Pope Francis, Jesus Was Not a Palestinian

When the Vatican’s newest Christmas manger opened in December 2024, Pope Francis was on hand to celebrate the exhibit – and so was a spokesman for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

PLO representative Ramzi Khouri  conveyed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ “warm greetings” and extended his “deep gratitude for the Pope’s unwavering support for the Palestinian cause…”

The PLO’s presence was fitting, as this Vatican manger, located in the Vatican’s massive Paul VI Audience Hall, carries a distinctly political message with an infant Jesus laying on a keffiyeh, a traditional scarf that is associated with Palestinian political activism today.  Pope Francis understood the political significance, announcing at the opening that Bethlehem is being attacked (it's not), and “Enough wars, enough violence.”  It was a not-so-subtle dig at Israel, which the pontiff has urged to cease its self-defensive war against Hamas.

This Vatican exhibit was created by students at Dar al-Kalima University, an art school in Bethlehem that was created and is run by Rev. Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran pastor and outspoken anti-Israel activist.  Rev. Raheb helped write the infamous Kairos Palestine document which has been adopted by a number of churches across the world and which portrays Israeli-Arab relations in Manichean terms, with Israel being the “enemy” of all that is good.  Dr. Raheb’s Kairos Palestine screed declares “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity” and that the Jewish state is supposedly “an evil that must be resisted.”  He belongs to groups with links to terrorism and which support violence, boycotts, and demonization of the Jewish state.

Rewriting history that Jesus wasn’t a Jewish resident of the Jewish country of Judea but rather a Palestinian man who was persecuted by Jews is gaining ground around the world, including in the Vatican.

The Vatican Palestinian-themed manger was a major success for a movement that is trying to rewrite history and recast Jesus not as a Jewish resident of the Jewish country of Judea - which both Christian and other sources indisputably describe him to be - but as a Palestinian man who was persecuted by Jews.  Yet it can be resisted: after a week of protests by Jewish organizations worldwide, the Vatican quietly shelved this outrageous display.  Yet the damage was already done: millions of people around the world had already seen Pope Francis give his blessing to the Jesus-as-a-Palestinian manger.  This wildly ahistorical nonsense is gaining ground around the world, including in the Vatican.

Jesus was Born a Jew in Judea

First, a dose of reality.  Jesus was a Jew who lived in Judea, a distinct Jewish country.  Judea had been the ancient homeland of the Jews ever since the 10th Century BCE, when King David established Jerusalem as Judea’s capital.  The name Judea comes from Judah - Yehuda in Hebrew - one of Jacob’s 12 sons who first settled the area that makes up modern-day Israel as a Jewish nation.  In fact, the very word “Jew” also derives from Judah’s name, and is intertwined with the history of the Jewish land of Judea.

In the First Century CE - the era in which Jesus lived - Judea was embroiled in civil strife.  It was a partially independent part of the Roman Empire and was ruled by a local puppet king installed by the Romans, and also by a procurator who was directly appointed by Rome.  Christians will be well aware of the procurator Pontius Pilate, who was installed as procurator in 25 CE and who ordered Jesus - as well as thousands of other Jews - to be murdered.  (Within a few decades, in 70 CE, the Roman authorities would destroy the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and absorb Judea into the Roman Empire.)

The Christian Bible describes Jesus living a Jewish lifestyle, celebrating Jewish holidays, and visiting the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. While Jesus’ teachings dramatically left Judaism behind and in no way represent Jewish thought or practice, the fact that he was born a Jew was never in doubt.

As Dr. Samuel Ungerleider, a professor of religious studies at Brown University, has observed: “Of course, Jesus was a Jew.  He was born of a Jewish mother, in Galilee, a Jewish part of the world.  All of his friends, associates, colleagues, disciples, all of them were Jews.  He regularly worshipped in…synagogues….  He lived, was born, lived, died, taught as a Jew.”

His nationality was Judean.  In fact, the name Palestine was never applied to the land of Judea until the Roman Emperor Hadrian crushed a major Jewish revolt led by Shimon ben Kosibar, known as Bar Kochba, in 135 CE.  Hadrian renamed Judea “Syria Paelaestina:” “Syria” because the province was considered part of southern Syria, and “Paelaestina” as a reference to the ancient Plishtim people of the Bible - a Greek group who settled along the coast of present-day Israel - who were known as a fearsome enemy of the Jews.

