Where would Jesus stand as Palestinian resistance factions continue to push back against Israel’s barbaric occupation forces in the birthplace of Christianity?
Jesus was a Palestinian revolutionary, who challenged vested interests including that of the Imperial Roman Empire.
Western ideas about Jesus and his role sometimes forget his origins. Yes, Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. And yes, he was Palestinian.
As Hamid Dabashi, professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, has noted, generations of European depiction of Christ as a blond haired, blue eyed, white man, has 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.
Terry Eagleton, notes “Jesus was homeless, vagrant, without property, celibate, a scourge of the rich and powerful, a champion of the dispossessed, with an aversion to material possessions”.
Eagleton goes on to say that Jesus warned his followers that if they speak out for justice and friendship as he did, then they too will be done away with by the state.
There are plenty of latter day zealots who have learned this lesson the hard way.
Jesus was, as Reza Aslan puts it, a politically conscious revolutionary Jewish figure, who 2,000 years ago walked across the Galilean countryside, gathering followers for a Messianic movement with the goal of establishing the kingdom of God, but whose mission failed when, after a provocative entry into Jerusalem and the brazen attack on the temple, he was arrested and executed by Rome for the crime of sedition.
It is important to remember that Jesus is a figure of immense importance to Jews, Christians and Muslims. He is a prophet in the Torah, the Bible and indeed the Quran. In the Quran, Jesus or Issa, in Arabic, is referred to in about 71 verses.
Today, the descendants and disciples of Jesus in Palestine, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, are engaged in a life or death struggle to cast off the genocidal ideology of Zionism.
The Zionists, for their part, have shown a particular desire to destroy all of the infrastructure that sustains Palestinian society including hospitals, schools, universities and places of worship and prayer, especially those run by Muslims and Christians.
This, in addition to the deliberate targeting of journalists, doctors, aid workers, and other civilians, as well as babies and children, which marks this as a genocide of truly biblical proportions.
The question of Christmas this year for all those Jews, Christians or Muslims who believe in Jesus as a prophet, as well as for the unbelievers, is would Jesus have been a leader of the Palestinian resistance?
The Zionist assault on Gaza’s Christian community.
Christians and Christianity are under attack in Gaza and throughout Palestine.
Zionist ideology is not just anti-Muslim, it is anti-Christian, too. What is the common factor that links Muslims and Christians in Palestine? They are Palestinian. So it’s no surprise that the Zionists are making sure they destroy churches as well as mosques.
On October the 19th Israel bombed the Church of St. Porphyrius, the oldest church in Gaza, killing at least 18 people.
The church is said to be the third oldest Christian church in the world, with the current building having been constructed by the Crusaders in the 1150s or 1160s. A church was built on the site as early as 425 AD.
Two days earlier an explosion at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, an Anglican institution located a few blocks away, killed and injured hundreds according to Palestinian health authorities.
The evidence is beginning to mount that the attacks on specifically Christian targets are themselves a specific genocide contained within the larger genocide aimed at Muslims, and indeed, all Palestinians.
On December 16th the Zionists directly targeted a Christian convent; “an Israeli army sniper assassinated two Christian women, Nahida and her daughter Samar, inside the parish of the Holy Family in Gaza on Saturday”, said the Latin Patriarchate’s media office.
“One of the women fell while trying to rescue the other. Seven others were injured while attempting to help. Gunfire was directed at them inside the walls of the monastery and there was no resistance in the area”, it added.
Israeli artillery also targeted the monastery of the Sisters of Mother Teresa in Gaza City, which sheltered more than 54 disabled individuals within the church walls.
The Zionist attack also destroyed the fuel tank, the power generator, and, the solar panels, in addition to extensive damage that rendered the place unsuitable for habitation or providing care for people with disabilities.
On January the 26th this year, a mob of Israeli settlers attacked an Armenian bar in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem shouting: “death to Arabs, death to Christians”.
At the beginning of October, a video emerged of ultra orthodox settlers in Al-Quds spitting on Christian pilgrims, armed and violent settlers are also in the process of attempting to liquidate the Armenian Quarter in Al-Quds, and, with it the wider Christian presence which has been there continuously since the fourth century.
Only 800 to 1000 Christians are believed to still live in Gaza, constituting the oldest Christian community in the world, dating back to the first century
This year Christmas celebrations are canceled in Bethlehem and for obvious reasons.
It’s impossible to celebrate while our people in Gaza are going through genocide.
Bethlehem Priest
It’s no wonder the church in Palestine has canceled Christmas.
