Published in Washington Post

Missing pages from the Palestinian history book. ● In an effort to counter Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s claim that the Palestinians are an invented people, Maen Rashid Areikat said his home town of Jericho “goes as far back as 10,000 B.C., making it the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.” But he neglected to say who inhabited it, given that there is no evidence, archaeological or otherwise, that it was inhabited by Palestinians. Would the vast majority of the Americans living in say, Sioux City, Iowa, have a right to claim that their ancestors have been in Sioux City for thousands of years? Hardly. Michael Berenhaus, Potomac