Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich said on Saturday night that he will not step back from his assertion that Palestinians are an "invented" people.
"How would he know the difference?" Gingrich said when askes about his comments at the GOP presidential debate in Iowa, adding what he said was "historic" and correct. "Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists ... we pay for those text books through our aid money."
Mitt Romney replied, "I happen to agree with most of what the speaker said (except the specific "invented" remark). That I think was a mistake on the Speaker's part. I think the Speaker would suggest that as well. "
Gingrich shook his head and mouthed "No."
Romney said it was throwing "incendiary words into a place that is a boiling pot, You don't speak for Israel. If Bibi Netanyahu wants to say what you said, let him say it."
“I've also known Bibi Netanyahu for a long time; we worked together at Boston Consulting Group. The last thing Netanyahu needs to have not just a person who's an historian but somebody who is also running for president of the United States stand up and say things that create extraordinary tumult in his neighborhood. If I'm President of the United States, I will exercise sobriety, care, stability and make sure that in a setting like this, anything I say that can affect a place with rockets going in, with people dying, I don't do anything that would harm that process. And therefore, before I made a statement of that nature, I get on the phone to my friend Bibi Netanyahu and say, would it help if I said this? What would you like me to do? Let's work together because we're partners. I'm not a bomb thrower. Rhetorically or literally".
Even Prime Minister Netanyahu in his speech before the US congress acknowledged this fact: " There is another truth: Palestinians share this small land with us.."