a myth that came from the Tigris-Euphrates Delta: Sumeria. Trace the language group back using linguistic lowest common denominators and the place of origin is in the Horn of Africa.
La Gata Gris
@ Temporarily Max McGee –
White Americans already tell the ‘Sioux’ (Lakota, Dakota and Nakota peoples) that we indigenous types aren’t welcome in our own lands. Or, at least, to have any sovereignty over our lands in the 21st century. Indians get a lot of push back whenever any tribe tries to carry on traditional religious practices, water rights, land rights, etc etc. As my mom used to say oh so sarcastically, they stole it fair and square.
So, as an indigenous person of the Milluk k’a, I can empathize with the Palestinians over their desire to not be run the hell out of their homes and have all their water stolen.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): If the Likud succeed those cultures will be erased. Hence Newt’s disingenuous claim of the “invented” Palestinian people. Fuck him with a heated rusty pitchfork tine; they are no more invented than the “American” people – in my family, our generations on this continent are far fewer than the that of average Palestinians in Gaza.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@La Gata Gris:
But not the Jews, who were run out of there by the Romans and kept from returning by the Byzantines (if you want to consider them separately from the Romans), Arabs and Turks?
La Gata Gris
@ Dennis G –
Uhm, I hate to break it to ya, but the “Iroquois” (Haudenosuanee, the people of the Longhouse) are very much alive and kicking, and giving hell to Canada and New York state. Just ask the governor over there, LOL. Remember, the “Iroquois” are a confederation of Six Nations (Five at their founding, the Tuscarora were added in the 18th century) – they are the Mohawk, Seneca, Onandaga, Oneida, Cayuga, and (as mentioned) the Tuscarora. And they are quite fierce, even now, in fighting for their sovereignty.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q):
Oh, certainly. Fuck the Israeli right wing.
The thing is that if the Israeli left was in power and working out a peaceful resolution with Palestinians from the center to the left, you’d have Palestinian Islamic fundies fighting just as vociferously to wipe Israel- and Israelis- off the map.
Don’t ever forget that the UN originally provided for a two-state situation in the ’40s, and the neighboring Arab States not only disapproved, but took much of that Palestinian land as their own.
some guy
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
the presence of Israel erases (attempts to erase) Palestinian culture. what does Syria have to do with it?
(nice misdirection, however)
some guy
oh sweet jeebus, Temp Max Zionist is up on his “wipe off” soapbox.
http://www.imemc.org/article/62651
“19 Children Killed, 200 Injured, By Israeli Shells In 2011”
over there dwell monsters.
some guy
Don’t ever forget how many UN Security Council Resolutions Israel violates, every day. day in, day out.
Don’t ever forget. fucking idiot.
Yutsano
@some guy:
So here’s your problem. You now have a society of seven million people that have developed and worked the land for 60 years. Where do you propose they go?
Dennis G.
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I do not think the presence of Israel erases any culture in and of itself.
OTOH, the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and the endless expansion of settlements has erased the culture of the people removed from their land, their traditions and their rights.
These are folks of different faiths and different traditions, but they have taken the name of the land, Palestine, as their cultural name and their bond of memory. When they are removed from their land and forced to live without rights, their culture is erased–slowly, but surely. You may call that culture Arab, Syriac or whatever you wish. They self-identify their culture today as Palestinian and so I would say that the culture erased by the occupation is Palestinian culture.
Corner Stone
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): I just figure you have as little understanding on this issue/subject as you do on pretty much every thing else you comment here on.
PIGL
“Invented” was invented by the Zionist Entity, or factions within it. The precise turn of phrase was this:
There are no Palestinians, you see, because we said so. Nobody at all was living there before, and we have no idea who built those villages and planted those olive groves…not Palestinians, no sirree bob.
¸
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@some guy:
Not Syrians, Syriacs.
Okay, not even Syriacs, because that is generally a reference to Middle Eastern Christians, but “Greater Syrians”, Syro-Palestinian, the inheritors of Assyrian culture and identity, people of the Levant. This is a population that covers Syria, Lebanon, Israel/Palestine and Jordan and into southern Turkey. These are the inheritors of Assyrian culture whom Westerners tend to think of Arabs, though Arabic culture supplied the majority religion and the lingua franca, but not the semi-nomadic part of its culture. Think of Egypt, which has its own culture prior to Arabization, or Ireland, with it’s Gaelic traditions that pre-date English cultural dominance.
Tabbouleh, shawarma, tahini, hummus? Cuisine of the Levant, not Arabia.
Anoniminous
Missing the point.
Gingrich has a gift of the gab, stringing words together as if the was some intellectual content behind them. Trying to find intellectual depth in Gingrich’s blather is exactly the same as looking for intellectual depth in Scooby-Doo cartoons. Fun, perhaps, but ultimately not worth the bother.
