At Christmas, Palestinians and their supporters blanket the media with claims that “Jesus was a Palestinian.” This year was no different; more on the latest iterations of this farcical tale can be found here: “Media Falsely Help Turn Ancient Jewish Jesus Into a Modern-Day Palestinian,” by Chaim Lax, Algemeiner, December 27, 2023:
Every Christmas season, the mainstream media publishes several news articles and opinion pieces that seek to reinvent history by claiming that Jesus was Palestinian (or, at the very least, born in Palestine), and that the present-day experiences of Palestinians in the Holy Land are akin to the experiences of the Holy Family at the time of Jesus’ birth.
In effect, these pieces divorce the story of Jesus from its ancient Jewish context, and re-settle it within a modern political milieu.
With the war between Israel and Hamas still raging through the Christmas season this year, the peddlers of the “Jesus was a Palestinian” narrative have gone into overdrive, inserting it into mainstream media coverage while also blasting it around on social media.
In the mainstream media, the “Palestinian Jesus” story focused heavily on a nativity scene set up by the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, which depicts baby Jesus draped in a keffiyeh and laying atop a pile of rubble.
But baby Jesus was a Jew. Mary was a Jew. Joseph was a Jew. The nativity scene at the Lutheran Evangelical Christmas Church suggests, with its keffiyeh draped over the baby Jesus, that he was not a Jew, but rather, one of the Jews’ mortal enemies, a Muslim Palestinian. Islam, however, did not appear in the world until six centuries after Jesus’ death.
In numerous reports on this creative blend of traditional religious iconography and modern-day politics, the mainstream media gave the Church’s head, Reverend Dr. Munther Isaac, ample space to rejig the ancient figure of Jesus for a contemporary audience.
In The Guardian and the Washington Post, Reverend Isaac is quoted as saying that “If Jesus was born today, he’d be born under the rubble of Gaza,” essentially removing Jesus’ Jewish identity and making him a member of present-day Palestinian society.
In the Associated Press, Reverend Isaac is similarly quoted as saying that “We see Jesus in every child that’s killed [in Gaza].”
Why not “see” Jesus instead in the Jewish babies murdered or kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, rather than in the Palestinian babies who will grow up taught to believe that they, too, can someday murder Jews? Why not place Jesus in Jerusalem, where he lived and died, rather than in Gaza, which he never visited?
This sentiment was also expounded upon in an NPR program where one guest stated that “If you look for Jesus today, he is in Gaza.”
Look for Jesus, rather, among his fellow Jews, whom he never renounced.
Instead of implicitly connecting Jesus to contemporary Palestinian society, the Irish Examiner went so far as to claim that “Jesus was a Jewish Palestinian refugee,” while a guest on CNN’s Christmas Day programming referred to Jesus as a “Palestinian Jew.”
You don’t need a degree in ancient history to understand why referring to Jesus as “Palestinian Jew” is a misnomer.
No “Palestine” existed until 100 years after the death of Jesus. Jesus was always a “Judean Jew.”
Along with Jesus’ newly found Palestinian identity, some media outlets also drew comparisons between Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and the treatment of the Holy Family by Herod and the Romans.
On NPR, one guest drew a parallel between the Roman occupation of Judea and Israel’s current control over the West Bank. He blatantly disregarded the fact that Bethlehem falls under the authority of the Palestinian Authority, and that the Romans were foreign occupiers, while Israel is an indigenous state.
The modern Israelis live in the same area that Jews have been living in since at least 2500 B.C.; they are the descendants of its indigenous inhabitants, not foreign conquerors such as the Romans and so many others, including Muslim Turks and Arabs.
Similarly, both NPR and the Religion News Service ran absurd comparisons between the descent of Jesus’ family to Egypt in order to escape Herod’s bloodlust, and Israel’s ordering Palestinians in northern Gaza to move south for their own safety as the IDF works to rout Hamas from the north.
Jesus was taken by his family to Egypt for safety, in order to prevent Herod from killing him. Israel has not been chasing Palestinians out of northern Gaza, but advising them to move southward, beyond the Wadi Gaza, for their own safety, with the promise that they can return once the fighting had died down. There is a difference, that NPR and the Religion News Service were apparently unable to comprehend.
