October 22, 2010 10:26 am ET — MJ Rosenberg

One would have thought that after being publicly shunned by Harvard for writing that Muslim Americans don't deserve the protection of the First Amendment, Marty Peretz would lay low for awhile.

But yesterday, he wrote that the Palestinian people are a new invention. In fact, according to Peretz, there were no Palestinians around to share the land (known as "Palestine") when Israeli Jews agreed to the UN Partition Plan of 1947:

It is a sour irony that there were no Palestinians around to claim the Arab state that the United Nations had bestowed on them at the end of the 30 year process of making separate polities from what once was the Ottoman Empire. As it happens, Palestinian nationalism (such as it was, and it wasn't much) was not a contender for the land at all.

It's really no surprise that the former Harvard teaching assistant never became a professor in Middle Eastern studies.

Of course, Peretz can't seriously believe that the existence of the Palestinian people is a myth. One of his constant complaints about the Palestinians — who were the majority in 1947 — is that they did not accept the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. So how did they reject it if they didn't exist? And why was there even a plan to divide the land between Jews and...Palestinians?

Peretz reminds me of those Arab absolutists who complain that there is no such thing as Israelis yet continue to rage against the Israeli occupation.

But maybe the crazies like Peretz are right. No Israelis. No Palestinians. No Middle East problem.

Just much ado about no-one. Problem solved!