Santorum: ‘There Is No Palestine’

UPDATE — The Washington Post Fact Checker reporter, Glenn Frankel, saw The Jewish Week's blog item about Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum saying "All the people that live in the West Bank are Israelis.  They are not Palestinians," and he decided to check out the former senator's accuracy. Quoting the Israeli Foreign Ministry, the CIA Fact Book and other sources he awarded Santorum Four Pinocchios for telling a big "Whopper." In other words, Santorum is totally wrong.

GOP Presidential contender Rick Santorum, who appears likely to come from far behind to finish in the top 3 in Tuesday's Iowa Caucuses, is trying to out-do his former Congressional colleague Newt Gingrich when it comes to insulting Palestinians.

Gingrich called the Palestinians an "invented" people who didn't exist until sometime in the 20th century. Santorum criticized Gingrich’s widely-reported remarks as “provocative,” but his own more extreme views got little attention at the time because he was considered a hopeless back-of-the-pack candidate and not being taken very seriously.

But now that he is rising rapidly in the polls, his comments deserve a second look.

As far as Santorum is concerned, Palestinians don’t exist.

“There are no Palestinians,” he told a questioner at a campaign event in Iowa. You can see the video here.

"All the people who live in the West Bank are Israelis.  There are no Palestinians.  This is Israeli land," the former Pennsylvania senator said.

"The West Bank is part of Israel," which won it as "part of an aggressive attack by Jordan and others" in 1967.  Israel doesn't have to give it back any more than the United States has to give New Mexico and Texas to Mexico, which were gotten "through a war," he said.