Was Jesus Palestinian?

On December 7, 2024, the Vatican unveiled a nativity scene crafted by Palestinian woodworkers which featured the baby Jesus in a manger wrapped not in swaddling clothes, but in a keffiyeh. Suddenly, a nativity scene that normally brings quiet admiration or curiosity sparked outrage. 

The picture made a statement—one that has been made ever since Hamas’ brutal assault on Southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Throughout the war, and especially at the approach of the Christmas season, the claim has been: “Jesus was Palestinian.”

Why has this claim caused such an uproar? It’s a loaded statement seemingly devoid of context, and one that is deeply problematic. As a Jew who believes in the claims of Jesus, I’ve found myself concerned about its implications—for Jews, for Christians, for Palestinians, and for the world.

Revisiting History

The immediate problem with calling Jesus a Palestinian is blatant anachronism. When Jesus was born, the land was called Judea (the word from which the label “Jew” derives). It was also referred to as Galilee and Israel (as in Matthew 2:20–21). 

The immediate problem with calling Jesus a Palestinian is blatant anachronism.

Two centuries after Jesus was born, the Romans crushed the second Jewish revolt, murdering thousands of Jews in the process. Upon taking control of their territory, the Romans renamed the land of Israel “Palestine.” 

The second implication of associating Jesus with Palestine is that his Jewish identity is usurped. But Jesus’ Jewishness is well documented. The genealogy outlined in the books of Matthew and Luke clearly establish his Jewish ancestry (Matthew 1:1–18; Luke 3:23–38). At his birth (genuinely) and at his death (mockingly), he is called “King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:1–2; 27:37). In an encounter between Jesus and a Samaritan woman, she refers to him as a Jew (as distinct from herself, a Samaritan). Jesus embraces her term for him in John 4:22. Reputable historians, whether they believed his other claims or not, have affirmed his Jewish identity.

Though it is anachronistic and politically charged to make a “Jesus was Palestinian” statement, it makes sense that some Palestinians would feel a tie to Jesus. Palestinian Christians understand themselves to be the descendants (literally and spiritually) of the ancient church in that region, which started as a movement of Jewish followers of Jesus. 

The Jewish people who are living in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora today are descended from the ancient people who lived in the Land of Israel. It follows then that each would feel a connection to this Jewish man born in Israel.

The Effects of Separating Jesus From His Jewishness 

While people around the world may feel a connection to Jesus (and I believe that’s his intention), there is a danger in plucking him from his original context to fit our own ideas and needs today.

This isn’t the first time some have tried to erase Jesus’ Jewish identity. Even though the New Testament records that Jesus, his disciples, and the original religious movement he inspired were all Jewish, within a relatively short period of time, the Christian church began to distance itself from the Jewish people and from Jewish believers in Jesus.

This isn’t the first time some have tried to erase Jesus’ Jewish identity.

As Jesus became “goyish,” his message began to be weaponized against the very people he claimed as his own. Jewish people were ostracized, socially and economically oppressed, harassed, and massacred. The distressing history of the church’s contempt for the Jewish people culminated in Christian complicity in the Holocaust. 

During the Third Reich, the state church adopted the Nationalist Socialist platform of the Nazi Party in hopes that Hitler’s rhetoric would revitalize German Christianity. The German church went so far as to adopt an “Aryan” or Judenfrei (Jewish free) Bible by removing the Old Testament altogether and editing the New Testament so that Jesus was Aryan, not Jewish.

As history has shown, revising Jesus’ narrative for political gain is deadly.

The Danger of the Latest Narrative

Today’s narrative is largely politically motivated as well. By claiming that Jesus is a Palestinian (Jewish or not), activists are aligning him with a particularly revolutionary cause (Palestinian nationalism) and, as they see it, pitting him against a particular oppressor (Israel and Zionism). 

Columbia professor Hamid Dabashi demonstrated this line of thinking: “Generations of European depiction of Christ as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white man have made it difficult for European and North American Christians today to imagine him for what he was: a Jewish Palestinian refugee child who grew up to become a towering revolutionary figure.”