Gingrich doesn’t give two flying farts about Israel. He does care about votes and he knows the Conservative, evangelical, and fundamentalist goof-balls who are the majority in the Most Likely GOP primary voter demographic are huge, massive, supporters of Israel because their
Invisible FriendGod done told them so.If there were votes to be had Gingrich would be a supporter of the Hottentots against the Bantu.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Corner Stone:
From you, I consider that a badge of honor. Thanks!
dadanarchist
As a practicing historian (no, seriously, I have the PhD and teaching post, such as it is, to prove it), let me say this to Newt:
“Grifter, I work with historians, I know historians, historians are friends of mine. Grifter, you are no historian.”
amk
@Anoniminous: Bingo. He ain’t no fucking ‘professor’ and it’s time the left stopped ‘discussing’ his framing.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Dennis G.:
But what makes that culture unique?
I’ve lived nearly my entire life in Michigan- not Detroit, but on the west side of the state where we got a lot of spillover of the Middle Eastern migration to Detroit/Dearborn. I know quite a few people from Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, and their families are spread across the borders. In a few cases, one part of the family is Muslim and the other side is Christian. There’s about as much cultural uniqueness as there is between a European-rooted family with branches in Detroit and Cleveland, or between a Chicago-style hot dog and one from New York City. That is, there’s very, very little difference.
dadanarchist
What’s your point? That only Muslims are true Palestinians? Srsly, I don’t get it.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dadanarchist:
Sloppily written, yes, but it’s something that happens region-wide. That there isn’t a Palestinian-specific culture.
Chris
@Anoniminous:
You have no idea how many conservatives I’ve met, not politicians or pundits but regular old voters, who’re exactly like that.
dadanarchist
I still don’t get your point. Religion is the not the end-all, be-all of a culture. It’s one part, but not the entirety.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dadanarchist:
I never said it was. But I think people tend to think of interfaith marriage as something more uniquely Palestinian, where there’s been political unity between Islam and Christianity in order to fight for property rights (which is what the whole thing boils down to, imo), than, say Lebanese, where there are interfaith marriages in spite of the enmity of the last…however many decades it’s been now.
Tolkien's Ghost
Can we please stop referring to Newt as “The Professor.” JRR Tolkien has been fondly referred to as “The Professor” for many many years and he’s also much more deserving of the nickname. Newt is an a**, so we can just refer to him as “The A**” please?
pseudonymous in nc
Or perhaps Dublin, which was founded by Vikings, expanded by Normans (“The Pale”) and has been linguistically and culturally distinct from the Irish-speaking bits of Ireland for a thousand years.
The “cultural uniqueness” argument is a fucking canard.
Dude in Princeton
It’s not an evangelical thing.
Newt’s simply reviving Golda Meir’s outstandingly racist disapprobation of the Palestinians, from the late 1960s, namely that there’s no such thing as Palestinians.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Golda_Meir
Dialing for dollars.
dadanarchist
But what does any of this have to do with Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, or Newt’s claim that “there’s no such thing” as a Palestinian?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dadanarchist:
It’s that I don’t see Palestinians having a culture that differs from their cousins in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, either, except that they’re in the next county over.
Mike G
Newt is a “historian” the way the Bush Administration sought “intelligence” about Iraq before the invasion — as propaganda to justify what their arrogant asshole selves already wanted.
Gingrich is a stupid person’s idea of what an intelligent person sounds like.
Anoniminous
@amk:
The only “frames” I am interested in seeing wrt to Gingrich are hardened steel, encased in concrete, about 4″ apart, and have a locked, swinging door in the middle.
@Chris:
I’ve “worked” the Democrats-R-Us table at county fairs, local festivals, & etc.
So … me, too. Also.
Svensker
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
It’s nice that you don’t. Do you see a difference between Oneida culture and Onandaga culture? We’ll be hanging on your response.
Here’s an article about some of that undifferentiated non-Palestinian culture.
dadanarchist
So what? Canadian and American cultures aren’t radically different, yet we’re separate nations. Same with Austria and Germany. Australia and New Zealand. Iceland and Denmark. The Scandinavian nations.
A long time ago, the literary historian Benedict Anderson pointed out that all nations are, essentially, invented and that all peoples are, essentially, imaginary.
The same applies to both Jews and Palestinians, but we only seem to remember that fact when it comes to the dispossessed.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Yutsano:
You now have a society of seven million people that have developed and worked the land for 60 years. Where do you propose they go?
Why not stick them on a godforsaken reservation on marginal land somewhere in the US?
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Svensker:
You know that there’s a difference between Flint-style and Detroit-style coneys, too, don’t you?
Svensker
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
See 116 above.
