Palestinians: Did Gingrich Get it Right?

Both the mainstream media and Mitt Romney have been painting a picture of Newt Gingrich as a loose cannon largely because he has been articulating that the Palestinians were not ever a nation or a people prior to 1947. Is he right?

In fact, in spite of the common wisdom of the day, this is the rap everywhere, from Ivy League classrooms to the mainstream media. Are Palestinians getting shunned, oppressed and just treated badly by Israel?

It is no secret that Palestinians lob deadly rockets into Israel almost daily. They indiscriminately target homes, schools, hospitals and public places without warning. Less than a month ago a rocket did land at a kindergarten, but most western media said little about that attack.

It is also well known (to anyone taking the time to find out) that after a suspected terrorist hideout or center of operations is discovered by Israel, they spend three days dropping leaflets to announce that they are going to strike that center. The IDF may be the most compassionate army on earth, but that is never mentioned by left leaning news outlets anywhere in the world.

Romney’s characterization of Gingrich as a loose cannon has played well in the hands of the mainstream media who after all are satisfied to see any GOP candidate as a bad choice in 2012. Truth is on Gingrich’s side, even if it is not the kind of truth they want to hear.

In the most recent GOP debate, Ron Paul condescended by declaring, that from the Ottoman Empire and on, Palestinians had no nationhood imagined or real, and Romney exclaimed that while it may be true this was not the time to agitate or exacerbate the conflicts already plaguing the Middle East.

How quickly we seem to have forgotten, that prior to, and during World War Two, Chamberlain’s Crimean concessions, Vichy France ’s biddable compliance, and America ’s early quiescence about Hitler did nothing to curb, quell or stop Nazi Fascism. Have we now capitulated to the kind of diplomacy that is willing to talk softly while our enemies carry a big stick?

Are we creating a vision of America that would make Jane Fonda proud, truth vague and no backbone vogue?

It is hard to envision policy making by common wisdom and sensitivity training being very effective against the rages of Hamas or Hezbollah as seen daily in the media. Masked gun toting, goose stepping soldiers chanting, death to Israel, will hardly stop to check if policy is based on truth and good historical findings. But is it?

In fact, one has only to ask a few simple questions to discover the truth that media has ignored for decades. The questions are simple and the barest amount of research is needed to answer them all.

Where are the borders of Palestine, where were they ever in history? Have the Palestinians ever had a charter, constitution or a bill of rights? What is, or was, the coin of the realm or the currency? Where is the Palestinian capital, where was it in times past? What nation or group of nations has ever recognized Palestine as a free and independent nation prior to 1947? Who were the first or subsequent leaders of Palestine according to historical records?

None of these questions can be answered positively, but this one can. Have the Palestinians ever been offered self rule and a chance to become a completely autonomous nation? The answer is, yes, twice, but both times they refused because their only interest was to see the complete destruction of Israel.

Using the Palestinian question to label a GOP candidate as, a loose cannon, reflects only desperation among both Newt’s opponents and the mainstream media, but sadly it also reflects America’s new penchant to create policy by ‘common wisdom’ rather than truth and historical accuracy.

It is doubtful that Gingrich would appoint a Secretary of State or ambassadors who would lambaste the Palestinians for their ignorance of history or for their barreling ahead with a policy of “wipe Israel off the map” but whatever policies he uses to seek peace in the Middle East should not restrain the truth, even if it is vogue in the classroom and the media.

Here is the place we may want to remind the liberals of the words of one of their own. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was quoted often for saying, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

A generational effort by feckless, farcical and frothing academicians has produced the most history challenged young adults in U.S. history. They are convinced that they are free from frumpy frozen traditional values and cannot be told that; in fact, they have been hornswoggled, hoodwinked and virtually robbed of their own shining heritage. If they would fail at American history, what can they be expected to know about Palestinian history?

They see the austerity, hardships and trials of their forbears as disturbing, a gauntlet to be avoided, rather than, a crucible whose flames refine the gold that makes great men, and exceptional nations. Free thinkers are as common as rocks, but great thinkers are as rare as the fossicker’s oro fino, found lying only at the bottom of the deepest and darkest pits, and brought to the surface with great labor and determination.

The moment they insisted that they must be different they became the same as their fellows. They failed to notice that every great man, with rare exception, stood outside of the crowd like the lighthouse on the roaring seas. Thinkers and doers who treasured their freedoms, knowing it was a platform on which to build the lasting fruit of real integrity, instead of the passing fancies of indulgence, with friends of like mind.

They laughed at the individual who looked beyond, at times, by looking behind. They forgot to be - while thinking only of belonging. They were the successoral purveyors of their own opinions, but conquerors of no new thing. They could not be bothered with the facts that fly in the face of their views, opinions, wandering twisted tropes, and self serving truculence.

They are Occupy Wall Street, LGBT, greedy and violent unions, corrupt politicians, false religionists, and secularism’s well educated, but mindless minions, all rolled into one ball of degenerative mish-mush, that of late, are called, progressives. They are the broad way crowd Christ spoke of; (Mt 7: 13-14)) that are convinced by the crowd to stay close to the crowd. Yet even the broad way has a destination, a place of arrival or an end of travels. What is that final destination?

“There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Pr 14: 12)