correct me if I'm wrong, but they don't say what the actual question is. That can change results quite a bit. I also wonder what % of the responders are Jewish Israelis and what % are Arab Israelis (as distinct from West Bank Arabs).

Frankly, I'm surprised that Netanyahu / Lieberman have not had to run for re-election. I don't understand why Barak stays in the government.

According to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics, the Arab population of Israel in 2010 is estimated at 1,573,000, representing 20.4% of the population.[4] The majority of these identify themselves as Arab or Palestinian by nationality and Israeli by citizenship.

If the phone poll was truly random, it should have resulted in 20% of the sample being Israelis Arab. More importantly, the extrapolation of the completed sample to universe could have been weighted to ensure the demographic profile reflected the demographic make up of the population in the results...
But, as you rightly point out, the University has not published their questionnare nor their sampling technique. At least not publicly. I'll bet they've used the same techniques for every one of their polls however and I'm reasonably certain that at some point an independent source vetted their methodology and techniques when challenging some result. They don't seem to have come under fire anywhere I could find for their methodology. Either that means they've passed the vetting of their method, or the Israelis press and politicians are remarkably accepting and uncritical.. That doesn't strike me as typically Israelis.
But it wouold be nice if they were a little more transparent on their public offering of poll results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_citiz ... vil_rights

Apparently to become emperor you have to prove your hatred of the down trodden.

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich on Saturday defended his statement that the Palestinians are an "invented" people, brushing aside criticism that he had unnecessarily made the Mideast peace process more difficult.

"Is what I said factually true? Yes," Gingrich said during a candidate debate in which he drew applause for asserting that it was time someone spoke the truth about the nature of Israel's struggle with the Palestinians.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich at the Republican Jewish Coalition's Republican Presidential Candidates Forum in Washington December 7, 2011.

"Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists," he said. "It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, 'Enough lying about the Middle East."'

Your last paragraph is not from that forum but from the debate, I believe. I'm trying to figure out what "these"references. I suspect Hamas was the previous noun.

Invented People?

All nation states were at one time, invented. Including the US. (perhaps especially the US)
Genetically, and historically there is definitve proof that people now calling themselves Palestinian have resided in the region for thousands of years. They are largely descended from Levants and Chrstians and though Islam converted many, a significant minority are still Christian, Druze and Samaritans. Its fair to say that they are now an Arabic people, but probably have more credence as a nation than the "invented" nations of Iraq, for instance. Or Kuwait.
I fail to see what he intended to accomplish with this language, other than pandering to the core fundamental Christian right of his party

The friendly historian Newton even disputes the view of Netanahu who beleives in a 2 state solution.... Is it possible that the world just doesn't appreciate the wodnerfulness of Newts reasoning?As a president, Newton would be dangerous ...

From the Washington Post:
“The fact is, the Palestinian claim to a right of return is based on a historically false story. Somebody oughta have the courage to go all the way back to the 1921 League of Nations mandate for a Jewish homeland, point out the context in which Israel came into existence, and ‘Palestinian’ did not become a common term until after 1977.”

--Gingrich

Let’s stipulate that both Israelis and Palestinians have their own historic narratives, and woe be the Fact Checker who tries to decide which narrative is right.

But Gingrich’s claim that “Palestinian” did not become a common term until 1977 is bizarre. The very League of Nations mandate that he mentions was called “The British Mandate for Palestine.” The text of the declaration mentions the word “Palestine” 45 times and “Palestinian” twice.

I'm not supporting Gingrich on this, but Ricky, you need your own fact checker for all your falsehoods. I searched the text of the British Mandate for Palestine for the word "Palestinian". I found it just once in the following article:

ARTICLE 7.

The Administration of Palestine shall be responsible for enacting a nationality law. There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.

I'm not supporting Gingrich on this, but Ricky, you need your own fact checker for all your falsehoods

Take it up with the Washington Post. If you think that they are lying becasue they claim Palestinian was used twice and you can find it only once...and that's your impetus to use the term "falsehoods" you've a real problem with perspective.

No, I have a real problems with liars.

You need to learn to check your sources. If you find that a source is unreliable, you should stop quoting them, or at the very least verify them. If you repeat a lie that another liar has said, then you are lying. My 8 year old gets that.

The one mention is in the context of Jewish citizenship, and has nothing to do with other Palestinian people.

so let me get this straight. when the washington post says this:

But Gingrich’s claim that “Palestinian” did not become a common term until 1977 is bizarre. The very League of Nations mandate that he mentions was called “The British Mandate for Palestine.” The text of the declaration mentions the word “Palestine” 45 times and “Palestinian” twice

they're lieing?

Oh, boy. Gingrich claims to be a historian, but his accuracy is by reputation somewhat lacking. He made the claims that 'Palestinian' is a term of less than 40 years' providence, and he's been caught out. Now, Ricky can be a but slapdash at times, but I don't see how attacking him helps much. It certainly doesn't help exonerate Newt.

The sad thing is that it seems to be far more important to US politics to take sides over I/P and make a name for being a hard-ass for your 'team' than it is to actually address the reality of it.

I think that you are confused about the importance of facts. If you want to comment on the correctness of Newt's comments, feel free. But if you want to be specific in your attacks, you should get your facts right. First, Ricky didn't link his WP source. My assumption is that he is referring to a particular blog (which is different than an article, and different than the Newspaper's opinion) that I saw http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fac ... _blog.html

which has other inaccuracies. It pretends to be a fact checker, but it clearly is not. This is a disservice to all fact checkers that legitimately do their jobs. There is a difference between the word Palestine and Palestinian. If you are going to claim that the British Mandate for Palestine specifically refers to the term Palestinian twice, then it should. As far as I can tell, it only refers to the term once, and in the context of Jewish citizenship. It never refers to the term Palestinian and never recognizes a Palestinian people (or that there isn't). I'm not saying that is important. I'm not saying that was a term or wasn't. I'm just saying that a "fact checker" who states that should have his facts straight. If you quote him, particularly after I point out that he is in error, then you are also guilty of distorting the truth.

If Gingrich is wrong, prove it, instead of quoting stuff that other people have made up.

There shall be included in this law provisions framed so as to facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine.

How can you have "Palestinian citizenship" if the people havn't been invented yet?

The whole idea of refering to Palestinians as "invented" is to demean their claim to a state. Only the extreme in Israel even support the view that Palestinians don't have a right to a state.

You've counted the references to Palestine too? Was it 47 or did the fact checker "lie about that too?"

You are confused. Palestine has been an area of the world for quite some time. So has Greenland. But a geographical place is not necessarily the same thing as a people. One can refer to Greenland without referring to Greenlanders.

The reference to "Palestine" is meaningless and was not brought up by Gingrich. I'm just saying that people like this blogger and yourself who bring forward the number of references to the word "Palestine" are saying something incoherent. Of course the British Mandate for Palestine uses the word Palestine. Why is that relevant?

By the way, if you want to learn something instead of scoring worthless and imaginary gotcha points, why don't you read the British Mandate. It shows that a Jewish homeland is more than a reaction to the Nazi holocaust. I believe that it was approved by the League of Nations. It also refers to a Palestine that includes all of today's Jordan. It does not talk about the Palestinian people. It is bizarre that the blogger brought it up.

To a certain extent, all peoples are invented, including Canadians and Americans. However, if the Palestinians didn't exist as a people in 1960, they do today. They have a shared history and a shared narrative. At issue has always been why they don't have their own state.