New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez draws fire for Christmas message comparing Jesus to Gazans

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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.

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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.

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.

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https://www.jta.org/2023/12/26/ny/new-york-rep-ocasio-cortez-draws-fire-for-christmas-message-comparing-jesus-to-gazans