Palestinian Jesus, Israeli Herod
Palestinian Jesus, Israeli Herod


When Yasser Arafat made his first Christmas appearance in Bethlehem in 1995, after 28 years of “Israeli occupation”, the PLO leader addressed a crowd in Manger Square under banners of his own picture and that of the “Engineer”, the late revered Hamas bomb-maker Yihye Ayyash.

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill towards men”, Arafat proclaimed, invoking the Christian account of the Nativity.

“In spirit and blood we will redeem thee, O Palestine!”, answered the crowd of Christians and Muslims.

The Israeli lowering of the Star of David in King David’s city was also the beginning of one of the most successful Palestinian operations:  the Arabization and Palestinization of Jesus.

At UNESCO’s next session, which will run from June 24th  to July 6th in St. Petersburg, the UN cultural body will assess the Palestinian request for admission of the “Birthplace of Jesus: Church of the Nativity and the Pilgrimage Route, Bethlehem” to the list of world heritage sites.

The Christian shrine will become Palestine’s first world heritage site.

Next in line is the Hevron’s Cave of the Patriarchs.

The Palestinians are trying to erase any trace of Jewish history in Judea and Samaria. Yet a few days ago Israeli archaeologists discovered a seal bearing the name “Bethlehem” in ancient Hebrew script from First Temple times, one of the most important pieces of physical evidence supporting the Jewish claim to the town before it became revered as the birthpace of Jesus.

The Vatican has capitulated to the Palestinian propaganda and the Holy Land’s Custodian, Fr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa, has asked for recognition to be given to the city of Bethlehem as a whole as a heritage site and not just to the Basilica.

Since the first Intifada, local Arab Christians created a Muslim-Christian unity, an unholy alliance, to portray Israel as “the aggressor”, “the colonizer” and “the invader”.

Mustafa Barghouti, the influential so-called “moderate” leader within the Palestinian Authority, in December 2009 claimed that Jesus is “the first Palestinian who was tortured in this land”.

The Palestinization of Jesus, with the corollary of an Islamicized Christianity, is one of the most lethal weapons in the Arabs’ war against the Jewish State.

Identifying Jesus as “a Palestinian living under an occupation” has become normative for Christian Palestinianists in the current anti-Israel crusade.

There is a growing global network of Islamophile Christians with organizations like Amos Trust, Christian Aid, Sabeel, Living Stones, World Council of Churches, and influential bishops and pastors like Mitri Raheb, Stephen Sizer, Elias Chacour, Naim Ateek and Michael Prior.

It doesn’t matter that Jesus was not born a Christian, but a Jew, and that Bethlehem was a Jewish town in Judea, not a Muslim one - because there was no Christianity before his death and certainly no Islam for hundreds of years after his death.

It doesn't matter that the Palestinian Authority persecuted Arab Christians in its midst.

The Palestinian Arab leadership has been successful in turning the Christian narrative against the Jewish people. In this theological-political operation, there is no space for the Jewish tomb of Rachel as well. The Palestinians will try to convince UNESCO to call the shrine Bil Bin Rabah mosque.

The entire Eretz Yisrael is a myth, a colonialist construct, a Jewish plot, as far as they are concerned.

The entire Eretz Yisrael is a myth, a colonialist construct, a Jewish plot, as far as they are concerned.
The final message, delivered by the Palestinian Arabs to global public opinion, equates Israel’s killing of Palestinian Arab children with the biblical story of Herod’s systematic slaughter of Jewish babies in his effort to destroy Jesus. 'Palestine' becomes “one huge Golgotha”.

This Palestinian silly propagandistic canard means that a new massacre of Jews is allowed, again. The proof? When the Palestinian terrorists took shelter in  Bethlehem’s basilica in 2002, the Vatican and the Western public opinion stood silent and supported the armed Arab struggle.

This diabolical Arabized Christian “peace” is equated with Israel’s extinction, a Jüdenrein Judea, a de-Judaized “holy land”, as the anti-Semitic semanticists like to call it.

How will the Israeli officials combat these historic lies and sanctioned bloodshed? Will they?