A Reply to the historical fallacies of the U.S. presidential candidate Gingrich and his claims that the Palestinian people had been invented

Written by: Yaseen Iz Ed-deen

Translated by: Amal Yaseen

Reviewed by: H. N.

 The statements of the U.S. presidential candidate Newt Gingrich about the Palestinian people has raised Quite a sensation, because of its extreme ignorance of history and the incitement it carries against the Palestinian people together with justifying the genocide which the Palestinian people suffered from.

The essence of Gingrich statements is that there was no Palestinian people before 1948 and that it was invented by the "wicked neighbors of the poor Israelis " as a tool to fight the State of Israel.
I would like to point out that I will not reply on all his historical fallacies.

I will not speak about how the "State of Israel" was established over the bodies of another people after the largest ethnic cleansing operation, including the expulsion of hundreds of thousands from their homes by force, and preventing them from returning to their homes in order to maintain the Jewishness of the state, I will also not talk about the historical right in Palestine for its another subject.

I will refute his statements from a historical perspective, for he denies that there was such a thing as Palestine or Palestinian people before the Zionist project. Accordingly the Palestinians are simply Arab arrivals or newcomers on this land, and " they have not respected the hospitality so they deserved the expulsion".

However, most of the Zionists have abandoned this narration due to its weakness for it contradicts the most obvious historical facts, and they have adopted a more realistic narration, which is astonishingly more explicit and also more blatant, which states that the Palestinian people fought a war and lost it therefore the loser must pay the price.

This land was called Palestine, after the name of the tribes that came from the Aegean Sea and mingled with Canaanites. It seems that they were in control , so the land was known by their name. They had fought in later wars with the Jews. And as a historical paradox, Palestinians back then inhabited the coast, while the Jews inhabited the mountainous areas, exactly the opposite of the present days , where the Jews inhabit the coast and specifically around Tel Aviv region which was not under the Jewish rule according to historical narrations, while Palestinians inhabit the mountainous areas in the West Bank and the Heights of Galilee (the area on which the kingdoms of Judah and Israel in ancient times).

The Romans were the ones who established the name Palestine, and when Arabs came, they continued to use it. We find an example in the Umayyad penny picture below, which has the name Palestine inscribed on it. Palestine was an independent state in the Umayyad period, the Arabs Umayyad had a great interest in Palestine consequently the period of their rule was a very prosperous era in the history of Palestine. their monuments still remain to this day, including the four Umayyad palaces adjacent to the south wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque which has been seized by the Zionists as a prelude to the Judaization project which aims to change the landmarks and its history.

Arab tribes had inhabited Palestine before the Islamic conquest, when the tribes "Lakhm and Jutham" settled in Palestine, in addition to "Qudaa and Amela" and other tribes that migrated from Yemen and the south of The Arabian Peninsula after the destruction of Maarib Dam, some historians, contemporaries of that period, called it " The Lakhm and Jutham land ". Also some other Arab tribes came from the north of the Arabian Peninsula to Palestine with the Islamic conquest, some came from the south of the Arabian Peninsula which were known as the "Yamanyah" and others coming from the north which were known as "Qaysiyah" tribe. 

Until today, most of the families and tribes of Palestine are divided between Qaysiyah and Yamanyeh, with large affinity among them, including those clans and families of non-Arab roots , which came to Palestine in subsequent periods, they all merged in a social clan system and have not changed since the Islamic conquest.

Even though there was not an independent state called Palestine all these years, yet this does not preclude the existence of a Palestinian entity, and during the Islamic history it was an independent state until the end of the Ottoman Empire, where it was known "Sunjuq Alquds", and when Gingrich says that Palestine belonged to the Ottoman state and was not an independent state, Does it mean that it was empty of its people or that is a free property after the demise of Ottoman rule?

Here we stop with the largest paradoxes in Gingrich talk, when the British occupation came and gave the Jews the Balfour Declaration and began the implementation of the Zionist project, Zionist immigrants were using the name of Palestine in their dealings, their jobs and even in their political demands. So, Are they also a part of the conspiracy of " inventing the Palestinian people"?

And for those who speak that the Palestinian people had been invented I want to introduce to them the image of a Palestinian currency, the pound below, which is not a currency of Palestine during the British occupation, but it was the first currency of the State of "Israel"! The image is taken from the governmental site, "Bank of Israel," which is responsible for minting currency in the Zionist state.

The site tells the story of this currency and why is it called the Palestinian pound (which contrasts with the Zionists pursuit after 1948 to obliterate everything that indicates to Palestine and delete it), for when the Zionists were preparing for their statehood in 1947 they decided to send to a special printing house in Europe in order to print the currency of their new state, but they faced a problem which was that they have not settled on a name of the country yet, so they agreed to print as the name of the national currency which was the Palestinian pound .

The Zionists adopted the name of the Palestinian pound and continued trading with this currency until the year 1955, when it was replaced by a currency that hides any reference or indication to Palestine, in other words, the Zionists did not know what to name their state until the last moment, and they did not have anything to build on their present, but Palestine, which was taken as a war booty after they expelled its people and displaced them.