We are currently witnessing a depraved reality.  Israelis are traumatized following the massacre by Hamas — and rather than offering empathy and compassion for Israel, much of the world has turned against the country.  In fact, antisemitic demonstrations have surged to new heights, engulfing world capitals as well as New York and Washington.

At the same time, a perverse phenomenon is being played out.  During the recent Christmas holidays, Jesus’s name was profaned, injected into the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  U.S. representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-N.Y.) drew parallels between the persecution of Jesus and modern-day Israel.  On Instagram, she posted this: “Jesus was part of a targeted population indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power.” And “the high Christian holiday is about honoring the precious sanctity of a family that, if the story were to unfold today, would be Jewish Palestinians.”

AOC ignored the sadistic murder of entire Israeli families by Hamas terrorists.  The so-called “unjust leader” AOC is referring to is essentially Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister.  Israel’s leader and the rest of the civilized world were appalled by the Nazi-like atrocities committed by Hamas, but apparently AOC was not.  And, in her ignorance, she neglects Jesus’s ministry and sense of justice, which would certainly have excoriated the Hamas butchery.

AOC was not the only one to distort history.  Father Edward Beck, a Catholic priest and religion commentator, was interviewed on CNN about pain and suffering in the world during the holiday season.  He noted, “What I am struck by is that the story of Christmas is about a Palestinian Jew — how often do you find those words put together? A Palestinian Jew — born into a time when his country was occupied, right?  I mean, you can’t make up the parallels to our current world situation right now.”

This outrageous falsification of history was best exemplified by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who, according to the AP (December 23, 2013) proclaimed in Bethlehem, “Jesus was a Palestinian messenger of hope.”  Abbas, a Muslim, whose regime has oppressed Christians and caused the Christians who once made up the majority population of Bethlehem to flee to Santiago de Chile, was cynically using Jesus to appeal to the Christian world.

Jesus was born a Jew and died as one.  During Jesus’s time, the word “Palestine” did not even exist.

In the year 135, the Romans finally defeated the Jews revolting against them.  They determined to erase all traces of Jewish indigeneity.  They renamed the land of Israel Syria Palaestina and King David’s capital, Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina.  The name was derived from the Philistines, a people from the Aegean Sea who had invaded and settled the coastal region of southern Israel.

The Arabs during the early British Mandatory years, living in what is today Israel, identified themselves as Southern Syrians, not as Palestinians.  For political expediency, this changed after the Jewish people declared statehood in 1948.  The Jews, until statehood, were known as Palestinian Jews, and their passports identified them as such.

Jewish and Christian links to the land of Israel are being erased with the imprimatur of UNESCO, a U.N. agency.  UNESCO makes a mockery of its purported mission for authentic cultural preservation.  The Muslim world makes up a majority of the U.N.’s membership, and Muslim nations, coupled with the likes of AOC, are engaged in this charade.  That is why in 2011 the U.S. and Israel withdrew their dues from UNESCO.

Dennis Ross, former Middle East envoy in the Clinton administration, recalled that during the Camp David Summit in July 2000 with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman, and Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister, Arafat told Clinton that the Temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem, but rather, it was located in Nablus.  Arafat argued that there was no trace of the temple on the Temple Mount!  Moreover, Arafat had disclosed to a delegation of Arab leaders that the holy Jewish temple was not in Jerusalem, but in Yemen.  Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, was a double-denier — he denied the existence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and denied the Holocaust.

Israeli and Western archaeologists have discovered tangible evidence of biblical accounts.  Yet Palestinian Arabs have sought to gain legitimacy and indigeneity by seeking to repudiate Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel.  To that end, Palestinian officials at the Al-Aqsa Mosque doing renovations in 1996 discarded artifacts from Solomon’s Temple.  Israeli archaeologists raised their concern over how the Waqf (Islamic Council) was trying to obliterate evidence of Jewish history.  Nevertheless, as Smithsonian Institute Magazine revealed, archaeologists have found various artifacts in the discarded shards from Solomon’s Temple.

The same Smithsonian Institute Magazine reported that a 1929 publication written by Waqf historian Aref al-Aref, titled “A Brief Guide to the Haram al-Sharif,” states that the Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”

The Palestinians, AOC and her “progressive” friends in Congress, and Hamas’s Western sympathizers not only lack empathy for Israeli victims, but also accuse Israel of aggression and oppression.  The fact that Hamas deliberately attacked Israel, and indiscriminately targeted innocents, does not bother them.  Their goal is to delegitimize the Jewish state, ultimately achieving Israel’s disappearance. But history and truth will not be obfuscated despite Palestinian political will.

Image: scottgunn via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.