Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich is courting the Republican Jewish vote with a series of statements showing his unwavering support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pro-Israel American conservatives. On Wednesday, he declared that he would appoint former U.N. ambassador — and outspoken über-hawk — John Bolton to be Secretary of State if elected president. In an interview released today, he struck out an even more extreme position by declaring Palestinians “an…invented people.”

He told The Jewish Channel:

We’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab community and they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel since the 1940s. It’s tragic.

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Gingrich, much like former Senator Rick Santorum, is effectively denying the right of Palestinians to a state, a position that goes against the policy positions of the Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama administrations.

With this assertion comes questions as to where Gingrich thinks the Palestinian — or “Arabs” as he refers to them — should go. Will residents of the West Bank gain full voting rights in a unified Israeli state? Will Israel allow them to stay as second-class citizens with limited voting and legal rights? Or is he in favor of forced deportation?

Gingrich isn’t the only GOP presidential candidate to stake out political ground which, if actually implemented as U.S. policy, would effectively end U.S. support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry have all endorsed moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Michele Bachmann claims to “already have secured a donor who said they will personally pay for the ambassador’s home to be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.”

Lanny Davis, a leading lobbyist and former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, responded to the recent controversy surrounding Josh Block, a former American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spokesperson and current Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) fellow who compiled thousands of words of opposition research on ThinkProgress and Media Matters bloggers and smeared the Center for American Progress as writing “borderline anti-Semitic stuff.” Davis, a business partner of Block’s, told ThinkProgress:

He’s done this all independently without any input from me. I respect Josh Block but I 100 percent disagree with much of his language. People can disagree about Israel’s policies without being anti-Semites. In fact I think it’s a terrible mistake to blur the two. We should be able to debate Israel’s policies. I am very pro-Israel. I believe the onus for negotiations is on the Palestinians but both Israelis and Palestinians share responsibility. However, that’s all fair debate. Israelis debate the subject. We debate the subject. Impugning motives of people at the Center [for American Progress] and impugning [that] those motives are driven by anti-Semitism is, in my opinion, wrong. I respect John Podesta and the Center greatly.

In our post yesterday on Block, we explained that Davis “represented business interests backing the 2009 coup in Honduras.” In an interview today, Davis responded, “I am on the record as having opposed the illegal and indefensible deportation of Mr. Zelaya. Suggestions that I supported a military coup are simply false.”

Davis also defended his lobbying work for the Ivory Coast, telling ThinkProgress, “The Ivory Coast Embassy in DC retained me, not Mr. Gbagbo. My mission, among other things, working behind the scenes for ten days before I quit, was to facilitate a phone call from the President of the United States to Mr. Gbagbo to bring about a face saving effort to avoid bloodshed.”

Former AIPAC spokesman and Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow Josh Block backed down this afternoon from his earlier accusation that ThinkProgress and its institutional home, the Center For American Progress (CAP), are anti-Semitic — a smear that was picked-up by, among others, Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post. (Tell the Post to retract that standing accusation here.)

Speaking to Politico’s Ben Smith for an article released on Wednesday, Block said that CAP “allow(s) people to say borderline anti-Semitic stuff.” In an effort to coordinate and “AMPLIFY” smears of ThinkProgress and CAP based on this claim and others, Block enlisted members of a secretive right-wing e-mail list serve. Salon’s Justin Elliott obtained and published a copy of the e-mail, where Block said CAP engages in “vilification of… Jews.” In the same document, he insinuated that CAP and ThinkProgress’s work constitutes “the words of anti-Semites.”

CAP and ThinkProgress categorically deny these allegations, and took exception to the mischaracterizations of our work.

Now, again speaking to Politico’s Smith, Block says he never claimed CAP engaged in anti-Semitism:

I’ve been accused of leveling the charge of anti-Semitism against the Center for American Progress. That is not true, and suggesting so is an attempt to distract from what I am actually saying.

As shown above, Block certainly did make such accusations about CAP. Nevertheless, his retreat from his initial charges against ThinkProgress and CAP is welcome.

Instead of engaging in divisive rhetoric aimed at silencing those who disagree with his approach, we look forward to having a substantive, rational discourse about the best ways to pursue the U.S. interests of a safe and secure Israel living side-by-side and at peace with her neighbors.

When President Obama announced in October that he was ordering all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, Mitt Romney’s campaign issued a statement assailing the president, calling his decision an “astonishing failure”:

“President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women. The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.”

