Jesus was as Palestinian as bagels and chopped liver

There’s a chill in the air – the faint promise of snow. Houses are decked with flashing lights, reindeer, and jolly old men dressed in red seeking to trespass down chimneys. There are massed choirs soulfully singing on the radio and no doubt we are about to see yet another appallingly cynical attempt to capitalise on the nation’s mawkishness to secure a number one single.

Yes, it’s almost ‘Jesus was a Palestinian’ day.

If you are not aware of this relatively new trend, let me bring you up to speed – of all Christmas traditions, it is certainly the most recent.

In the past, various Palestinians and those aligned with the pro-Palestinian cause have sought to claim Jesus as their own. This has its origins in Islamic tradition, in which Jesus (or Isa, to give the Arabic version of his name) is regarded as a prophet – one of a number arriving before the one viewed as the ultimate prophet, Mohammed.

Therefore it is not uncommon to see claims in certain quarters that Jesus was Muslim, despite Islam having been founded more than half a millennium after his death. (To be scrupulously fair, Judaism sees figures such as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob firmly in the Jewish tradition, despite the Revelation at Sinai having taken place hundreds of years later).

In recent years, however, the claim to Jesus has taken on different, far more direct proprietary tones, which operate via two main strands. The first is to directly claim that Jesus was historically a Palestinian. This would likely have confused Jesus himself, given that the region at the time was not known by its inhabitants as ‘Palestine’. That designation would be forcibly imposed by the imperialist-colonialist power of the age, the Romans, after a particularly brutal suppression of a Jewish revolt against their authority under the Emperor Hadrian, some 80 years after the death of Jesus. To describe Jesus as Palestinian, therefore, would be the rough equivalent of describing the Trojans as Turkish just because the modern-day site of the ruins of Troy lies between Istanbul and Izmir.

Jesus was Jewish. We know he was Jewish, because the New Testament doesn’t stop talking about the fact that he was Jewish. His original twelve apostles were all Jewish too. The word “Palestinian” does not feature in the New Testament. The word “Israel”, on the other hand, is mentioned fairly regularly.

Facts, of course, do not matter to those making claims that Jesus was Palestinian – what matters is the creation of a narrative which seeks to deny any historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, despite all evidence to the contrary.

But this leads us to the second strand of the “Jesus was a Palestinian” claims – a more metaphorical reading, but no less sinister for that.

For close to 1,800 years, antisemitism played a significant part within the operation of Christianity. The mechanism for that antisemitism was the charge of eternal guilt. Jews – all Jews – were blamed for the killing of Jesus. The phrase attributed to a Jewish crowd in Matthew 27:25, “His blood be on us and our children”, was interpreted as acceptance of guilt for that death forever more. It was only a scant 60 years ago that the Catholic Church officially repudiated such a doctrine, with Nostra Aetate (colloquially known as Vatican II) saying that the death of Jesus “cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”

In the last few years, however, various strands of Christianity have appeared receptive to the supposed Palestinian nature of Jesus. In this country, for example in the last two years the Anglican Church has seemed comfortable cosying up to the Bethlehem-based Palestinian priest, Munther Isaac, who is particularly keen on this concept.

In December 2023, Isaac said that “if Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble and Israeli shelling.” The nativity scene in Bethlehem that year featured baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh, with a similar image adorning the front of Isaac’s latest book, “Christ among the Rubble”. Similar manger scenes were then staged elsewhere – there are pictures of the late Pope Francis considering one.

There is a strong tradition of charity in both Judaism and Christianity, and in that vein we could extend such charity to Pastor Isaac by saying that perhaps he has absolutely no idea of the deeply insidious parallel that presenting Jesus in such a manner so obviously evokes for Jews. And that parallel is as follows: that as the Jews killed Jesus, so they are now killing Palestinians. That Palestinians, in such attempts to present them as the incarnation of Jesus, are to be viewed as the ultimate symbol of all that is good and holy – and that Jews, once again, are determined to snuff out such goodness and holiness through their evil. Jews, in effect, are the Antichrist.

You may not think, given the devastation in Gaza, that such concerns matter. But the comparison is one which is making waves on the rapidly growing Christian “anti-Zionist” far right in America, where a range of podcasters, pundits and influencers have been falling over themselves to make that comparison. And, as mentioned before, Jews have 1800 years of experience as to what happens when that idea is taken up.

So merry Christmas, happy holidays – whatever you prefer. Jesus was about as Palestinian as bagels and chopped liver, and if you claim otherwise, you’re either deeply deluded or extremely sinister – or else trying to get a rise out of Jewish people, in which case, find something better to do with your life.

And a happy new year, while we’re at it.