For all the hawkish Mideast rhetoric among the GOP presidential field, Newt Gingrich is quickly distinguishing himself for right-wing stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the latest such posturing, the former House speaker cited an example of Palestinian incitement against Israelis — a real issue, but just [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

For all the hawkish Mideast rhetoric among the GOP presidential field, Newt Gingrich is quickly distinguishing himself for right-wing stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the latest such posturing, the former House speaker cited an example of Palestinian incitement against Israelis — a real issue, but just not quite in the fact-free way Gingrich confidently spoke of in last week’s Republican debate.

Gingrich was asked about his earlier remark, plucked from “an ideological tract disguised as history,” that Palestinians are an “invented” people — a view he hasn’t walked back, but qualified with support for a two-state solution to the conflict. At last week’s GOP presidential debate, however, Gingrich doubled down and declared of the Palestinians, “These people are terrorists.” He went on:

They teach terrorism in their schools. 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 fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, enough lying about the Middle East.

Watch a video of Gingrich’s remarks at the debate:

Gingrich invoked truth and spoke with certainty. But an Associated Press fact check of his quite specific claim — that U.S. money pays for school textbooks that teach math by counting Jewish deaths — found it didn’t check out:

Three researchers — [George Washington University political scientist Nathan] Brown, Itamar Marcus from Palestinian Media Watch and Eldad Pardo from IMPACT-SE — said the example Gingrich cited in the Dec. 10 Republican debate does not exist in the texts. Gingrich’s office did not respond to two emailed requests for further comment.

Incitement in the Mideast conflict is a complicated and serious issue, and it’s an impediment to peace. By making false claims about incitement, Gingrich cheapens the discourse on this serious issue.

The full AP article describes religious schools in Occupied Palestinian Territory — constituting about 750 Palestinian students of the Territories’ 1.6 million students — that glorify martyrdom. A study found that government schools, which teach more than 700,000 students, had two examples of anti-Jewish sentiments in their textbooks, but the largest concern was that the Israeli national narrative was omitted from the books.

Last year, the Washington Institute For Near East Policy (WINEP) noted some progress against Palestinian incitement in textbooks, while important areas of concern persist. “We need to recognize what needs to be improved and recognize and praise the progress that’s been,” WINEP chief Robert Satloff said. “We need to stay away from hysteria and its opposite, whitewash.”

In the confrontational, climactic scene of the the classic 1964 Cold War film Seven Days in May, President Jordan Lyman barks a question in frustration at Gen. James Mattoon Scott, the leader of a right-wing military conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. “Why in the [...]]]> Reposted by arrangement with Think Progress

In the confrontational, climactic scene of the the classic 1964 Cold War film Seven Days in May, President Jordan Lyman barks a question in frustration at Gen. James Mattoon Scott, the leader of a right-wing military conspiracy to overthrow the U.S. government. “Why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect?” says the president, slamming his hand on the table. A much toned down version of this drama plays out today, too. Only now it’s the generals — the top brass, no less — using strong language to remind politicians of the delicacies of the American republic.

Perhaps taking their cues from Congress or neocon websites, GOP presidential candidates long ago settled on a battle cry against President Obama’s national security record: the almost universal theme that the President should do to what the generals tell him. Texas governor Rick Perry said it about Afghanistan and Iraq. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) said it about reinstating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (many generals were for the repeal). Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said he would do what the generals want on Afghanistan, before backing down. Former House speaker Newt Gingrich went the other way, reversing his support for civilian control in favor of wondering why Obama “overrule(d) all his generals.”

But during a press availability while traveling in Saudia Arabia, the top U.S. military officer sang a different tune, using harsh language to describe the talking point about deferring national security and war decisions to the generals. Asked about the line, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said:

I’ll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me.

And here’s why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that’s what it is. Its advice. It’s military judgments, it’s alternatives, it’s options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don’t find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned.

Dempsey isn’t the first top military officer to tell politicians about the chain-of-command recently. This summer, the last two Joint Chiefs chairmen, Gen. David Petraeus, since retired and leading the CIA, and the now-retired Admiral Michael Mullen, explained the concept in hearings on Capitol Hill.