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Easter marks the resurrection of Jesus, but this year the holiday comes with a twist: Jesus resurrected as Palestinian. Never mind that Jesus was born and died a Jew in Judaea. From the pronouncement of a member of Congress to the pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jesus is now heralded as a “Palestinian” or, more delicately, as a “Palestinian Jew.”

Jesus made an appearance on social media as a “Palestinian” around Christmas, and the meme has flourished since then. The gambit casts 1st-century Jews in the role of an occupying power and “Palestinians” as their victims. Just as Herod, the king of Judaea in Jesus’ time, persecuted the “Palestinian” holy family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, so, too, goes the claim, is modern Israel an occupying power persecuting Palestinians today.

So caught up were these advocates in their own spin that they mischaracterized reality. In a Christmastime post on Instagram, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) condemned modern Israelis as “right-wing forces violently occupying Bethlehem.” But Bethlehem has been administered by the Palestinian Authority since 1995. Once a significant majority there the Christian population plunged from 86 percent in 1950 to less than 12 percent in 2016.

As for the Gaza Strip, it is even less hospitable to Christians. As the New Yorker reported in January, a count by the Catholic Church in Gaza, “once home to a thriving Christian community,” found just 1,017 Christians, amid a population of more than 2 million. After seizing control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas ended the designation of Christmas as a public holiday and discouraged its celebration. The dwindling population of Gazan Christians has been harassed, intimidated, even murdered. Were Jesus to show up in modern-day Gaza, he would find an extremely hostile environment.

Roughly 3,000 years ago, on the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, a coastal confederation of five cities stretched from Gaza into Lebanon. The Bible refers to this zone as Philistia, the land of the Philistines. In 430 B.C., the Greek historian Herodotus, translating this term, gestured toward the broader area as “Palaistinē.”

To the east, the region of the biblical highlands was called Yehudah. The name predates Herodotus by centuries. By Jesus’ lifetime, the Romans labeled this whole area, coast and highlands together, as “Judaea,” a Latinization of “Yehudah.” The people living in Judaea were called “Iudaei”: “Judeans” or “Jews.” Their temple in Jerusalem, the focus of their ancestral worship since the first millennium B.C., was sacred to Jesus, which is why the gospels depict him as journeying there for pilgrimage holidays. An ethnic Judean, Jesus was, accordingly, a Jew.

Where, then, did the name “Palestine” come from? From a foreign imperial colonizing power: Rome. Judeans revolted twice against the Romans. The first revolt, from A.D. 66 to 73, reached an awful climax with the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem. Still, Rome kept “Judaea” as the region’s designation. But in A.D. 132-135, the Jews again revolted. By that point, Rome had had enough. The empire changed the administrative name of the region to “Syria-Palestina” — a full century after Jesus’ death. It was a deliberate way to “de-Judaize” the territory by using the throwback term for the coastal Philistines.

What does this mean? It means that Jesus was not “Palestinian.” Nor was he a “Palestinian Jew.” This is so for a simple reason: There was no political entity called “Palestine” in his lifetime. If Jesus was born in Bethlehem, he was born in Judaea as a Jew. He certainly died as one, under Rome’s heavy hand — the political condition that led to the two Jewish revolts.

It was Roman colonizers who changed the name of Judaea to Palestine.

Why rehearse this well-known history? Because now, in the current crisis, even Jesus is being enlisted for attacks on Israel. Calling Jesus a “Palestinian” or even a “Palestinian Jew” is all about modern politics. Besides being historically false, the claim is inflammatory. For two millennia, Jews have been blamed for Jesus’ execution by the Romans; casting him as a Palestinian just stokes the fires of hate, using Jesus against Jews once again.

It is, further, an act of cultural and political appropriation — and a clever rhetorical move. It rips Jesus out of his Jewish context. And it rips 1st-century Jews — and 21st-century Israeli Jews — out of their ancestral homeland, turning them into interlopers. This is polemic masquerading as history.

There have already been too many casualties since Oct. 7. Let’s not allow history to be one of them.