Yet today during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Romney backtracked. Immediately after criticizing Obama for not keeping up to 30,000 troops in Iraq, the former Massachusetts governor said the withdrawal is the right move:

ROMNEY: With regards to Iraq, of course we’re following the Bush timeline with one exception and that is the [blank space] President Bush and I believe others anticipated that we would have an ongoing force, somewhere between 10 and 20 and 30,000 there to help with the transition. President Obama’s own Secretary of Defense suggested that would be the case and they were unable to negotiate a status of forces agreement to allow the 10 to 20 to 30,000 troops to remain which I think was a failure on the part of the administration. But is the wind down in Iraq appropriate? Yes.

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It seems like Romney and Newt Gingrich are in stiff competition for this year’s top GOP flip-flopper. Gingrich’s recent Iraq reversal clocked in at an impressive 13 seconds. Perhaps Romney is trying to reclaim the mantle.

The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin this week in two separate posts smeared CAP and its bloggers as “anti-Semitic” and “anti-Israel.” In her first post highlighting a recent Politico piece — which was originally titled “Liberal think tank harbors Israel haters” but subsequently changed to “Uncovering the anti-Israel enablers” — Rubin, without offering any evidence, said our “views are not merely anti-Israel, they are anti-Semitic” and that our writing is “fiction for Israel haters.” Rubin posted a follow-up story the next day, noting Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow Josh Block’s role in it and added, again without offering any evidence, that CAP bloggers promote “out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech”:

Block is a self-identified Democratic activist whose pro-Israel credentials are well known. He’s actively worked for years to elect scores of Democrats. Of course he wants the anti-Israel left to be exposed. Of course he wants pro-Israel Democrats on record as distancing themselves from the CAP-housed bloggers who peddle in anti-Israel attacks and out-and-out anti-Semitic hate speech.

Again, Rubin offered no proof of these charges. But she promoted Block’s claim that “the European Union’s accepted definition of anti-Semitic hate speech applies to much of the CAP bloggers’ rhetoric, such as holding Israel to a dual standard while demonizing the Jewish state.” The “accepted definition” she links to is an undated EU Military Committee “working definition of antisemitism,” but Rubin presented no direct quotes from any ThinkProgress posts that meet any of the criteria the EU document listed.

We categorically reject these accusations. We don’t endorse the term “Israel firsters” or demonize the Jewish state on ThinkProgress. We are not anti-Semitic and this blog regularly promotes a strong relationship with Israel. Further, there is no anti-Semitic or anti-Israel “hate speech” written anywhere on this blog. We would never condone such language or beliefs, and in fact, we have made efforts to fight individuals who do engage in anti-Semitic discourse. For example, earlier this year, we reported that Jewish groups were “deeply concerned” that former Alaska governor Sarah Palin had used the anti-Semitic term “blood libel” to describe criticism by her detractors.

Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton criticized Rubin last month for promoting a “brand of incendiary rhetoric [that] has gained too much purchase on the landscape of American politics.” Pexton added that the rhetoric Rubin promotes “pollutes our discourse and erodes the soil on which reasonable solutions and compromises can be built, whether at home or in the Middle East.”

The Washington Post should issue a correction to Rubin’s post. Please email, or tweet, politely asking that the Post correct Rubin’s article.

Former Bush administration U.N. ambassador John Bolton responded to Newt Gingrich’s commitment to the Republican Jewish Committee that he would appoint Bolton as his Secretary of State if elected president. Bolton downplayed Gingrich’s statement and clarified that he wouldn’t commit to serving in a Gingrich administration and that Gingrich hadn’t offered him the job. He told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren:

He hasn’t spoken to me yet so it’s obviously very flattering. I’m honored that anybody would say that. But I think it’s really presumptuous for people in that position to be accepting or not. The focus has to be on nominating the best candidate we can and replacing President Obama. I think there’s some advantage to candidates talking about who they might have in their cabinet… It helps the candidates show what their priorities are and the direction of their thinking.

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Indeed, appointing Bolton as Secretary of State would say a great deal about Gingrich’s priorities. Bolton is a highly divisive figure — he said, “The [UN] Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” The Senate refused to confirm him as U.N. ambassador back in 2006. More recently, Bolton has forged ties to the Islamophobic far-right and wrote the foreword to anti-Muslim bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America. (HT: Christian Heinze)