Jeff Dunetz is editor/publisher of the blog "The Lid." and a contributor to Israel National News and The Jewish Press. He is a weekly Thursday Guest on The Schaftlein Report, a National Board Member of Herut North America and Herut Representative on The AZM Board
Jesus was a Jew, NOT A Palestinian.
This season, social media were filled with the fabrication that Jesus was a Palestinian. At times, it seemed that every other text on X and many texts on Truth Social made that Jesus is a Palestinian lie. Five different groups have been created on Facebook about Jesus being a Palestinian.
Anyone who believes that deception is trying to delegitimize Israel or is an imbecile with no knowledge of basic math or history.
Oops, before I start, my son, who graduated cum laude with a degree in applied mathematics, arrogantly says addition and subtraction-type calculations are not math. They are arithmetic.
Because I am Jewish and live 2,000 years after Jesus, I can’t speak to Christian theology. However, my Christian friends gave me the basics. They told me when and where he lived and where they believed he was crucified. According to Christian tradition, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which, at the time, was in Jewish Judea. Then, his family moved to Nazareth, which, at the time, was in Jewish Samaria.
To explain the arithmetic, per Christian theology, Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Humble) calculated the calendar to make the Year 1 (not 0) the year of Jesus’ birth, but he miscalculated. Various guesses put the birth within 1-4 years B.C.E. No estimate counts the number zero. Using the earliest number of those estimates, if Jesus was born in the year 4 B.C.E, it was in Judea, a Jewish state. Judea wasn’t defeated until 135 C.E, a 139-year difference.
There seems to be some consensus that the crucifixion date is April 3, 33 C.E., or 106 years before the Romans destroyed the Judean state. According to sources, when Jesus was crucified near Jerusalem in Judea, he was 33 to 40 years old. Again, the numbers do the work.
Those who say the Jews have taken over a Palestinian land have no understanding. During the time of Jesus, the Jews were called Hebrews, Israelites, and The Children of Israel. After the Romans defeated Bar Kochba in 135 C.E., they were called Judeans, which eventually was shortened to Jews.
Jews have lived in the Holy Land ever since Moses turned over the leadership of the former slaves to Joshua, who led them across the Jordan River. When the haters say "from the river to the sea," the river was the Jordan River, which Joshua split, and the sea was the Red Sea, which Moses split. That’s "from the river to the sea." (By the way, God seems to help Jews control water. I would advise those haters to stay away from bodies of water near the holy land.) King David was crowned King of a united Kingdom (all 12 tribes) around 1,000 B.C.E. Using that as a base, it means the Jews have been the indigenous people of Israel for over 3,000 years.
After the Bar Kochba revolt which was defeated in 135 C.E, the Romans punished the Judeans (Jews) for rebelling for the third time in sixty years. To poke those rebellious Judeans in the eye, the Romans changed the Jewish State’s name from Judea to Syria Palaestina. The Romans used Palaestina because it was the Latin name of the ancient enemy of the Jews, the Philistines. The Philistines didn’t exist anymore (they had disappeared from existence around eight hundred years earlier) so they didn't protest.
The people in Palaestina were not called Palestinians because they were primarily people who followed the Jewish religion. The Romans tried to throw out as many as they could from their own country, creating the Jewish exile that lasted till 1948. Not all the Jews were thrown out. Jews lived in the Holy Land, although they did not rule it, through 1948 when a Jewish state was declared the eternal homeland of the Jews.
The Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire, formed from its eastern provinces. They took control of the holy land around the year 330 C.E. Three centuries later, in the year 638 C.E., the land was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate, which was the first of four caliphs who took over (basically, colonialists) after Muhammad died. Eight hundred years ago, the land became part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire (in the 1400s).
After WW1, the League of Nations made the entire Homeland of the Jews a British protectorate, known as the British Mandate Of Palestine. That lasted until 1948, when the modern Jewish State, Israel, was created. Throughout that period, from the year 135 C.E. through the year 1948, there was a large population of Jews living on the land. In fact, before 1948, Jews living in the holy land were also called Palestinians. When the UN partitioned, the partition document (UN 181) called for an Arab state and a Jewish state, but the plan did not mention a Palestinian state because there was no nation called by that name - it was basically a geographical location.
Putting the timeline together, it is clear to anyone who knows basic math (sorry, son) or has mastered arithmetic skills that Jesus couldn’t have been a "Palestinian". Based on Christian theology, the land was called Judea until a century after Jesus died. Muslims didn’t control the area until 600 years after Jesus. Even then, it was part of a Caliphate, not an independent state. It became part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in 1400 C.E. After World War I, Christian Great Britain was given the holy land as part of the British Mandate. Those who call themselves "Palestinians" today, are Arabs who live in the area the Romans renamed Palaestina, some are recent arrivals and others descendants of the Moslem hordes who conquered and colonized Judea in the 7th century.
Answering the question and putting the timeline together, it is clear that anyone with basic arithmetic or history skills could not claim that Jesus was a "Palestinian".
Anyone claiming that Jesus was a "Palestinian" is trying to create a new history, which is part of the Palestinian Arab strategy of trying to erase the Jewish people’s historic connection to their Indigenous homeland.