What an asshole. What group identity exists that wasn't made up at one time? Saying palestinians are just arabs is like saying frenchmen should only be classified as europeans.

I wonder how much money and support AIPAC has given him. Foriegn nations should not steer US politics!

Not to put too fine a point on it - but his essential point is quite correct. No one was really called a "Palestinian" except in very recent world history. Certainly not within the context that the term is being used today.

However, that doesn't really matter much. The modern Jewish state also did not exist until recent modern history. They had a history as a nation until the Romans sacked the place, but after that point their identity was not that of a people/state, but simply as a 'race' which was scattered. Does that mean they did not exist? Of course not, and the Palestinians may not have had a state either, or necessarily an identity linked to a specific nation - but they were there.

As always - this whole discussion is pointless. The world should forcibly relocate all Jews to an island like Sicily. Then relocate all the "palestinians" to an island on the other side of the planet. Then build a big fence all around the disputed territory and turn it into an international museum run by the Swiss and no one else is allowed to live there. Problem solved.

There was a book released awhile ago that made such claims as well and was embraced over here. Someone bothered to do the research though and blew it completely out of the water. Noam wrote about it apparently it went across the pond and when it was released in England it was just annihilated.

Thing is, people are just lazy and they won't bother to double check things. When someone finally does interesting things come out.

No more made up than Americans... I mean, they just showed up in a land that wasn't theirs and suddenly started calling themselves Americans... They didn't exist before that.

Actually, Americans didn't just start calling themselves Americans. Everyone else in the world started calling the people living in the Americas Americans as early as the Napoleonic Wars. We just began to self-identify as Americans because everyone else called us that.

This guy will say anything...for a vote.