During the Republican presidential primary debate in Florida last week, a man identifying himself as a Palestinian Republican asked the candidates what they would do to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were both given the opportunity to responed; who do you think did a better job?

Video: Romney and Gingrich Respond to Palestinian

During the Republican presidential primary debate in Florida last week, a man identifying himself as a Palestinian Republican asked the candidates what they would do to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were both given the opportunity to responed; who do you think did a better job?

24 Comments

  • Jefferson

    I think the Palestinian did a better job. despite what we were told to believe by our teachers in Oholei Torah, the Palestinians deserve self rule just like the Tibetans deserve independence from China, the Kosovans from Serbia and the Americans from Great Britian in 1776.
    The conflict will never be resolved unless Israel gives the Palestinians voting rights (will never happen) or a state of their own. otherwise there will just be perpetual bloodshed.

  • Wrong, Mr. Jefferson.

    Dear Mr. Jefferson,

    You are making a flaw in logic known as “mistake in causation.” This “perpetual bloodshed” is NOT happening because there is no “two state solution”, it’s happening because the Arabs have an ideological motive to kill Jews. You don’t need to look far to find this information, just look at the charter for HAMAS.

    Whether or not Israel grants the “Palestinian” people a state of their own, they will still try to kill Jews.

    Now, concerning the two state solution, there are many pros and cons in implementing an Arab state. This is not the forum to discuss the pros and cons (unless people want me to), however, DO NOT adopt the misconception that the violence exists because the Arabs do not have a state of their own. The violence exists due to an ideological hatred toward the Jewish people.

  • Jefferson

    Response to #3
    Of course! I should have known.

    That’s why throughout our 2,000 years in golus we were tormented, persecuted and massacred by the hateful Muslims. in Spain, during the crusades, and the ottoman empire – it was always the Muslims who were out for Jewish blood.. because of their inherent hatred of Jews. On the other hand, our christian friends were always there to defend us

    – or am I a bit confused. Maybe you are.

  • to Jefferson

    The “Palestinians” aren’t fighting with Israel because they want a state. They are fighting because they hate us. What was their excuse for killing Jews before Israel “occupied” the West Bank and Gaza strip? There was never any talk about a “Palestinian State” back then, yet the still wanted to drive us into the sea.

  • Both

    They were both great!

    Its comforting to know at least with regards to Irael that one of these guys stands a chance of being the next president of the united states.

    Although Romney would be good I think Newt is the man needed to shake things up.. America needs a leader that is not scared of being politically correct but rather being correct.

  • DeClasse- Intellectual

    There is an old statement:“It takes two to Tango.” and Abbas and his fellow leasers including /Arafat have demonstrated repeatedly that they do not want peace. Call it a cultural-ideological religious thing or what ever, their mind set will not accept the reality of Jews living in a Jewish state in the location they are at. History has proven this: Three times the Fatah was offered a peace treaty based on current demands during Clinton administration and the Olmert Administration adn three times Fatah (Arafat and Abbass said no) and even when Bib suspended settlement building for ten months did Abbass come to the negotiating table. No and now he whines about the settlements. Until this culture of hatred and refusal to accept the reality that the Jewish people will not disappear

  • Milhouse

    #1 Jefferson, you know very well what the Rebbe said about this. How can you contradict him in a Lubavitcher forum?

  • Milhouse

    #4, are you under the impression that the Moslems were any better to us than the Christians?! You are very ignorant of history.

  • Wrong, Mr. Jefferson. #4.

    Again, you are making mistake.

    The fact that people other than Muslims were violent toward Jews has nothing to do with the Charter of Hamas and their stated desire to kill Jews.

    To be honest, by the stupidity and insincerity of your arguments, I’m not quite sure you really believe what you are saying. I think you’re just trying to stir controversy.

  • Get Real

    Mr Jefferson,
    Define Palestinian!
    What is their origin and history?
    Exactly where in any authentic history book is there mention of a Palestine with defined borders owned by a people called Palestinians.
    They are a recently invented people and the fact they live the way they do ( the majority poor) is because their leadership keep the money givien by the world communuity to themselves and for weapons to destroy Israel.
    Yemach shmom vezichrom!!

  • Jefferson

    to #5 and #10. You were brainwashed to believe that they hate us because they are Muslim and we are Jewish. but that is simply not true. for 1,900 of our 2,000 years in exile we were rarely mistreated by Muslims (yes, there were many cases, such as the era of the Almohads, and many others, where Jews were mistreated my Muslims. but for the most part of the last 2,000 years Jews were lived in tranquility in Muslim lands, that only changed when Zionism came around).

    Milhouse, you seem to be an intelligent man but apparently you need some serious history schooling if you think that the way Muslims treated Sephardic Jews comes even remotely close to as bad as the way Ashkenazic Jews were treated by the Christians in Europe.
    Please try to make your points without sounding delusional.

    to #8 you are right, there will be no peace until the Palestinians recognize Israel’s right to exist as a state, but they will not do this until Israel recognizes theirs. even then, it will take some time for the wounds to heal, but ultimately one day you will have two states living peacefully side by side, if the radicals on both sides are willing to get out of the way and let it happen.

  • in Reply to above mentioned ignorance..

    actually if you know a bit of history, it was the Christians that killed more Jews then the Muslims, until the 1920s Jews lived under Arab rule better then under Christian rule, like in Europe etc.

