A British TikToker who was just last week convicted and sentenced to a suspended prison sentence for antisemitic posts is calling on her followers to "make Christmas Palestinian again."
In her latest video, published on Sunday, Fiona Rayan says: "What I think we need to do is to make Christmas Palestinian as much as we possibly can."
She suggests "decorating your tree perhaps with some Palestinian decorations. Maybe telling your family about how Jesus was a Palestinian and how Christmas is a Palestinian story. Mostly, it's about supporting Palestinian businesses, whether it's with presents, whether that's through donations, however, you want to do it."
On Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced that the 40-year-old Salsbury resident was sentenced to a total of 20 weeks' imprisonment, suspended for 18 months, for what it called "grossly offensive antisemitic posts." If Rayan were to commit the crime again she would be sent to prison.
The CPS noted that Rayan's posts directly compared Ashkenazi Jews with Nazis, and claimed Jewish doctors carried out sex change procedures on children.
Ryan attempted to justify her views by invoking her freedom of expression at trial at Salisbury Magistrates' Court on 4 September 2024.
However, prosecutors with CPS Wessex were able to demonstrate that her posts far exceeded the boundary between freedom of expression and hate speech.
Gavin Sumpter, a Senior Crown Prosecutor with CPS Wessex, said: “Fiona Ryan sought to hide behind the right to freedom of speech, however, the court found that her posts and videos were grossly offensive.
“Her vile rhetoric reached a wide audience and has caused real harm in the Jewish community, the impact of which she was fully aware of," he added.
David Lange, an Israel advocacy activist, called on the local police department to arrest Rayan following her newest video for breaking the British law on hate speech. "After escaping prison for posting 'grossly offensive' social media posts including rank antisemitism, Fiona Ryan is back at it, this time claiming Jesus was a "Palestinian" - an offensive and yes, antisemitic, claim that erases Jewish history," he wrote and tagged the Wiltshire Police Department.
Over the past several years there has been a growing movement that claims that Jesus was a Palestinian in an attempt to erase the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel and Judea.
In the past month, anti-Israel social media users expressed outrage over the fact that Israeli actress Noa Cohen was cast to play Jesus' mother, Mary, in the Netflix movie about the New Testament character.
One X user wrote: "A film about a Palestinian woman played by actors from the settler state that is currently mass slaughtering Palestinian women. Oh, the disgusting audacity.” Others even went so far as to claim that Mary was Muslim, even though she lived over 600 years before the foundation of Islam.