SteveC says
Well lets go a little more recent. The Romans were the wetwork team but the Jews were the ones that condemned him and chose Barabbus to be pardoned. No one comes out of this BS squeaky clean.
gravenimage says
What does this have to do with the story above?
rick says
The only people who referred to themselves as “Palestinian” were Jews living in the Mandate until 1948 when they called themselves Israels. Arabs refused to call themselves Palestinians for several reasons. First, Jews called themselves that and what Arab is going to call him/herself the same as a Jews does? Also as “Palestine” had no significance or importance, Arabs preferred to refer to themselves as “Southern Syrians” as Syria and Damascus did have more meaning than backwater Mandate Palestine. Arabs did not begin to use the term “Palestinian” until Arafat back from the Soviet Union with a “liberation” game plan for Arabs was told to start using the term and create a flag ( copying the Jordanian one) in the 1960s.
gravenimage says
+1
tim gallagher says
Jesus was Jewish and, more importantly, was a thoroughly decent, loving, peaceful human being, and possibly, for Christian believers, God as well. Because they are followers of islam, the Palestinians are vicious, backward, barbaric and murderously violent creatures and are the opposite of everything that Jesus was. Being Muslims they hate the Christians, the followers of Jesus., just as they hate, with a murderous hatred, all non-Muslims. This Jesus is a Palestinian is a load of bullshit and completely irrelevant.
James Lincoln says
Perfectly stated, tim.
My compliments.
tim gallagher says
Thanks, James. Jesus’s nature and Christianity are as far away from the evil, hate-filled filth that islam contains as anything could possibly be. Maybe almost nobody in the world believes this irrelevant garbage about Jesus being a Palestinian anyway. islam will destroy the potential for good of any person and it has turned the Palestinians into the type of evil monsters who support hamas. islam has poisoned so many minds throughout its evil history.
gravenimage says
Spot on, Tim.
The character of the “prophet Isa” is *nothing* like that of Jesus. The main role of Isa is to kill Christians in the last days.
John Smith says
Everything you say here Tim is absolutely true. I honestly believe that muhammad reversed all the teachings of Jesus. Hate becomes the most dominant force in islam they must hate us. In fact hatred it is so important to muslims they even have a a doctrine of sacred hatred called al wala wal bara, Which you probably are aware of. Love what allah loves (muslims ) and hate what allah hates which is us (non-muslims). Even their so called messiah the mhadi is infact the Biblical anti-christ, everything is in reverse. The quran is without doubt a satanic counterfeit of the Christian Bible.
tim gallagher says
Hatred, murderous hatred for all non-members of this foul religious ideology, islam, seems to me to be the main characteristic of islam, John. As you mention, islam seems to be morality in reverse, or complete immorality from the point of view of any half decent, civilised human being. I see islam as an evil religion that was made up by a bunch of the most barbaric, low life scumbags and so it condones all the evil behaviours those people wanted to carry out and says that their bullshit version of god says it is fine and dandy to behave in that way. Definitely satanically evil and yet so many people are still fooled by it.
carpediadem says
It is part of the Islamic appropriation and denial of Jewish history and culture and aims to increase their grasp on history and other people’s alliances, especially religious. Many Christians are pushing this nonsense online too, out of solidarity with “palestinians”.
A load of bullshit, yes.
Irrelevant, no.
tim gallagher says
I’m amazed that any people would fall for such utter nonsense, carpediadem. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised though. I don’t get why almost everybody has still not woken up to islam’s vile nature. People, including those Christians that you mention, seem to have a stunning ability to believe in complete fantasy land nonsense. And no doubt they consider themselves to be being oh so virtuous by supporting the poor “oppressed” Palestinians by supporting this bullshit.
gravenimage says
Grimly true, carpediadem.
John Smith says
According to the Bible Abraham was forefather of both the Jews and the Arabs. The Arabs are the descendants of Ishmael who he fathered with his maidservant Hagar. The Jews are the descendants of Isaac who he fathered through his wife Sarah.
Great nations will come from both of them. But it’s the descendants of Isaac that God made his covenant with, and this is the linage that gave us Jesus.
Palestinians was the name given to the Philistines who were in conflict with the Israelites approximately 1060-1050 BC and according to most scholars the Philistines came from Greece and in all probability Crete. The so called Palestinians of today are actually all of Arab descent. So there is noway Jesus could of been a Palestinian, he was most definitely of Jewish origin.
