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A legal scholar sizes up the religious argument against abortion bans
(JTA) — The abortion debate is often portrayed as a clash between religious beliefs on the pro-life side and secular or humanist convictions on the pro-choice side. Indeed, lawmakers and activists have often invoked God in enacting state bans on abortion since the Supreme Court, in last year’s Dobbs decision, struck down a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.
Some clergy and faith groups, however, including a number of Jews, are pushing back. In efforts to overturn these restrictions, they have been pressing a legal strategy claiming that abortion bans violate their religious liberty. In Kentucky, a case brought by three Jewish women argues that the state’s near-total abortion ban violates their religious beliefs about when life begins and protecting a mother’s life. In Indiana, a suit brought by Hoosier Jews for Choice and four women who represent a variety of faiths demands exemptions from the state’s abortion ban for people whose religions support abortion rights.
In Florida, a synagogue filed a lawsuit saying the state’s abortion restrictions violate the religious freedom rights of Jews.
“Judaism has never defined life beginning at conception,” the Kentucky suit says, adding that “millennia of commentary from Jewish scholars has reaffirmed Judaism’s commitment to reproductive rights.”
Although Orthodox organizations support restrictions that allow abortion only under rare circumstances, most American Jews and their representative organizations back wide abortion access.
To understand the legal strategy behind these state-level religious challenges to abortion bans, JTA spoke Friday with Elizabeth Reiner Platt, the director of the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia Law School. Last year, the center published “A Religious Right to Abortion: History & Analysis,” a memo intended for lawyers, activists, faith leaders and journalists.
Platt spoke about what Politico recently called “the sleeper legal strategy that could topple abortion bans,” two recent Supreme Court cases on religion and how the conservative court is approaching religion in general.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Last August you released a report analyzing how religion law might apply in legal challenges to abortion bans. Can you summarize the strategy?
I always like to start by saying that the idea that religious liberty includes a right to make decisions about one’s reproductive health care is not just a legal strategy that folks came up with in response to Dobbs. It is how religious groups themselves have been talking about their understanding of reproductive rights for a very long time. I have a handy list of denominational statements from a range of different traditions, including some Jewish groups, as well as Lutheran, Presbyterian and Unitarian Universalist back from the ’80s and ’90s saying reproductive rights are a religious liberty issue for them and for their congregations.
One of the most valuable things in that report is the case index that shows cases going back from the ’70s, the pre-Roe era, that make this legal claim where people of faith have said, “Our religious beliefs motivate us to help people access reproductive health care.” The report essentially lays out the different kinds of legal arguments to be made for a religious liberty right to provide access or facilitate abortion care. And we’re now seeing that happen and a handful of lawsuits across the country including Kentucky, Florida, Missouri, Indiana and Idaho. Several of those cases include Jewish plaintiffs [including Missouri, where five rabbis from multiple Jewish denominations are among more than a dozen Missouri faith leaders challenging the state’s ban on abortion]. There’s a very interesting lawsuit in Kentucky right now involving three Jewish women who actually focus on their religious obligation to have children using in vitro fertilization. And so their complaint overlays on both the state constitution as well as the state Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and says that they have a religious right to seek IVF care, but also because of their age and other factors they have a higher risk of pregnancy complications, and so they’re including as part of that complaint right to access abortion care in accordance with their religious beliefs.
How does the IVF relate to abortion in this sense? Are they arguing that abortion is similarly included in a full range of gynecological and obstetric care?
Basically, they make the case that they want access to IVF but also that some of the claimants in the past have had really serious fetal anomalies and believe that the religiously motivated decision for them at that time was to seek abortion care.
Members of Jews For Racial and Economic Justice and IfNotNow hold signs that say “Baruch Hashem [Bless God] For Abortion” at a rally at New York City Foley Square, May 2, 2023. (Jacob Henry)
Have there been rulings over the years that accept the right to abortion as a question of religious liberty?
