Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) compared Jesus and the biblical Christmas story to the modern Israel-Hamas conflict in a social media post.
“In the story of Christmas, Christ was born in modern-day Palestine under the threat of a government engaged in a massacre of innocents,” she posted.
Mary and Joseph, displaced by violence and forced to flee, became refugees in Egypt with a newborn waiting to one day return home. Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians, so much so that the Christian community in Bethlehem has canceled this year’s Christmas Eve celebrations out of both safety and respect.”
“And yet, also today, holy children are still being born in a place of unspeakable violence — for every child born, of any identity and from any place, is sacred. Especially the children of Gaza.
“The entire story of Christmas and Christ himself is about standing with the poor and powerless, the marginalized and maligned, the refugees and immigrants, the outcast and misunderstood without exception.
“This high Christian holiday is about honoring the precious sanctity of a family that, if the story were to unfold today, would be Jewish Palestinians.
“Merry Christmas. May there be peace on Earth, amen.”
The statement caused outrage.
Rabbi Shmueley, who has been called “the most famous Rabbi in America,” condemned Cortez’s post.
“What an ignorant, illiterate, embarrassment to both Christianity, and the United States, who has never read a single page of the New Testament,” he posted on X.
Another individual wrote, “Jesus was NOT Palestinian. He was a Nazarene born in Bethlehem of the House of David. Stop being ignorant if it’s possible & stop making crap up. That’s all you do.”
While Cortez compared Jesus’ birth to the modern Israel-Palestine conflict, the magazine Christianity Today claimed that Jesus Christ was Asian.
“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,” the article reads, adding that when artists portray Jesus as “Japanese, Indonesian, or Indian, they convey a sense of God’s immanence.”
