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by Daniel Pipes December 10, 2011 http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2011/12/newt-gingrich-and-the-invented-palestinian-people The former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and current Republican presidential candidate  said yesterday that "there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. We have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab people, and they had the chance to go many places." Everyone  from the PLO to a Mitt Romney spokesman  jumped on Gingrich for this assertion, but he happens to be absolutely correct: no Arabic-speaking Muslims identified themselves as "Palestinian" until 1920, when, in rapid order this appellation and identity was adopted by the Muslim Arabs living in the British mandate of Palestine. For details, see a long article of mine from  1989  on the topic or a short one from  2000 . (December 10, 2011) The Year the Arabs Discovered Palestine {Long versi...

You are here: Home > Essays > Palestine vs. Israel as the Name of the Holy Land Dr. Thomas McCall, the Senior Theologian of our ministry, has written many articles for the Levitt Letter. He holds a Th.M. in Old Testament studies and a Th.D. in Semitic languages and Old Testament. He has served as Zola’s co-author, mentor, pastor, and friend for nearly 30 years. by Thomas S. McCall, Th.D. This article appeared originally in the December 1997 Levitt Letter. During the last few centuries, the world, Christians included, has fallen into a bad habit. We have bought into some early Roman propaganda. We have used the name Palestine, which Roman Emperor Hadrian placed on the country of Israel in 135 A.D., for so long that it has become common usage. This would be as incorrect as calling the Russia of today the “Soviet Union” or referring to Berlin as “East Germany.” The thoughts below by our ministry’s senior theologian, Dr. Thomas S. McCall, completely explor...