The Christian world recently celebrated the birth of Jesus in the small town of Bethlehem, or Bet-Lehem, meaning “House of Bread” in Hebrew. Joseph and Mary were only there because the Roman colonialist governor had ordered a census of the Jews in Judea. Jesus was raised in Nazareth, Natzeret in Hebrew, meaning “offspring” or “sprout.”
In other words, Jesus was born a Jew. He grew up in a Jewish family. He kept company with other Jews. He practiced Judaism. He went to the Jewish temple. All in Jewish territory that is now the Jewish State of Israel. All this is found in Christian gospel.
Yet here we are.
By calling Israel a “colonial project,” Abbas and others willfully ignore the fact that indigenous Jews never left Judea except at the point of a sword. They were scattered across Europe and Arab lands by the same Roman Empire that persecuted Jesus and his early followers.
It’s the colonialists, not the indigenous documented in the Bible, who stamped the name “Palestine” upon the Holy Land.
Still, even after repeated expulsions, Jews always returned to Israel, heeding the many exhortations ensconced in the Bible, Jewish law, and prayer. Every chapter of the Torah and page of Talmud reminds Jews that they have but one homeland, to which the Jewish faith binds them for all time.
This is why the great medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides migrated from Spain to the Holy Land, and why Rabbi Yosef Karo, author of the Code of Jewish Law, followed in his footsteps centuries later. It is why Rabbi Isaac Luria, father of modern Kabbalah, moved from Egypt, and why followers of the father of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, and those of his leading opponent, Rabbi Eliyahu Cramer, the Vilna Gaon, made the arduous journey to Jerusalem.
They were not “colonialists” or “occupiers”—they were indigenous Jews returning home. Yet Jews in Israel today, including those who can trace their family trees back centuries, are ridiculously called both—directly by Israel’s sworn enemies and by proxy by the elected officials and bureaucrats alike of the U.S. government.
It’s long overdue that such false and malicious narratives be put to rest.
In particular, it would be a significant setback for indigenous rights and civil liberties if the United States were to create a Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem. The current U.S. Embassy, opened by President Donald Trump in 2018, serves all who need its services. If a separate office were actually needed, its correct location would be in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority.
The Biden administration must recognize history as well as the Old and New Testaments, rather than listen to the dogmatic revisionist voices that would deprive the indigenous of Israel the God-given right to live and worship freely in their Holy City.