If Dabashi had stopped here, perhaps the argument could be made that he is merely making the provocative claim that Jesus is connected to both Jews and Palestinians. However, as he continues, what he means by “Jewish” becomes clear:

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.

I’m not sure who the “Jews as Palestinians” he’s talking about are, but clearly for Dabashi, the “real Jews” are those who oppose Zionism and stand with the Palestinian people. Israelis, Zionists, and their supporters are, in his perspective, fake Jews who lay claim to a “false Judaism” and “rob [real] Jews of their ancestral faith.” 

This ideology is not all that different from supersessionism, the belief that Christians are the “true Israel” who have replaced Jews (the “false” Israel) in God’s plan. By claiming Jesus as an anti-colonialist revolutionary, this new form of political supersessionism strips Jews of our right to self-determination. It was this very ideology that the Palestinian Revolution movement used to justify horrific violence against Israelis. 

By claiming Jesus as an anti-colonialist revolutionary, this new form of political supersessionism strips Jews of our right to self-determination.

After reviewing the history of weaponized ethnocentrism, witnessing the violence Hamas committed on October 7, and experiencing the subsequent rise of global antisemitism, we must not fail to see where these slogans and ideas can lead.

Who Jesus Said He Is

The temptation to remove Jesus from his context and redefine him to fit our worldview is pervasive. Numerous authors have written scholarly as well as popular level books on “the historical Jesus” and they always seem to come up with a Jesus who fits their own agendas. The Palestinian Jesus is just one example.

Jewish believers in Jesus are not immune from this temptation. In fact, our ethnic and religious connection to Jesus may give us blind spots along with insights. Just as it’s inaccurate to say Jesus is a Palestinian in terms of modern Palestinian Nationalism, it’s also inaccurate to imagine Jesus as an Orthodox Jew or as a Zionist (as that term didn’t even exist until the 19th century). Jesus’ Second Temple Jewish identity is different from modern Jewish identity. Perhaps the exercise of looking at Jesus through Palestinian eyes can help us see aspects of Jesus we may have missed.

But arguing about the Palestinian connection to Jesus distracts us from something far more important. The New Testament lays out very clearly not only where Jesus was born, but who he claims to be. I would argue that considering the implications of his claims is the far more pressing issue at hand.

Rather than enlisting Jesus into our own culture wars, we should pay attention to what he actually had to say:

You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matthew 5:43–44).

Rather than enlisting Jesus into our own culture wars, we should pay attention to what he actually had to say:

Jesus confronts and challenges our assumptions, biases, and ideologies. To Israelis and Palestinians living through war, and to any modern reader honestly wrestling with Jesus’ words, this section of his famous “Sermon on the Mount” seems naïve and unrealistic. However, Jesus wasn’t some idealistic peacenik or out-of-touch guru looking to market his own brand of spirituality; he was a realist who lived under the brutal reality of Roman occupation and understood how to live wisely in a dark and dangerous world. 

Jesus is teaching non-violent resistance to evil and oppression. That doesn’t mean that Jesus is a pacifist, but he is saying the most effective way to resist evil is to love your enemy. Reading Jesus’ teachings in context pushes against the various ways we tend to co-opt or politicize his message. Jesus challenges all of us, and none of us are able to simply enlist him to our cause. 

I don’t think most of those who have claimed Jesus for Palestinians are antisemites. I believe much of the show of support for the people of Gaza comes from genuine compassion for Palestinians and passion for social justice, which God also cares about. Caring about the suffering of innocent people and advocating for the rights of the marginalized are good things. But dressing up Jesus in a keffiyeh and accusing Israelis of murdering him is at best misguided and at worst weaponizing well-worn antisemitic tropes.

In her book We Need to Talk about Antisemitism, Rabbi Daina Fersko makes the point that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement doesn’t help Palestinians or even hurt Israelis—it hurts Jewish people here in America. The same can be said of calling Jesus a Palestinian. Erasing Jesus’ Jewish identity and distancing him from Israelis doesn’t make Palestinians’ lives any easier, but it does threaten to roll back generations of progress in terms of peoples’ attitudes toward the Jewish people. Rather than fighting over who has the right to claim Jesus, we should look to his teachings to see if they can lead us to peace.