I’ll start by saying they’re kind of two basic ways a claim can be made.There are concrete Free Exercise Clause claims that essentially say, “My religious beliefs motivate me to seek this care to make this decision. And abortion bans therefore stifle my religious practice.” And that kind of claim would typically result not in overturning an abortion ban, but in providing a religious exemption for the claimant. The other way to make a religion claim is to say, “This abortion ban is actually religiously motivated and improperly enshrines one particular religious view into law, and it’s therefore a violation of a federal or state Establishment Clause provision.” And that kind of challenge would, if successful, overturn the law completely for everybody.
There is not a lot of case law on the former. There have been many challenges, but they’ve almost all been dismissed on things like standing or mootness — technical, legal things. The big exception is right now: There is a case being brought by the ACLU of Indiana that relies on that state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was a very contentious law passed several years ago by then Gov. Mike Pence. That case did, at the trial court level, succeed in granting religious exemption to the claimants [which remains in effect even as the Indiana Supreme Court allowed the state’s total abortion ban to take effect Aug. 1]. That’s the first major decision that we’ve seen post-Dobbs.
Is it fair to say that the same law that ostensibly would have protected conservative religious behavior is being deployed from a progressive standpoint?
That is certainly how it gets framed a lot. But these laws should ideally always be applied neutrally, across the denominational and the political spectrum, and have long been used by people of all different faiths and denominations. I deeply do not think that this is some sort of clever legal tactic. We’re seeing, in the wake of Dobbs, ideas and language that have been promoted by religious groups for many, many, many years.
In the current political climate, do you think courts are inclined to accept the right to abortion as a question of religious liberty?
I think there’s definitely an appetite for these arguments. There was a really interesting lower court decision in Kentucky a while back, when a judge ruled that the state’s abortion ban violated religious liberty — without that argument even having been made by either party, which is extremely unusual. I think [that] really shows that there is an appetite for these claims. It’s important to say that almost all of these claims are being brought in state court. Most litigators are bringing cases that would not end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m not Pollyannaish about the fact that we have very conservative state judiciaries and a lot of these states are very opposed to abortion, but I think the legal claims themselves based on doctrine should be very strong.
An argument I’ve heard in the Jewish community is that because some of the Jewish plaintiffs pressing religious freedom arguments aren’t Orthodox or traditionally observant Jews — in other words, because they do not act according to traditional Jewish law in other aspects of their life — they shouldn’t be making religious claims in this one area of reproductive rights. Do the courts take into consideration the extent of perceived sincerity or consistency of a party’s beliefs and actions when they review these cases?
Courts can absolutely look at religious sincerity, but I also think it’s outrageous to say that “only Orthodox Jews are sincere.” You know the old saw: two Jews, three opinions. What matters is not getting an Orthodox rabbi in the stand to give expert advice on the Talmud. What matters is the plaintiffs’ own understanding of their Judaism and what it looks like in practice. People can be very sincere about how they practice their Judaism without necessarily being glatt kosher or what have you. Courts tend to use a pretty light touch when it comes to sincerity.
Going back to the Establishment Clause, can you explain to me how an entire ethos that seems to be very much based in religious conceptions of when life begins can make it into secular law without running afoul of the Constitution? Some of these abortion bans seem to me to be examples of one denomination’s religious views becoming everyone’s law. How does that pass muster?
The key case on this is Harris v. McRae from the ’80s, which was a case that challenged the federal Hyde Amendment that bans almost all federal funding for abortion. The challengers made that exact claim: that this is based on a particular conception of when life begins and is essentially a religious restriction. And that case lost before the Supreme Court. The court said that just because a law happens to overlap with particular religious beliefs, it doesn’t make it an inherently religious law. And honestly, since then, the Court’s conception of the Establishment Clause has gotten narrower and narrower.
Right to Life advocates pray during a sit-in in front of a Planned Parenthood in Washington, D.C. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
That does not mean, however, that that’s the end of the story. Again, I’ll say that most of these claims are being brought under state rather than federal provisions. And we’re now seeing state legislators being much more frank and forthright about their religious motivations when passing some of these laws, in a way that can be relevant to new Establishment Clause challenges. So, for example, the Missouri case which is being brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and National Women’s Law Center [filed on behalf of 13 clergy members from six faith traditions, saying that the state’s abortion ban establishes one religious view about abortion as the law of the land in violation of the Missouri constitution]. It’s a challenge under the state’s Establishment Clause. And they point to the fact among other things that the law has the words “Almighty God” right in the text of the statute. That is pretty shocking and unusual.
