ARTICLE

Gaslighting History: Jesus Promoted As Palestinian Refugee, Freedom Fighter

News Image By Michael Brown/AskDrBrown.org December 29, 2023
Share this article:

You would think this would be pretty easy to get right: according to the Gospels, Yeshua (Jesus) was born a Jew in an ancient Jewish city in the historic land of Israel.

But no, all this must be disputed, after all, how can Jesus be the liberator of the oppressed if He Himself was born to an oppressor people in an oppressor city? The narrative must be changed.

That's why, for many years, we have heard that "Jesus was a Palestinian," or, more fully, "Jesus was a Palestinian freedom fighter," suggesting that He led an armed revolt against - guess who? - the Israeli Jews!

In the words of Hamid Dabashi, in an op-ed published on December 25, 2018 on Aljazeera News, "Remember: Christ was a Palestinian refugee."

Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, does acknowledge that Jesus was Jewish, but only in the context of being "a Jewish Palestinian refugee child who grew up to become a towering revolutionary figure." 


And in the midst of an article meant to be conciliatory for Muslims and Christians, he opines,

"The dark days of Zionism laying a false claim on Judaism and Palestine alike are happily over. The lies of a gang of European settler colonialists trying to rob Jews of their ancestral faith and Palestinians of their historical homeland have finally come to a crushing defeat when Jews and Palestinians, and Jews as Palestinians, have come together to lay a post-Zionist claim on their ancestral faith and homeland alike."

Can you feel the Christmas spirit? (And yes, when you parse every word of that paragraph, Prof. Dabashi's claims are beyond shocking.)

Adding to the mix is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whose Christmas message also compared Jesus to the Palestinians saying "He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians."

The New York lawmaker, a member of the so-called "Squad" of outspoken progressives in Congress, referred to Jesus’ family as “Jewish Palestinians.”

This Christmas, a Catholic priest from New York, Father Edward Beck, added this on CNN:

"What I'm so struck by is that the story of Christmas is about a Palestinian Jew. How often do you find those words put together? A Palestinian Jew born into a time when his country was occupied, right? They can't find a place for [Jesus's mother, Mary] to even give birth. They're homeless. They eventually have to flee as refugees into Egypt, no less. I mean, you can't make up the parallels to our current world situation right now."


This is not just a matter of historical inaccuracy, since the land in which Yeshua was born was not called Palestine until more than one century after His death and resurrection.

This is a matter of separating Yeshua the Jew from the Jewish people as a whole, and from His ancient Jewish homeland.

It is also making a political statement, comparing the first-century Roman occupiers of Judea with the people of Israel today, occupiers of the West Bank and Gaza: The Romans were and the Israelis are evil oppressors with no right to the land.

That's the magic of using words like "Palestinian" and "occupied."

As for language that is even more extreme, how about these comments from Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Shtayyeh on December 28, 2020? 

"The birthday of our lord Jesus, peace be upon him - the first Palestinian self-sacrificing fighter from whom we learned Martyrdom-death, and who paid for his mission with his life - takes place at the same time as the anniversary of the outbreak of the Palestinian revolution [i.e., the anniversary of "the Launch" of Fatah, counted from its first terror attack against Israel], for which thousands of Martyrs have paid with their lives so that we will live and remain, and so that our children will dream of a better future." 

Did you think I was exaggerating?

How threatening it is to say that Yeshua was a Judean Jew, born in Bethlehem, the ancient city of David, called "rabbi" (not "reverend" or "imam") by His followers.

This does not mean that Jesus would agree with every policy of Israel today or of every tenet of Judaism. He certainly would not. (The same can be said about Him agreeing with every American policy today or of every tenet of Christianity.)

And this does not imply that He does not hurt for the downtrodden and the oppressed of all peoples. He certainly does.

But the references to Him as a Palestinian refugee born in occupied territory, not to mention Him being compared to an Islamic jihadist "martyr," are meant to mislead in the most insidious way.


In comparison, the recent article by Victoria Emily Jones in Christianity Today, while not insidious, is certainly misleading, stating,

"Jesus was born in Asia. He was Asian. Yet the preponderance of Christian art that shows him at home in Europe has meant that he is embedded deeply in the popular imagination as Western." 

What, exactly, does Jones mean? Pointing to Asian nativity scenes dating back 1240, she explains,

"Some may object to depicting Jesus as anything other than a brown male born into a Jewish family in Bethlehem of Judea in the first century, believing that doing so undermines his historicity. But Christian artists who tackle the subject of the Incarnation are often aiming not at historical realism but at theological meaning.

"By representing Jesus as Japanese, Indonesian, or Indian, they convey a sense of God's immanence, his 'with-us-ness,' for their own communities--and for everyone else, the universality of Christ's birth."

On the one hand, all this is quite understandable, since people from every nation embrace Jesus as "one of us." That means that we depict Him (or imagine Him) to look like us. That's why there are White European Jesus images and Black African Jesus images, along with other racial and ethnic Jesus images.

But Jesus was not born in Asia, nor was He Asian (based on what "Asian" would mean in the first-century Roman empire, and based on what "Asian" means today).

More importantly, given the historic attack on the Jewishness of Jesus, beginning with early Church leaders severing the Jewish roots of the faith, continuing with classic Christian art that demonized the ancient Jewish leaders and transformed Jesus into a White European, moving to the Nazi effort to make Jesus into a non-Jewish Aryan, and to the current "Jesus was a Palestinian refugee" rhetoric, now would be a good time to emphasize historic truth:

Jesus, whose Hebrew name was Yeshua, was born in Bethlehem of Judea.

His mother's name was Miriam, and His followers were named Yaakov and Shimon and Yehudah, among others.

And He was Messiah (= Christ in Greek) because He was hailed as the long-awaited Savior of the Jewish people (and thereby, the Savior of the whole world).

He was born King of the Jews and died King of the Jews.

And when He comes again, He is returning to Jerusalem.

Amen.

Originally published at AskDrBrown.org - reposted with permission.




Other News

February 05, 2025How Did USAID Go From Helping Those In Need To Advancing Leftist Indoctrination?

It has now become clear that any humanitarian assistance provided by USAID is simply a cover story for the real purpose of the organizatio...

February 05, 2025California Gov't App Advises Teens To Drop Christianity And Embrace The Occult

An official "mental health" app backed by the state of California is targeting vulnerable children with controversial propaganda involving...

February 05, 2025Wikipedia Goes Full Censorship As Conservative Media Blocked For Article Sources

A new investigation has discovered Wikipedia "has effectively blacklisted all right-leaning media from being used as source material, excl...

February 05, 2025Putting An End To The Pronoun Police

Almost every class would begin with the standard introduction prompts -- name, major, where you're from. Typical stuff. But what stood out...

February 03, 2025Do They Know Something We Don’t? Hedge Funds Betting On Market Crash

Do they know something that we do not? All of a sudden, hedge funds are betting billions of dollars that the stock market is going to cra...

February 03, 2025China's Military Master Plan: A Slow March Toward Conflict?

China's military buildup is not just about raw power--it's about strategic preparation. From the new command center outside Beijing to its...

The Future Of Warfare? Drone Vs. Robot Dog

A recent viral spectacle featuring a drone and a robotic quadruped—each armed with fireworks—battling in a dazzling display has sparked cu...

Get Breaking News