Dear Mr. Gingrich,

Warmest regards and best wishes to you and your family during this holiday season.

Allow me to remind you that recently you said in an interview with the Jewish Channel: "Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we've had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and I think it's tragic."
Gingrich's interview with the Jewish Channel

Again, describing yourself as a historian while speaking to those gathered for the Republican debate in Des Moines, Iowa, you mentioned that the word Palestine had been invented. "There never was a Palestinian state (or people) and so, there is no legitimate place for them today."  Today the Palestinians make up almost half of the people living in the Holy Land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. They're not an invention.

As a refresher, historian Basil Soufi recaps the history of Palestine: Peleset (transliterated from hieroglyphs as P-r-s-t) is found in numerous Egyptian documents referring to a neighboring people or land starting from c 1150 BCE during the Twentieth dynasty of Egypt. The first mention is though to be in texts of the temple at Medinet Babu which record a people called the Peleset among the Sea Peoples who invaded Egypt in Ramesses III reign.The Assyrians called the same region Palashtu or Pilistu, beginning with Adad-nirari II in the Nimrud Slab in c 800 BCE through the emperor Sargon II in his Annals approximately a century later.

The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the region synonymous with that defined in modern times was in 5th century BC Ancient Greece.Herodotus wrote of a 'district of Syria, called Palaistinê" in The Histories, the first historical work clearly defining the region, which included the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.

Approximately a century later, Aristotle used a similar definition in Meteorology. Later writers such as Polemon and Pausanias also used the term to refer to the same region. This usage was followed by Roman writers such as Ovid, Tibullus, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder, Dio Chrysostom, Statius, Plutarch as well as Roman Judean writers Philo of Alexandria and Josephus. Other writers, such as Strabo, a prominent Roman-era geographer (although he wrote in Greek), referred to the region as Coele-Syria around 10-20 CE.  The term was first used to denote an official province in c.135 CE, when the Roman authorities, following the suppression of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, combined Iudaea Province with Galilee and other surrounding cities such as Ashkelon to form "Syria Palaestina" (Syria Palaestina), which some scholars state was in order to complete the dissociation with Judaea.

The Hebrew name Peleshet (פלשת Pəlésheth)- usually translated as Philistia in English, is used in the Bible more than 250 times. In the Torah / Pentateuch the term is used 10 times and its boundaries are undefined. The later Historical books (see Deuteronomistic history) include most of the biblical references, almost 200 of which are in the Book of Judges and the Books of Samuel, where the term is used to denote the southern coastal region to the west of the ancient Kingdom of Judah.
During the Byzantine period, the entire region (Syria Palestine, Samaria, and the Galilee) was named Palaestina, subdivided into provinces Palaestina I and II. The Byzantines also renamed an area of land including the Negev, Sinai, and the west coast of the Arabian Peninsula as Palaestina Salutaris, sometimes called Palaestina III. The Arabic word for Palestine is فلسطين (commonly transcribed in English as Filistin, Filastin, or Falastin).

Moshe Sharon writes that when the Arabs took over Greater Syria in the 7th century, place names that were in use by the Byzantine administration before them, generally continued to be used. Hence, he traces the emergence of the Arabic form Filastin to this adoption, with Arabic inflection, of Roman and Hebrew (Semitic) names. Jacob Lassner and Selwyn Ilan Troen offer a different view, writing that Jund Filastin, the full name for the administrative province under the rule of the Arab caliphates, was traced by Muslim geographers back to the Philistines of the Bible. The use of the name "Palestine" in English became more common after the European renaissance. It was officially revived by the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and applied to the territory that was placed under The Palestine Mandate.

Mr. Gingrich, may I suggest that you review your understanding of history and make a public statement about the people of Palestine being "invented."  I think everyone, including your supporters, would appreciate your apology for this historical error.

Palestine was mentioned twice in the letter to Lord Rothchild from Balfour in the 1917 saying that a national home for the Jewish people would be in Palestine and nothing should be done which might prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine. See the exact copy of the Balfour letter below.

(Mr. Rodgers provides an exact copy of Arthur James Balfour's letter to Lord Rothschild. You can read the letter by going to http://history1900s.about.com/cs/holocaust/p/balfourdeclare.htm)

Sincerely,

Leonard Rodgers

Leonard Rodgers
Director - EMEU (Evangelicals for Middle East Understanding)
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