I’d like to shift gears and talk about some of the other religion cases of the last week. The court ruled last week in Groff v. DeJoy that employers had to show a substantial burden before curtailing accommodations for religious employees, who may seek accommodations for the Sabbath, or wearing distinct dress. Groff was a postal worker who argued he shouldn’t have to work on his Sabbath. What did you think about the unanimous ruling?
This is an unusual example of the court taking at least somewhat of a middle path. They could have ruled very explicitly that the needs of coworkers don’t matter and shouldn’t be considered, and thankfully they didn’t. Ultimately, neither side got exactly what it wanted. I mean, Groff did not get his religious exemption yet. The court tweaked the test by which it will be evaluated, and according to my reading of the case, there is ample opportunity for the lower court to look at the new test and say, “Your request was really burdensome on the operation of this very small postal office, and you don’t get [your accommodation].” The jury’s still out on that case and I think we might see a real kind of diversity in how it ends up getting implemented in practice.
In another important ruling on religion and the law, the court ruled that a website designer could decline to provide service to a same-sex couple based on her assertion that she has a religious objection to creating messages that promote a view she doesn’t accept. I was intrigued by your tweet: “The decision in #303Creative today is not a win for religious liberty.” How did you mean that?
We wrote an amicus brief in this case on behalf of a bunch of religious minority organizations and faith-based organizations from a lot of different denominations. The point we made was that if we want to make sure that people can exercise their religion openly in a pluralistic society and without being chilled or in fear that they’re going to get turned away and unable to access services because they’re wearing a hijab or a yarmulke, then we need robust civil rights laws. A return to a segregated marketplace is going to maybe help a few religious believers who happen to own small businesses, but overall it’s going to have a real chilling effect on religious diversity and pluralism in smaller communities. Our point was that civil rights law shouldn’t be seen as being in conflict with religious liberty, but in fact, civil rights law is what has helped religious minorities thrive in the United States. And you know, I mentioned in my tweet that when my parents were kids, the “Jewish Vacation Guide” was still helping families figure out whether they were going to get turned away from hotels and such.
To take a broader view of the Supreme Court for a second, it’s clearly privileging religion in ways not seen in previous courts. The New York Times columnist Linda Greenhouse has written that the conservative supermajority completely identifies with “the movement in the country’s politics to elevate religion over all other elements of civil society.” I’m wondering if you agree with that assessment. And if so, what are its implications? I know that for a lot of our readers, it’s a great thing to elevate religion over other elements of civil society.
I would tweak it, because there are religion claims that don’t succeed. For example, there have been a lot of cases involving the targeting of Muslims, questioning people about their religious beliefs and practices at the border and the surveillance of mosques and religious groups, and very famously the court’s upholding of the Trump Muslim travel ban. In those cases, religious liberty did not win out over other elements. So I agree that the court has sided with particular, primarily conservative, Christian religious liberty claims. But I don’t think that that is going to protect everyone.
To conclude again with abortion: I don’t know if you are familiar with the work of Rutgers professor Michal Raucher, who argues that Jewish movements like hers — she is a Conservative Jew — should be arguing the case for abortion from the perspective of women’s bodily autonomy, and not the more narrow case that Jewish law allows abortions in some limited circumstances. Are religious challenges to abortion bans just sort of the flip side of religious opposition to abortion — they downplay the autonomy of women as individuals by making their decision-making a matter of church or synagogue doctrine?
This is sort of an age-old strategy question. If you look at the pro-life movement, there was a lot of argument between a “chip away over time” strategy or a more absolutist constitutional amendment saying that personhood starts at the moment of conception. We can have shorter term and longer term strategies, and I don’t know that it’s necessary to pick one. Even to the extent some of these lawsuits don’t end up succeeding, there is value in showing the diversity of religious beliefs on reproductive healthcare, because I think conservative Christians have had such a dominant presence over the issue of religion and abortion. There’s been a lot of history lost. I think of things like the Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion, which was a national network of clergy members who helped people access abortion, vetted illegal abortion providers and also helped people access care abroad. And that history has been all but lost. So yes, I think there can be multiple narratives happening at the same time.