Rick Olsha says
The usual Arab lies. Jesus was jewish.!!!!
AM ISRAEL CHAI !!!!
gravenimage says
+1
Troybeam says
Jesus born in Bethlehem to Mary and Joseph both Jews, gifted by God to raise and care for his son. Cannot get anymore Jewish than that.
Reliance of the Traveller: Islamic sacred law, Chapter 9 titled Jihad. Chapter talks about killing the Jews where ever you find them and more barbaric acts of violence against humanity if not Muslim. Read this book, forget the Koran as Muslims live and breathe sharia law.
Julie says
Yeshua is Jewish. There is no history of Christ with Muslim’s as satan had not yet inverted Judaism and Christianity into evil, blasphemous Islam that is a counterfit, until after Christ gave His life for our sins and returned to our Father to sit at his right hand. Herod was an Arab ruling over the Jewish people when he sent out the decree to slaughter the babies in the land during the time of Yeshua’s birth. Herod was also a counterfit and murdered many in the name of his god of this world. The Philistines are still marching with satan trying to decieve the world, replace, and usurp God’s truth and all that God has sanctified. There is also a huge heresy within the Christian churches now and a belief that God “replaced” the Jews with Christians as His chosen. God placed a veil over His people so that gentiles could be grafted in. Satan has been real sneaky with this mindset in the churches. The holocaust turned many Jewish people from God and even now many feel God has abandoned them to let such a thing happen. News reports say there are now 7 Arab nations joining the fight against Israel but I suspect it is all Arabs in that region and across the world. We likely should continue to teach our children that before physical war they need to be armed with the Sword (Word) of God above all things.
FYI says
What would Jesus say?
allah tells muhammed in koran 10:94 that if in doubt he should consult the Bible people.
So perhaps muslims might follow allah’s advice here.
“We JEWS know whom we worship because it is from the Jews that salvation comes”
John 4:22
See?There you go.It is pretty clear.Jesus couldn’t possibly be muslim or palestinian …..and given allah’s epic theology fail in koran 5;1116[pickthall version anyway}where allah insists MARY is one of the 3 gods Christians worship thus revealing an amazing lack of omniscience proving allah cannot be God..allah cannot be God as you need to be omniscient to be God and allah hasn’t got that important attribute.
allah’s inredibly moronic question
O Jesus son of Mary.Dids’t thou say unto mankind ;take me and my mother for two gods beside allah?”
koran 5:116{pickthall version}
Mary!Where does allah get Mary from?If allah is omniscient then allah surely knows already but he clearly has no idea.
This is like saying Christians worship 3 gods:Jesus,Mary,Joseph and then asking”oh Jesus?Who said you could put Joseph as a god beside yourself” It shows that allah does NOT know all things as he boasts in koran 2:29.It is laughably wrong.Let’s not forget the science errors…
The koran is like this..
“A textbook of modern Astronomy” but in fact it has a ptolemaic view which is wrong and so is not modern
“Amazingly true facts” book but it is only relevant to the 6/7 century era and the “facts” are all wrong.
And you are not allowed Critical Evaluation as the Death Penalty applies if you note the errors.
allah doesn’t even understand the stupidity of the question he is asking.
allah doesn’t understand what Christians believe.
allah is provably NOT omniscient:allah has a HUMAN mind:allah should already know if he claims in koran 2:29 to know ALL things.
OLD GUY says
Let’s face a fact Islam can not admit it’s wrong or evil. Therefore islam must destroy all who disagree with it. Allowing the muslim/islamic migration invasion is a MAJOR mistake for the non-islamic societies. Islam’s hate hate for the west and non-islamic people is indoctrinated into these people from birth.
commonsense says
Somewhat off-topic, perhaps, but the media’s incessant talk of a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza is ass-backward. There is indeed such a crisis, but it concerns the whereabouts and fate of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas and/or its murderous allies such as Islamic Jihad. And let us not forget the valiant IDF in detestable, dangerous, hate-filled Gaza, fighting for their lives against a genocidal enemy,.
gravenimage says
‘Jesus was a Palestinian’ and Other Fables For Our Time
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I am *so* sick of this. Jesus was a Jew.