    Get your facts straight…

  • Jefferson

    to #13
    Yes, there is a Palestinian people. to classify all of the middle eastern Muslims simply as Arabs is like classifying all blacks and “Africans.” It is extremely racist.
    The Arabs who lived in Palestine pre-1948 are Palestinians, just like the Arabs who live in Syria are Syrians, and those who live in Morocco are Moroccans.
    Just because they never had independence doesn’t disqualify them as a people. Perhaps there are no Ukrainian people because they were always ruled by Poland or Russia until about 22 years ago?

  • My Opinion is....

    Romney did a better job. He gave a more direct and straight-forward response. Newt gave a ‘reasoning’ response but trailed off at the end.

  • Milhouse

    #14 and #15, your claim that “for 1,900 of our 2,000 years in exile we were rarely mistreated by Muslims” is simply not true. The fact is that there is no significant difference between “the way Muslims treated Sephardic Jews” and “the way Ashkenazic Jews were treated by the Christians in Europe”; if you think Jews in Christendom had it worse than Jews in dar-al-Islam it is you who are delusional. In both there were good times and bad times; taking the good with the bad they come out about the same.

    And no, there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. They are just Arabs who happen to live in Eretz Yisrael. They never had a distinct identity. They thought of the area they lived in as part of Syria. They only made up their “nation” in order to steal our land. But even if they were a nation, so what? How would that give them a right to our land?

    But the bottom line is, why are we even having this discussion here? This is Crown Heights, where the Rebbe’s word is law. You know what the Rebbe said about this, so why are you arguing? Even if you don’t understand it, you have to accept it with kabolas oil.

  • My Seven Cents

    to Millhouse: Jefferson’s comment in #4 was sarcastic.
    to Jefferson: You are mixing apples and oranges. Just because the Muslims were relatively good to the Jews in history does not mean that they don’t hate us now! So the leadership didn’t hate us then; so the leadership hates us now. Two completely independent facts. The point is this: There cannot be peace between two if one is not interested in peace and just wants to completely abolish the other.

  • TO JEFFERSON- NONSENSE

    To Jefferson: What you’re saying is nonsense! These people don’t want to have peace or anything like that they are taught from a young age to kill Jews and get rid of them! There is no such thing as Palestinians! They are a bunch of people- refugees that came from all different countries! I think you better get your facts straight before writing anything on this website, because you’re going to have a lot people slamming you down!

  • Dear Jefferson and friends,

    This is not a territorial dispute

    Read the Hamas Charter

    “Israel will rise and will remain erect until Islam eliminates it as it had eliminated its predecessors. The Islamic World is burning. It is incumbent upon each one of us to pour some water, little as it may be, with a view of extinguishing as much of the fire as he can, without awaiting action by the others.”

    “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!”

    And before you tell me they are radicals, please take a look at Fatah’s flag (the moderates, who had kill the Jews in their charter until recently), it has a picture of the entire Israel.

    I understand your need to be intellectual and academic, put please be honest and rational.

    Do you think the Palestinians will ever be able to control the radicals?

    Do you think peace is in their heart?

    What happens if you are wrong and other innocent people are killed because the radicals have a real army and independent land?

    What would a Palestinian state mean for America?

    And one last question, do you think the Rebbe didn’t know what he was talking about or was it different then? Because putting aside that he was Rebbe, he was also an intellectual. If you want to be academic, try and take an honest look at some of the things he said.

  • AA

    Jefferson:

    Answer just this, please. In 1920-21, and again in 1929, and yet again in 1936-39, the Arabs rioted violently against the Jews in then Palestine, when the whole area was under the British Mandate. (The last two series of riots were after nearly 4/5 of the area had been designated, in 1922, as a future Arab state, which later became the present-day kingdom of Jordan.)

    Now, can you explain why that might have been so? Do you think it might have had something to do with the fact that they couldn’t bear to accept that _any_ part of this territory would be under Jewish sovereignty? And if that’s the case, is any kind of concession, short of dismantling the state of Israel, going to appease the holders of such views?

  • Milhouse

    #19, I know he was being sarcastic; the point is that he’s wrong. Overall, taking the good times and places with the bad, the Moslems were no better and no worse to us than the Xians.

    As for the Arabs, they have never been good to us; we have a long long cheshbon with the Arabs, going back to the time of Nevuzaradon, as Rashi mentions on “baasher hu shom”.

  • Elesoy

    Milhouse and AA,
    Jewish treatment by the Muslims was far better than by the Christian Europeans. The proof is in the pudding: the culture that is inseparably attached with being an observant ashkenazi Jew, contrasted with the comparative nonrestricted culture of an equally observant sephardic Jew, attests to the massive difference in persecution each underwent at the hands of his gentile neighbors.
    Orthodox Ashkenazim were made insular, narrow-minded and cloistered in mental as well as physical ghettos due to European antisemitism. Not so with Sephardim under the Muslims. Of course this changed with the rise of the atheist Zionists in the early 1900’s.
    Also, Milhouse, you should delineate your point re Nevuzaradon if you want it to be evaluated for our context.
    Also, censoring viewpoints because you claim they conflict with the Rebbe’s viewpoint is weak.