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Clark University Adopting BDS Measures Pushed by Student Government
Illustrative: A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a megaphone during a demonstration held on the one-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Photo: REUTERS/Mike Segar
The student government of Clark University in Massachusetts is enacting a series of policies based on the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — despite their failing to receive the support of the majority of the student body.
According The Scarlet, the university’s official campus newspaper, the Undergraduate Student Council (CUSC) will enforce student clubs’ “compliance” with BDS, which includes coercing them, under the threat of defunding, into purchasing goods exclusively from vendors the BDS movement deems acceptable. This effort reportedly has the support of the university’s office for Student Leadership and Programming, as it has supplied student clubs with “tax-exempt vouchers” for making purchases while CUSC orders their leaders to “regularly check the BDS Movement’s website to ensure compliance.”
So far, The Scarlet added, only the university’s food vendor, Harvest Table, has resisted CUSC’s edicts, arguing that it has no “political stance” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or any issue. However, it was still forced to go along, The Scarlet said, having agreed to “buying from local vendors and providers to better comply with the movement.” It is not yet clear how the BDS policies have affected the university’s kosher vendors.
BDS proponents in the CUSC await the endorsement of the university administration, but it has not come, The Scarlet reported.
The university’s president, David Fithian, as well as its dean, Kamala Keim, reportedly held a meeting with members of the pro-BDS party during the summer to “begin charting a path toward divestment,” but they have not corresponded with them since. Additionally, Clark University’s board of trustees has declined a formal request for a discussion on BDS — which aims to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state, by crumbling its national security, alliances, and economy.
The Algemeiner has reached out to Clark University for comment for this story.
Several CUSC Equity and Inclusion Representatives — Molly Joe, Jordan Alexandre, Melissa Bento, and Stephen Gibbons — told The Scarlet in a statement which alluded to conspiracies of Jewish influence and control that their efforts, despite achieving some successes, have been stymied by hidden forces.
“We as representatives have limited power so long as those above us are unwilling to change,” the group said in a statement to the paper. “We, like you, are only students navigating an opaque and bureaucratic system that is designed to protect certain interests. Our goal will only be achieved if enough of us are unwavering and persistent.”
CUSC’s actions were, on paper, mandated by a spring referendum which asked students if they want the university to divest from Israeli companies and those that do business with it and apply BDS to campus dining options. Eighteen percent of the student body, or 772 students, ultimately “participated” in voting, a phrase CUSC has stressed, and of them an average of 658.6 students, just 15.8 percent of students, voted to approve those items. Even fewer students voted to approve two more on mandating clubs to “adhere” to BDS and initiating a boycott of Amazon. However, in its public statements, CUSC has manipulated student enrollment data to describe BDS as the expressing the will of the students, intentionally excluding from its count the number of graduate students who were enrolled at the university during the 2023-2024 academic year.
For months, CUSC has employed double-speaking in discussing the student body’s reaction to the BDS movement, saying at once that enthusiasm for it is “overwhelming” while also acknowledging that the referendum saw “low voter turnout” and “low engagement numbers.” It has never addressed its disenfranchising 84.2 percent of the student body, which includes the Jewish students who will be affected by the imposition of a political movement which is widely denounced for being antisemitic.
Clark University Hillel, a chapter of the largest Jewish campus organization in the world, has already denounced CUSC’s polices.
“While it may not have been the intention of CUSC and the student body, there are serious consequences of adopting this referendum,” the group said in April, following the vote. “BDS referenda claim to be about changing university policy, but they ultimately discourage dialogue, normalize extreme hatred of Israel, and empower the targeting of Israeli students and those for whom Israel holds cultural or personal significance.”
It continued, “We will not allow Israeli-affiliated products to be banned from the Kosher Kitchen and we will not tolerate our funding being bound to BDS Movement principles. We will do everything in our power to ensure that discriminatory practices are not implemented on our campus.”
The BDS movement is threatening to take hold at other universities.
Yale University will soon hold a student referendum on the issue of divestment from Israel, an initiative spearheaded by a pro-Hamas group which calls itself the Sumud Coalition (SC). According to the Yale Daily News, students will consider “three questions” which ask whether Yale should “disclose” its investments in armaments manufacturers — “including those arming Israel” — divest from such holdings, and spend money on “Palestinian scholars and students.”