Palestinian Authority’s Campaign to Redefine Jesus as a Palestinian

None of this history matters to anti-Israel activists who’ve waged a campaign for years to claim that Jesus was, against all evidence, Palestinian, and who’ve often drawn on damaging antisemitic stereotypes in the process.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is leading the way.  Abbas, who’s history Ph.D. thesis, written in a KGB-affiliated university in Moscow, denied the Holocaust, has redefined Jesus as “a Palestinian messenger” and claims Christmas as a traditional “Palestinian holiday.”  Palestinian officials have described Jesus as “a Palestinian messenger,” as “the first Palestinian martyr,” and as a Palestinian jihadist.  In his 2023 Christmas address, Abbas reprised this theme: Jesus, he erroneously declared, was a “Palestinian messenger” of hope.

Discriminating Against Christians

Despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is claiming Christmas as its own, it’s not doing much to help actual Christians living under its control.  The number of Christians living in the West Bank has declined precipitously, from about 20% of the population in regions controlled by the PA-controlled a century ago to barely 5% today.  In Hamas-controlled Gaza, the decline in the Christian population has been even more stark, with only a few hundred Christians remaining.  The European Parliament has documented shocking discrimination and abuse of Christians in PA and Hamas controlled areas, including violence and threats of violence.

In Bethlehem, the decline is even more dramatic.  In 1950, soon after Jordan took control of the city, the population was 86% Christian.  Today, under Palestinian Authority rule, it is less than 12% and declining fast.

Tapping into Antisemitic Tropes

In 2011 then Pope Benedict XVI declared that it was the Roman authorities, not Jews, who killed Jesus.  Yet the pernicious and untrue slander that Jews murdered Jesus has persisted, and is given new life by contemporary representations of Jesus as a Palestinian.

Take US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: on Christmas 2023 she posted on social media this string of slurs: “In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in a massacre of innocents.”  Given that Ocasio-Cortez has been an outspoken critic of Israel, it was hard to read her message as anything other than a harsh critique of Israel as it engaged in a war of survival against Hamas.  “He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power.”

Calling Jesus a Palestinian unleashes enormous power, channeling the intense religious devotion of billions of Christians into loathing for the Jewish state, which is cast once again as the agent of Jesus’ death.

The canard that Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew, and that he was persecuted by Jews, not Roman authorities, plays into anti-Israel sentiment today and magnifies the animus many feel against the Jewish homeland.

Indeed, Ocasio-Cortez went on to directly criticize Israel and link supposed Israeli crimes to supposed Jewish crimes in the time of Jesus: “Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians, so much that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations out of both safety and respect.”

The fact that no portion of the Congresswoman’s outrageous tweet was true presumably didn’t matter to her social media followers: the canard that Jesus was a Palestinian, not a Jew, and that he was persecuted by Jews, not Roman authorities, plays into anti-Israel sentiment today and magnifies the animus many feel against the Jewish homeland.

Also in 2023, Britain’s Guardian newspaper ran an inflammatory headline declaring: “If Jesus was born today, he’d be born under the rubble.”  The article quotes Rev. Munther Isaac - who now runs the same radically anti-Israel Lutheran church in Bethlehem that Rev. Mitri Raheb once led - asserting that the “reality of Christmas for Palestinian children” is lying in a heap of rubble after an Israeli airstrike.

The Associated Press ran an article quoting Rev. Isaac going even further, declaring that Jews - or at least Israeli Jews - are killing Jesus over and over today: “We see Jesus in every child that’s killed, and we see God’s identifying with us in our suffering.”

This is a coordinated message. Rev. Raheb appeared on America’s National Public Radio channel on Christmas Eve 2023, telling listeners that “If you look for Jesus today, he is in Gaza.” The implication is clear: the enemies of Israel are godlike in their goodness.  That’s a dangerous message to spread, but one that’s deeply embedded in the “Jesus is a Palestinian” message.

I’ve even seen it in my own social media feed this year.  In the runup to Christmas 2024, an old friend from high school, who’s now a minister in a large church in an upscale suburb of Chicago, posted a meme depicting baby Jesus being held by his mother beside a similar picture of a Muslim woman in a headscarf holding a child.  The meme declared that some people - Jews, was the implication - always want to destroy what is innocent and good.  After I messaged my old classmate that I found this meme highly offensive, she messaged back defending her post.  The Jesus-is-a-Palestinian myth has burrowed so far into the Western consciousness that it goes largely unquestioned.

Hanukkah As An Antidote to Hatred

As a Jew, I’m not used to thinking much about Jesus, but this year I find myself thinking a great deal about the turbulent period of Jewish history in which he lived.

First Century Judea was riven by divisions within the Jewish community which allowed our enemies to weaken and then destroy us.  Jewish tradition teaches that the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE because we exhausted ourselves through baseless hatred of our fellow Jews.

This Hanukkah, let’s resolve not to fall into the trap that our ancestors succumbed to.  Let’s do all we can to strengthen Jewish unity and fight the hatred that’s directed against us with boundless love for our big, diverse, beautiful Jewish community.