BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS Presenting Jesus as a “Palestinian” has become a political weapon. This is why it is actually importa...
BY CHRISTINE
DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
Presenting Jesus as a “Palestinian” has become a political
weapon. This is why it is actually important that Jesus be presented as a
“Palestinian,” particularly a “black Palestinian.” In this presentation, both
Black Lives Matter (Marxist) and the Palestinian jihad are promoted as woke and
therefore good. Beckford says this is particularly important “in this year of
protest and change.”
The “Palestinian resistance,” presented to the world as
peaceful, which it is not, should be recognized for what it is: an active
jihadist war against Israel to obliterate it “from the River to the Sea.” There
is no reason whatsoever that it should be associated with Jesus.
Jesus was of Middle-Eastern Jewish heritage. He was from the
house of David and arrived in Bethlehem long before the 1995 Oslo Accords, when
Bethlehem was assigned to the Palestinian Authority. This should be obvious.
The Palestinians are historically Ottoman South Syrians, with no historical
claim to the Holy Land.
In exploring some of the roots of how and where it became
popularized to claim Jesus as a Palestinian, the Israeli monitoring agency
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) focused upon a Palestinian Authority TV interview
in 2010, in which author Samih Ghanadreh from Nazareth was asked about his new
book Christianity and its Connection to Islam. Ghanadeh states that he
personally heard Yasser Arafat several times affirm that Jesus was the first
Palestinian martyr, whereupon the host replies: “Jesus was a Palestinian, no
one denies that.” PMW cited the regularity of this declaration by prominent
Palestinians, including the Governor of Ramallah Leila Ghannam (“We all have
the right to be proud that Jesus is a Palestinian”), Senior PA leader Jibril
Rajoub (“The greatest Palestinian in history since Jesus is Yasser Arafat“),
and an editorial in the PA official daily — Al-Hayat Al-Jadida — referred to
the “holy Trinity” as being Arafat, Abbas and Jesus.
Abbas did his PhD in Holocaust denial, and Rahman Abdul Rauf
al-Qudwa al-Husseini (a.k.a. Yasser Arafat) learned under the tutelage of his
revered uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini, who worked
with Hitler and Adolf Eichmann to slaughter six million Jews.
Palestinian propaganda has become rooted in the modern-day
Church via many outreach programs, which has unfortunately lead to a new
antisemitism, tailored especially for evangelicals. Bible researcher and author
Jim Fletcher wrote:
Even LifeWay bookstores, the chain owned and operated by the
Southern Baptist Convention, stock Sunday school maps depicting “Palestine in
the Time of Jesus.” Never mind that neither Jesus nor the apostles knew
anything of “Palestine,” but the regional name has compelled too many
evangelicals (like Philip Yancey) to label Jesus a “Palestinian rabbi,” or the
“Palestinian Jesus.” This false historical label was popularized by none other
than Yasser Arafat, yet evangelical leaders are good with it.
Ed Stetzer, president of research at LifeWay — the resource
arm of the Southern Baptist Convention — referred to Jesus as a “Palestinian
Jew” in his article published in Christianity Today entitled: “Monday is for
Missiology: Some Thoughts on Contextualization.”
Robert O. Smith, program director for the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America/Middle East and North Africa and co-moderator of the
Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum of the World Council of Churches, blames the
Israeli “occupation” on the dwindling number of Christians in the Bethlehem
regions. Smith’s agenda is anti-Zionism, and thus he helps to advance the false
narratives about Israel and about the Palestinians which some evangelical
leaders have fallen into, in sync with the late Arafat and the PLO.
Jesus is presented not only as a Palestinian, but an
oppressed Palestinian. In an obscene Easter message presented by Bethlehem
Anglican Canon Rev. Naim Ateek, president of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation
Theology Center, Ateek stated:
In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is
on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around him. It only
takes people of insight to see the hundreds of thousands of crosses throughout
the land, Palestinian men, women, and children being crucified. Palestine has
become one huge golgotha. The Israeli government crucifixion system is
operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.
“BBC WS radio promotes the claim that Jesus was
‘Palestinian,’” by Hadar Sela, CAMERA UK, December 23, 2020:
On December 18th the BBC World Service radio programme
‘Heart and Soul’ aired a 27-minute programme (since repeated several times)
titled ‘Black Jesus’.
“The identity and colour of Jesus – and why it matters – has
taken on a new significance in this year of protest and change. Seeing Jesus as
a darker skinned Palestinian rather than blonde European is both historically
accurate and theologically important, but it’s not a new idea.” [emphasis
added]
The notion of Jesus as ‘Palestinian’ is repeated during the
programme itself by its presenter Robert Beckford.
01:16: “Despite the fact it’s more realistic as a
first-century Palestinian Jew that Jesus was dark skinned, somehow the white
Jesus has become the most popular and accepted image.”
25:37: “The colour of Jesus matters, both literally and
symbolically. A first-century Palestinian Jew had colour…”
Beckford is of course by no means the first to promote the
notion of Jesus as a Palestinian, be that for political ends or as a result of
lack of knowledge.
As CAMERA observed in 2008 when the New York Times claimed
that Jesus ‘spoke in Palestine’:
“Bernard Lewis has noted that the word “Palestine” was
sometimes used by Greek and Latin authors prior to 135 CE, though that appears
to have normally been used as an adjective in apposition to “Syria” (Palaistine
Syria or Syria Palestina) and in reference to the coastal area formerly
inhabited by the Philistines but not “Judaea,” a region that “in Roman times
was still officially and commonly known by that name,” as Lewis explained, or
the region around Nazareth (“Palestine: On the History and Geography of a
Name,” The International History Review, January 1, 1980).”
Earlier this year when the same paper referred to
“first-century Palestine” CAMERA noted that:
“…during the time of Jesus, Bethlehem and Jerusalem were in
what was commonly called Judea and Nazareth was in what was commonly called the
Galilee. The land where Jesus lived did not take on the name Palestine until
the second century, well after his death. Thus, the notion of “first-century
Palestine,” […] is totally fictional…
In 132 (Common Era or AD), approximately 100 years after the
crucifixion of Jesus, the Jews fought against Roman rule for a second time in
what is known as the Bar Kochba Revolt. After the Romans defeated the
rebellious Jews in 135, they renamed the land of the Jews Palestina to punish
the Jews and to make an example of them to other peoples considering rebellion.
The Romans took away the Jewish name, Judea, and replaced it with the name of
an ancient enemy the Jews despised. The Philistines were an extinct Aegean
people whom the Jews had historically loathed as uncultured and barbaric.”
One must assume that it is not a lack of knowledge which
prompted “one of the UK’s prominent black theologians” – as Beckford is
described in the programme’s synopsis – to repeatedly promote the anachronistic
notion that Jesus was “a first-century Palestinian Jew”. In fact, Beckford’s
political/theological agenda is abundantly clear throughout the programme,
which begins by describing Jesus as “a leading figure in the fight against
racism and discrimination” and goes on (apparently missing out the word ‘to’)
to claim that:
“…in reality Jesus was a refugee whose family had to flee
North Africa due to persecution. He was one of the oppressed by the colonisers
of his day.”…
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