The paper added that a path for the referendum was cleared when a petition SC circulated amassed some 1,500 signatures, or “roughly 22 percent of the student body.” Despite that over three-fourths of Yale students did not sign the petition, its proponents — including a representative of the Yale College Council (YCC), an ostensibly neutral body — have taken to describing it as “so popular.” The final vote could wind up being even less representative of the opinion of the student body, as it only has to be approved by “50 percent or more of respondents” who constitute “at least one third of the student body.” Should that happen, Sumud Coalition will — as has happened at Clark University — claim victory and forward the results to Yale University president Maurie McInnis, with a note claiming that SC has received a mandate from the people.
Beyond ideological concerns, the BDS movement could wreak havoc on the financial health of the schools which adopt it. JLens, a Jewish investor network that is part of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), published a report in September showing that colleges and universities will lose tens of billions of dollars collectively from their endowments if they capitulate to its demands.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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US Cautions Israel-Hezbollah Ceasefire Close but Not Finalized as Truce Announcement Expected Imminently
Israeli tanks are being moved, amid cross-border hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel, in the Golan Heights, Sept. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jim Urquhart
A ceasefire to halt fighting between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah is close, but an agreement has not yet been achieved, according to the US State Department.
“We don’t believe we have an agreement yet. We believe we’re close to an agreement. We believe that we have narrowed the gaps significantly, but there are still steps that we need to see taken. We hope that we can get there,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters during a press briefing on Monday.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby expressed similar sentiments.
“We’re close,” he told reporters, but “nothing is done until everything is done.”
Miller and Kirby’s comments came not long after a senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel’s cabinet would meet on Tuesday to approve a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist group that wields significant political and military influence across Lebanon.
Reuters also reported on Monday that US President Joe Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to announce a ceasefire in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel within 36 hours, citing four senior Lebanese sources. The US and France have been seeking to broker a truce for months.
The news cite Axios reported separately that Israel and Lebanon had agreed to the terms of a deal, citing a senior US official.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has declined to comment on reports that both countries had agreed to the text of a ceasefire agreement.
Hezbollah has been launching barrages of rockets, missiles, and drones at northern Israel from neighboring Lebanon almost daily since Oct. 8 of last year, one day after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of the Jewish state from Gaza to the south.
The relentless attacks from Hezbollah have forced tens of thousands of Israelis to flee their homes in the north, and Israel has pledged to ensure their safe return.
Israel had been exchanging fire with Hezbollah but drastically escalated its military operations over the last two months, seeking to push the terrorist army further away from the border with Lebanon.
Diplomacy has largely focused on restoring and enforcing UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which calls for Hezbollah’s withdrawal to north of the Litani River (around 30 km, or 19 miles, from the Israeli border) and the disarmament of its forces in southern Lebanon, with the buffer zone under the jurisdiction of the Lebanese army and UN peacekeeping forces.
Israel has insisted on retaining the right to conduct military operations against Hezbollah if the group attempts to rearm or rebuild its infrastructure — a stipulation that has met resistance from Lebanese officials, who argue it infringes on national sovereignty. Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon has said Israel would maintain an ability to strike southern Lebanon under any agreement.
Retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi — who leads the Israel Defense and Security Forum, a group of former military commanders — recently warned The Algemeiner that any deal must include Iran’s “full exit” from Lebanon and Israel’s freedom of action to prevent any future build up of Hezbollah. Otherwise, he added, the agreement would be “devastating” for the Jewish state.
Lebanon’s deputy parliament speaker, Elias Bou Saab, told Reuters the proposal under discussion would entail an Israeli military withdrawal from south Lebanon and regular Lebanese army troops deploying in the border region, long a Hezbollah stronghold, within 60 days.
He added that a sticking point over who would monitor compliance with the ceasefire was resolved in the last day, with an agreement to set up a five-country committee, including France and chaired by the United States.
Nabih Berri, the Hezbollah-aligned Lebanese parliamentary speaker, has been leading the Iran-backed terrorist group’s mediation efforts.
