On this Christmas Day, Christian hearts worldwide are torn over the violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
Unfortunately, some seek to take advantage of this genuine concern by politicizing the holiday and championing the phrase “Jesus was a Palestinian.”
This historically inaccurate sentiment reveals a transparent effort to reduce both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the players involved to mere caricatures, all the while weaponizing Christian identity to support one side of the conflict.
In other words, to state “Jesus was a Palestinian” often suggests a deeply problematic attempt to force Christians to exclusively view the conflict through the lens of liberation theology, with Israel cast as the evil oppressor.
Embracing true identity
Christians should not allow that to happen. Instead, we should embrace the fullness of Jesus’s identity as a Jewish man who cares deeply about both Israelis and Palestinians.
The term Palestine itself has a complicated history that contributes to the confusion about Jesus’s identity. However, most scholars agree that it derives from the ancient enemy of the Jews, the Philistines, who immigrated to the land of the Bible from their homeland somewhere in Greece or Crete. For most of their rule, the Romans used ancient Israelite terms like Judea and Samaria to describe local provinces.
The Romans did not rename the area Syria Palaestina until the second century as part of an effort to crush Jewish rebellion and erase their sense of ethnonationalism and connection to their ancestral, indigenous, and historical homeland. Jesus would not have known the name Palestine and certainly would not have considered himself Palestinian, nor would anyone else during his first-century life.
That means labeling Jesus a Palestinian is inaccurate at best and deliberately deceitful at worst. It seems a continued identification of Jesus as Palestinian is not based on historical facts but seeks to formulate a specific narrative about the conflict.
This version of the conflict’s story argues that Jesus came to save the poor, the sick, and those otherwise downtrodden. For us, although those purposes are all true, they miss the point that Christians believe he came ultimately to save humanity from their transgressions – from themselves really.
A rhetorical association of Jesus with Palestinian nationalism also alludes to the idea that Israel may oppress them.
This more subtle meaning can be inferred from the ancient trope about the Jewish people: that they shunned righteousness and killed God by rejecting Jesus. If that canard were true, then, of course, Palestinians and Israelis would represent good and evil, respectively. If that potential meaning is intentional and not accidental, proponents seek to connect historical Christian antisemitism with contemporary anti-Zionism.
Ironically, as should be well known, Jesus was in fact a Jewish man. He grew up in a Jewish family, had a Jewish name, and observed Jewish rituals and festivals. Given the often-tragic history of Jewish-Christian relations, it seems evident that not all Christians are fully aware of or appreciate this critical part of Jesus’s identity.
This is why I work at Passages, an organization that roots young Christians in their faith by bringing them to Israel. Through these immersive trips and the educational experiences back home, we teach them how to engage with their faith through the lens of its original context – Israel and the Jewish people. The more we appreciate Jesus’s Jewish background, the better Christians can respect our Jewish brothers and sisters, even when we may disagree about theology or political matters.
That does not mean, however, that Jesus would abandon the Palestinians, and neither should Christians. On the contrary, Jesus taught the revolutionary concept that pursuing peace, loving our enemies, and seeking justice are not mutually exclusive.
He commands his followers to seek the flourishing of those around us in harmony with our commitment to fight injustice. In these circumstances, that means Christians should support Israel’s right to defend itself and eliminate the forces of evil seeking to terrorize them.
However, it also means we should not celebrate the destruction required to accomplish that mission but instead mourn the brokenness in our world that makes these types of wars necessary in the first place.
Doing this requires Christians to dig deeper. We must hold different ideas in tension: that Jesus would not demonize his people, the Jews, but would support their efforts for peace and security.
However, he would not abandon innocent Palestinians either. We must find a way to appreciate the image of God in every person, no matter how broken their humanity has become.
Christians must back the just war of ensuring terrorists can never again commit the atrocities witnessed on October 7, and we should simultaneously commit to supporting Palestinian efforts to flourish free of Hamas’s chains.
The writer is director of education at Passages, where he helps young Christian leaders understand their role as peacemakers. His primary area of expertise is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Hamas’s strategic choices regarding the use of violence.