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New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez draws fire for Christmas message comparing Jesus to Gazans
(New York Jewish Week) — Critics blasted New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for a Christmas message comparing Jesus to the Palestinians, with at least one saying it invoked the historic charge that the Jews killed Jesus.
Drawing parallels between Jesus’ persecutors and present-day Israel, Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that Jesus was born in “modern-day Palestine” under a government carrying out “a massacre of innocents.” According to the New Testament, Jesus was a Jew who lived within the modern borders of Israel and was killed by the Roman forces ruling the territory at the time.
“He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote. “Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians.”
The New York lawmaker, a member of the so-called “Squad” of outspoken progressives in Congress, referred to Jesus’ family as “Jewish Palestinians.”
The text in the post was superimposed over an image of a baby doll in a pile of concrete rubble, a variation of the traditional nativity scene that became a motif for pro-Palestinian activists ahead of Christmas. Christian leaders in Bethlehem, traditionally seen as the birthplace of Jesus, called off Christmas celebrations this year to express solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Ocasio-Cortez’s post made no mention of Hamas, Israeli hostages in Gaza or the Oct. 7 atrocities that claimed the lives of 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians, and set off the war with the Hamas terrorist group. The Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas, says more than 20,000 people in Gaza have died during the war.
In a second Instagram post on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez posted a video of Rev. Munther Isaac, a Lutheran cleric in Bethlehem, delivering a sermon with a similar message. Ocasio-Cortez wrote in the post, “When we justify the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble.”
Former Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman called Ocasio-Cortez’s initial post “hateful and dangerous,” citing the historic libel claiming that Jews are collectively responsible for killing Christ, or deicide. The charge, refuted by the Catholic Church since the 1960s and rejected by some other Christian denominations, has fueled antisemitism in Christian communities for centuries.
“She invoked the charge that the Jews are again killing Jesus,” Foxman wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. Foxman served as the national director of the ADL from 1987 to 2015.
Former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman called the post “a reinvention” of history.
U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat and vocal advocate for Israel, criticized comparisons between Jesus and the Palestinians in a post that did not directly mention Ocasio-Cortez.
“It is antisemitic to compare Israelis to the Romans who murdered Jesus. Associating Jews with the murder of Jesus is antisemitism,” Torres wrote on X.
Ocasio-Cortez’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly compared Jesus’ plight to that of the Palestinians in the lead-up to Christmas. A leading New York activist group, Within Our Lifetime, vowed to “cancel” Christmas in a Monday protest near midtown’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, saying that celebrations were unacceptable during the war. During the protest, demonstrators carried a mannequin representing Jesus’ mother, Mary, holding a child’s body wrapped in white. Within Our Lifetime explicitly advocates for Israel’s destruction and endorsed the Oct. 7 attacks. Activists with the group have been accused of committing violent hate crimes against Jews.
During the Christmas protest, demonstrators scuffled with police and at least six people were arrested.
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The post New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez draws fire for Christmas message comparing Jesus to Gazans appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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