Miller told reporters that US officials are pushing hard for a ceasefire but the final steps to reaching a deal can be the toughest.
“Oftentimes the very last stages of an agreement are the most difficult because the hardest issues are left to the end,” Miller said. “We are pushing as hard as we can.”
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Palestinian Media Lambast Casting of Israelis in Netflix’s Upcoming Biblical Movie ‘Mary’
Scene from Netflix’s show “Mary.” Photo: Screenshot
Palestinian media outlets have castigated the new biblical epic “Mary” coming to Netflix next month because of the film’s Israeli cast, falsely accusing Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against Palestinian Christians.
Netflix announced earlier this month the coming release of “Mary,” which according to a synopsis provided by the streaming giant “tells the story of one of history’s most profound figures and the remarkable journey that led to the birth of Jesus.”
Notable in the cast are Noa Cohen in the titular role as Jesus’s mother and Ido Tako as her husband Joseph — two Israeli actors under the spotlight in a large-scale production depicting Jewish life during a period when Jews were the primary ethnic group of the region.
Director DJ Caruso previously defended casting Israeli actors for the roles.
“It was important to us that Mary, along with most of our primary cast, be selected from Israel to ensure authenticity,” he told Entertainment Weekly last month.
Nonetheless, the castings were met with derision among anti-Israel activists on social media and elsewhere upset with the choice of selecting Israeli actors. Critics called for a boycott of the film, claiming that Mary and Joseph were “Palestinian” despite them being Jewish and living in modern-day Israel.
Among those expressing outrage was Quds Media Network, the self-described “largest independent youth Palestinian news network,” which lambasted the production, publishing an article tying “Mary” to what it called the “ongoing genocide of Christians in Palestine.”
The article, quoting Father Abdullah Julio of the Melkite Greek Catholic Monastery in Ramallah, alleged that one of Israel’s goals is “the eradication of Christian presence in the region.”
On Aug. 3, Julio filmed a statement on TRT Arabic mourning Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, calling him “a martyr of our Palestinian people and nation.”
In its recent article, Quds Media Network cited the deaths of Christian residents of Gaza amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as evidence of “ongoing violence and Christian persecution,” and included a note to readers that “Israelis are not native to Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus.”
Both Jews and Christians boast an age-old presence in the southern Levant — a land sacred to both faiths and central to their peoples’ histories. The early Jewish people underwent an ethnogenesis in the region as a monotheistic people who formed a united kingdom in the late Bronze Age (around 1000 BCE), and remained the primary civilization there until their dwindling numbers under Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic persecution in the early medieval period.
During the Roman period, Jesus — an Aramaic-speaking Jew from the Galilee in modern Israel, then Roman Judea — led a sect of Judaism that would morph into modern Christianity in the decades following his storied execution. Palestinian Christians (culturally Arab local Christians who identify with Palestinian nationalism) likely represent the oldest continuous Christian community, as descendants of the first converts during the Roman occupation.
Genetic studies have confirmed the relationship of both Jewish diaspora groups and Palestinians of all faiths to Iron Age peoples of the region. Likewise, Jews and Palestinian Arabs each claim competing indigenous status, based on a combination of continued settlement and a culture inextricably connected to the Land of Israel.
Critics of “Mary” on social media maintained “Jesus was Palestinian,” or “a Palestinian Jew,” seemingly conflating residency in ancient Judea with Palestinian nationalism — which emerged much later in the early 20th century as a local expression of pan-Arabism and was hostile to local Arabic-speaking Jews (who consequently allied themselves with Zionism) from its outset.
Anti-Israel activists also cited the fair olive complexion of Cohen and Tako as evidence of their foreignness, ignoring that many Palestinians look similar and that skin tone does not necessarily equate to ancestry or claim to territory.
Palestinian Christians’ numbers in the West Bank and Gaza have dwindled in the past decade, from 11 percent of the Palestinian population in 1922 to 1 percent in 2017.
Meanwhile, in Israel proper, where Christians compose 6.9 percent of the Arab minority, they are among the best educated and most successful of Israel’s citizens.
“Mary,” which was shot in Morocco, is set to air on Dec. 6 to a wide audience.
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