Yutsano
@dadanarchist: There’s an irony here: the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has done more to unify the Palestinians as a people than any other force in their modern history. Israel is literally creating them out of the more nebulous background they came from.
dadanarchist
It’s an irony with historical precedent. Most peoples were born out of some sort of antagonistic relationship with a more powerful neighbor. One could read the Exodus story this way, vis-a-vis the Hebrews, and Theodor Herzl himself wrote that European anti-semitism would help create a Jewish nation out of scattered nationalities of Jewish faith.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dadanarchist:
Except that the lower 13 colonies filled up faster, saw their economy grow with the peculiar institution, fought a war for their independence, and founded a completely autonomous republic. Oh, and the lower 13 had not only the same European and Asian influences on it’s culture, but there’s been a lot of African and Latino influences that the neighbors up north just don’t have much of.
Too early to tell, isn’t it? Gotta believe that there are very different influences from the First Peoples of each, though.
Except for the differences in dialects, diets, traditional economies…And that’s just in Germany proper! Throw in the differences between centuries of different aristocratic dynasties ruling over either very homogeneous populations, or, in the case of the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns, ruling over diverse empires…yeah, sure.
But, ya know, the Levant, from the Hellenistic era onward, has mostly shared its history from one end to the other, and, from the Arabs onward, a language. And before transportation made the world smaller, they shared much of the same diet (those on the Mediterranean Coast, of course, with more seafood in their diets than those inland- but not too far inland, what with the lack of refrigeration). The music? The same. Place seems to be the difference, and it doesn’t have much of an effect on causing cultural differences throughout the area.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Svensker:
Well, that’s what I was replying to. Those are micro-differences. If you go to Rockford, you get chili dogs at the Corner Bar, if you’re on the southeast side of Grand Rapids, you stop for and Ultradog at Yesterdog. They’re different, but by a decimal or two of a degree on the culinary compass.
dead existentialist
@Phoenician in a time of Romans: ‘Cause then you’d have to call all of them Indians. And they’d be like Max’s “
Syriacscousins.” You know, non-European white types with no real cultural identity of their own.IOW: wogs.
John M. Burt
Repubs are doubling down daily on their reversals of reality.
In this case, the reality is that Palestine was a real country with a real population until Palestinian Jews decided to start calling themselves “Israelis”, and informed the Palestinian Muslims that it was no longer their country.
Ian
@Veritas:
You win the internets of the day.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@dead existentialist:
Have you ever taken a look at a map?
From Jerusalem to Damascus is 135 miles. From Jerusalem to Beirut is 145 miles. There aren’t unfordable rivers, impassable mountains, or long stretches of barren desert between them. There are a few valleys in Lebanon and Syria that are relatively isolated- these are places where Aramaic is still in use. This was not an area that was all that difficult to traverse before horses were domesticated. The area I’m speaking of is the breeding ground for a monoculture.
The borders as recognized were there for good reason before the Greeks conquered, but since then those borders made for nothing but more efficient administration-by-province within a number of different empires, and that’s no more a pasty Northern European construct than it is one of swarthy Mediterranean types from Italy and Greece as well as Central Asian Turks and Arabs from their Peninsula.
eemom
IMO, based on the thread so far, these are the people who are capable of having an intelligent discussion on the question of Palestinian national identity were such a question to arise:
smintheus
dedc79
JasonF
Temporarily Max
JMN
Yutsano
Anoniminous
I would exclude from that qualification anyone who thinks a meaningless pandering soundbite emanating from the mouth of Newt Gingrich is a good starting point for a discussion of that question.
JMochaCat
Our esteemed host says, “You could even mention that it was Newt’s romanticized British Empire that laid the groundwork for today’s conflict in a cynical colonialist exercise designed to divide the region and steal its resources.”
Don’t forget to apportion some blame to the French. Lebanon actually wanted the US to hold their Mandate (if they had to have one), but we weren’t signatories to Versailles. And then the French appointed a Governor-General who fancied himself the reincarnation of a Crusader.
Also, please remember the al-Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, eventually Hitler’s buddy.
Veritas said, “I think the Ethiopian and Sephardic Jews in Israel might object to Israel as a “white male European” country. The former look very much like Palestinians, and the latter are darker than them.”
But yet, one could argue that the modern state of Israel does have significant white male European roots; many of the early 20th-C proponents of same were western Europeans who did look at the region and see a bunch of brown people to deal with the way they usually did.
Also, the mostly-Ashkenaz ultra-Orthodox contributed lots to the years-long delay in getting them admitted. And then the Ethiopian Jews nearly made some of their heads explode because the Ethiopians had preserved the ritual of returning to Israel from exile (which some of them did on getting off the plane). And they still face a great deal of “you’re not real Jews” BS.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
FIFY
Ranger 3
Kill Whitey!!!!!!
JMochaCat
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Thanks (no sarcasm).
Also forgot to mention that one of France’s overwhelming motivations for Middle East territory over which it could exert control was (wait for it) oil.
