Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, a stupid person’s idea of what a smart guy sounds like, said this week that Palestinians are an “invented” people, a position that could be seen as putting him at odds with the U.S. push for a two-state solution in the Middle East.
“Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire,” Gingrich told the Jewish Channel, which posted portions of the interview online on Friday. “And I think that we’ve have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab community, and they had the chance to go many places.”
Newt, a college professor of history, missed this (Justin Rivero):
Specific references to “Palestine” date back nearly five hundred years before “the time of Jesus.” In the 5th Century BCE, Herodotus, the first historian in Western civilization, referenced “Palestine” numerous times in chronicle of the ancient world, The Histories, including the following passage describing “Syrians of Palestine”:
“…they live in the coastal parts of Syria; and that region of Syria and all that lies between it and Egypt is called Palestine.” (VII.89) The above translation by Harry Carter is featured in the 1958 Heritage Press edition of Herodotus’ famous work. Both older and newer versions corroborate the accuracy of the reference. A. D. Godley’s 1920 translation of the crucial line states, “This part of Syria as far as Egypt is all called Palestine”, while Robin Waterfield’s 1998 updated Oxford translationrenders the passage this way: “This part of Syria, all the way to the border with Egypt, is known as Palestine.”
A hundred years later, in the mid-4th Century BCE, Aristotle made reference to the Dead Sea in his Meteorology.