Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich refused to back down Saturday from his controversial remarks about Palestinians being an “invented” people, saying they are “terrorists” bent on destroying the Jewish state.
“Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes,” Gingrich said during a thorny moment in the latest debate among the Republicans vying to challenge President Barack Obama in the November 2012 election.
Gingrich, a former House speaker who has surged in public opinion polls, caused a firestorm with an interview released on Friday, in which he said, “We’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community.”
But Gingrich did not back down on the comments when pressed during the debate.
“These people are terrorists. They teach terrorism in their schools,” he said when moderators asked the candidates to comment on the controversy.
“They have textbooks that say if there are 13 Jews and nine Jews are killed, how many Jews are left? We pay for those textbooks through our aid money. It’s time for somebody to say ‘enough lying about the Middle East.’“
His rivals in the debate pounced.
Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and onetime frontrunner seen as Gingrich’s main rival in the nominating process that begins in three weeks, said Gingrich’s description of the Palestinians was “a mistake.”
“We stand with the Israeli people. If we disagree with them, like this president has time and time again, we don’t do it in public like he’s done it -- we do it in private,” Romney said, referring to a series of publicized clashes between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
When Gingrich said he was speaking the truth, Romney said: “We make it clear we’re going to tell the truth, but we’re not going to throw incendiary words into a place which is a boiling pot when our friends, the Israelis, would say, what in the world are you doing?”
Representative Ron Paul slammed Gingrich’s comments as “just stirring up trouble.”
“Under the Ottoman Empire, the Palestinians didn’t have a state but neither did Israel,” he said. “This is how we get involved in so many messes. It fails on the side of practicing a little diplomacy.”
In a bid to underline key character differences between himself and Gingrich, Romney said he would not speak so spontaneously as commander-in-chief.
“If I’m president of the United States, I will exercise sobriety, care, stability,” Romney said. “I’m not a bomb-thrower, rhetorically or literally.”
Gingrich, though, defended the remark and used it as an example to tout his tell-it-like-it-is style.
“I’m a Reaganite. I’m proud to be a Reaganite. I will tell the truth, even if it’s at the risk of causing some confusion sometimes with the timid,” Gingrich said.
Palestinians dismayed by Gingrich over his ‘invented... 
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