And it was Gouraud (GG of of Syria, not Lebanon) who was the wannabe Crusader.
That’ll teach me to post at 0Dark:30.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@JMochaCat:
Yeah, and mainly, like the other victors, with the idea of fueling their navy.
ETA: You’re welcome. Wasn’t trying to be a dick at all. All of the treaties signed after WW I can be confusing.
John Weiss
Every ‘people’ is invented unless one’s talking about our African roots. What crap. BTY shit on a stick is not a fudgesicle.
Hawes
@some guy: Ethnicity is not “invented”, it is ascribed at birth. There is no “Palestinian” ethnicity. They are ethnically Arab. That is their ethnicity. You are born Arab. You can chose your religion and even your citizenship in some instances, but the Palestinians are ethnically Arab.
Newt – like not a few commenters in this thread – confuses ethnicity and nationality. Newt is right that Palestinians are ethnically Arab. That “Palestinian” is not an ethnicity.
It’s a national identity, and national identities ARE inherently created. They usually include ethnicity (check) and long connection to a geographic place (check).
So it seems pretty apparent that ethnic Arabs who live in the former Roman province of Palestine (which is a corruption of the Greek word Philistine) have created for themselves the nationality of Palestinian. They are now trying to create a Palestinian state so that they may also enjoy Palestinian citizenship.
I get caught up in definitions, because I think it’s important. Newt’s fundamental misunderstanding of sociology and political science is apparent, but whatever. It’s his ability to take a few correct ideas and come to the wrong conclusion that makes this a problem.
wilfred
How about a discussion on the invention of Jewish identity. After all, the relevance of Palestinian identity is directly related to the Jewish State, no?
The indispensable Mondoweiss is a good place to start:
http://mondoweiss.net/2009/10/shlomo-sands-the-invention-of-the-jewish-people-reviewed-by-jack-ross.html
Svensker
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
I bow to your deep understanding of the cultures, identities, wishes, and dreams of those damned Arabs. So hard to tell them apart — now I know I don’t have to, cuz they’re all the same! Easy peasy.
Mike in NC
Newt Gingrich and Pat Buchanan would make a terrific pair of running mates. They must spend lots of quality time together working on the racist dog whistles.
eemom
heh.
Svensker
@eemom:
Not really a laughing matter.
The whole issue is an absolute train wreck and it’s not going to end well at all. Such a pity.
Brachiator
@Veritas:
Cyprus is still a thorny issue, as is the issue of peace in Northern Ireland. The former Yugoslavia is still a stewing pot of hatred, while the division of the former Czechoslovakia proceeded peacefully.
The civil war in Sri Lanka has been resolved with the stomping of the Tamils (to near universal blindness in the West). The severing of North and South Sudan is bubbling into a disaster, while the failed state of Somalia is crumbling into an ethnic, tribal, religious and nationalistic unstable patchwork.
And the problem of Kashmir is also as old as the problem of Israel and the Palestians, and arises in part as a residue of the British administration of the Middle East and India. People who over obsess solely on Israel have no sense of history or overly focus on areas where the US has an interest.
@Violet:
Excellent stuff, noting that the development of a national identity, of Americans seeing themselves as separate from being British is an apt rejoinder to Newt’s nonsense.
bvac
Yeah, Newt really has a whole Orient/Occident thing going on. It’s odd that the right has this world view down cold, and the only tool the left/whatever has to fight back is to point out what the right is doing.
Roy G.
Isn’t it ironic (or merely chutzpah) that the Zionists complain so loudly about the ‘delegitimization’ of Israel?
chopper
@John Weiss:
i do find it funny that people are arguing that ‘palestinian’ is an invented people, vs ‘israeli’ which is totes not made up at all. i’m sure all the sephardic jews living in the holy land a thousand years ago totally referred to themselves as ‘israelis’.
Jay C
@Veritas:
Was it “pretty quickly? On a historical level, maybe: but as a practical matter, maybe your “solution” should read:
eemom
@chopper:
Israelites. Like in the Desmond Dekker tune.
Jay C
@Jay C:
Ooops! Sorry – meant to link to THIS “Greco-Turkish War”; there have been several over the past 200 years (which kinda proves my point!)…
MaximusNYC
What I’m amazed by is that no one is mentioning that “The ____s are an invented people” is a trope that has classically been used against THE JEWS.
Much current American Islamophobia strikes me as rebranded anti-Semitism. Not surprising that Newt is in on the action.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Svensker:
And where did I say that, or anything like it? Hell, if anything, I’ve made the opposite argument: That those people in Palestine AREN’T Arabs, that they share their culture with people in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.
What Palestinians have is a subculture inside the Levant, and what the Gazans you linked to have is a sub-subculture. The question then, I think, is when does a subculture rate national status?