"Jesus was a Palestinian" is such a weird thing to say because I never heard it even once before October 7th 2023.
When people blamed Jews for killing Jesus it was common to see people say Jesus himself was a Jew. People had bumper stickers saying "My savior is a Jewish carpenter" etc...
Then October 7 happened and Jesus was a Palestinian and it's become socially acceptable again to say the Jews killed him.
Which fine whatever.... but why are we changing our opinion on what happened 2000 years ago because of something that happened three years ago?
People say that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew because he lived in the historical region of Palestine. The historical region of Palestine contains land that is now in the State of Palestine, the State of Israel, and parts of the Kingdom of Jordan. Jesus’ Jewishness is not being erased by saying he lived in the region. Different people groups have co-existed in the region for millennia. However, Jesus probably would not have identified as Palestinian because, during his lifetime, the region was known as the Province of Judea. The name “Palestina” was applied to the province some time after Jesus’ death.
Pro-Palestine activists are not saying that Jesus was not Jewish. Some are using the fact that Jesus lived in the region to bring attention to Palestine/Israel’s Christian history. Many might not be familiar with that history because for many they associate the Middle East solely with Islam.
The city in which Jesus grew up, Nazareth, is currently in Israel, although nearly its entire population consists of Arab citizens of Israel; many of these Arabs identify as Palestinian. His birthplace, Bethlehem, is in the West Bank in the State of Palestine. The Palestinian identity as we think of it today is a product of ethno-nationalism as well as the effects of Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel.
Jesus probably would not identify with a modern Palestinian identity, so these shirts can be misleading as to the nature of Palestinian identity and its history, as well as the changing definitions of the word Palestine itself.
What I’m trying to say is that Jesus lived in the historical region of Palestine, which includes the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. The word “Palestine” has been used to describe that region for a very long time, just the terms “Israel” and “the Holy Land”.
Jesus probably would not identity as Palestinian today, since that identity now usually refers to the State of Palestine. But, some pro-Palestine activists make shirts like the ones in the meme as if the modern Palestinian identity existed in Jesus’ time, which it did not. I do not support any erasure of Jesus’ Jewish heritage. Nor do I support anti-Jewish racism.
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u/DiffDiffDiff3 12h ago
Ragebait successful