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Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6875
Jesus of Palestine?
(Israel Hayom) Clifford D. May - Over Christmas, PA President Mahmoud Abbas called Jesus "a Palestinian messenger." When did the name "Palestine" begin? In 130CE, about a century after the crucifixion of Jesus, there was a Jewish rebellion against Roman imperialism. Simon Sebag Montefiore, in Jerusalem: The Biography, writes that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed in battles with Roman forces and "so many Jews were enslaved that at the Hebron slave market they fetched less than a horse." The Roman emperor, Hadrian, was determined to wipe "Judea off the map, deliberately renaming it Palaestina, after the Jews' ancient enemies, the Philistines." And who were the Philistines? They were "Sea People, who originated in the Aegean" and sailed to the eastern Mediterranean, where they "conquered the coast of Canaan." In other words, Jesus was born a century before the region was renamed Palestine. That makes calling him a Palestinian akin to calling a 15th-century Algonquin Indian a New Englander. And Jesus was certainly no Philistine. Based on all the evidence, he was a Jew. The writer is president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.