Paula Fredriksen, Aurelio professor of scripture emerita at Boston University, is a historian of ancient Christianity and the author of “When Christians Were Jews” and “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

I heard it was Jews who voted to crucify Jesus. That's duhmacracy for ya.

False trope promoting bigotry and hatred.

Your "duhmocracy" comment is irrelevant and single minded.

He was hung on a cross. Romans used this method. Jews would have stoned him to death back then.

Historically, the release of Barabbas at the crowd's behest, and their subsequent demands to crucify Jesus, have been used to justify anti-Semitism. Many have placed blame for Christ's death on the Jews, commonly citing Matthew 27:25, in which the crowd shouts, “His blood be on us and on our children!”

Yep, it was bloodthirsty mob rule. That sounds like duhmacracy in action to me.
To Robert, any criticism is "promoting bigotry and hatred" if his faith is brought up. The last I looked though, I never insinuated that Jews historically speaking had a monopoly on brutish behavior.


"Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. Wars are no longer waged by the will of superior men, capable of judging dispassionately and intelligently the causes behind them and the effects flowing out of them. They are now begun by first throwing a mob into a panic; they are ended only when it has spent its ferine fury." - H. L. Mencken

No humor in a story that has been used to harm Jews for centuries.

Historian rebukes liberals portraying Christ as a Palestinian: 'Rips Jesus out of his Jewish context'
Scholar calls out AOC for likening Jesus to Palestinians in Gaza
Kristine Parks, Fox News, 03/31/24

A biblical scholar accused left-wing politicians and media figures of using Jesus to send a "historically false" and "inflammatory" political message about the war in Gaza this Holy Week.

"This Easter, let’s not try to pretend Jesus was a ‘Palestinian Jew,'" historian and Aurelio Professor of Scripture emerita at Boston University Paula Fredriksen implored in her scathing op-ed for the Washington Post.

At Christmas, liberal figures, including Democratic "Squad" members, drew backlash for likening Jesus to a "Palestinian Jew" living in an "occupied" country.

"So caught up were these advocates in their own spin that they mischaracterized reality," Fredriksen reacted.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., seized on the trend in a social media post on Christmas Day.

"In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in a massacre of innocents," Ocasio-Cortez wrote, referencing Jews who lived in the land over 2,000 years ago under Roman control. "He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power."

"Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations out of both [fear for their] safety and respect," she added.

Fredriksen fact-checked the congresswoman's claims by pointing out that Christ's birthplace has been under Palestinian rule for decades.

"But Bethlehem has been administered by the Palestinian Authority since 1995. Once a significant majority there, the Christian population plunged from 86 percent in 1950 to less than 12 percent in 2016," she wrote.

Moreover, modern-day Gaza is "extremely hostile" to Christians, she argued, pointing to harassment and persecution against the dwindling Christian population in the region.

The historian said the term "Palestine" derived from Rome a full century after Christ's death. Thus, the attempts to appropriate Jesus as a Palestinian to attack Israel was not just "inflammatory" but also "historically false," she argued.

"For two millennia, Jews have been blamed for Jesus’ execution by the Romans; casting him as a Palestinian just stokes the fires of hate, using Jesus against Jews once again," Fredriksen wrote.

"It is, further, an act of cultural and political appropriation — and a clever rhetorical move. It rips Jesus out of his Jewish context. And it rips 1st-century Jews — and 21st-century Israeli Jews — out of their ancestral homeland, turning them into interlopers. This is polemic masquerading as history," she slammed.

AOC wasn't the only one making this argument most recently. Catholic priest Father Edward Beck also made a similar comparison on CNN on Christmas Day.

"I think the message of Christmas is that God enters into it with us and we're not alone in it," Beck said. "What I'm so struck by is that the story of Christmas is about a Palestinian Jew- how often do you find those words put together? A Palestinian Jew born into a time when his country was occupied, right? They can't find a place for her to even give birth, his mother. They're homeless. They eventually have to flee as refugees into Egypt, no less. I mean, you can't make up the parallels to our current world situation right now."



Father Beck has been listening to AOC to much.

Both clueless/