Some time ago, I discovered that an evangelical podcast I had previously been interviewed on had, at some point, interviewed a number of “Palestinian” Christians. I believe these episodes were recorded and released before October 7th, but even after that horrific day, such interviews were in high demand among many Christian podcasts, including the infamous Tucker Carlson. Even after “Palestinians” had committed an act of genocide against the Jewish people, many so-called Christians or repressed pagans were far more interested in hearing “Palestinian” perspectives on a war that “Palestinians” started than they were in hearing the voices of the Jewish victims. In point-of fact, this is because in the Western Christian psyche, the enemy of the Jew is always the victim of the Jew. In their minds, even unconsciously, “the Jew” can never be the victim and thus their enemy must be the victim. In this case, the “Palestinians.” I reached out to one of the co-hosts I knew to address my concerns. I told him that their theology, particularly that of “Palestinian” liberation theology, was inherently racist towards Jews, represented a form of replacement theology, and thus it was unacceptable to interview such people to give them a legitimate platform. 

Not to mention that “Palestinian” liberation theology is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. It would be like saying someone is a proponent of White liberation theology. The reality is that “Palestinians” are not occupied by Jews, but Jews are occupied by “Palestinians,” thus it is the Jews who need to be liberated from the “Palestinian” Arabs. If you yourself have stolen and occupied land, you cannot have a decolonial or liberation theology. It would be like German American Christians in the Black Hills of South Dakota touting that Lakota Indians (whose land this is) were occupying German land, and thus they needed to be liberated from the Lakota occupation.

But I digress. His response was astounding. He said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that it was their responsibility to give a listening ear to their “Palestinian” Christian brothers and sisters. As someone who is often excluded from the table, I am by “nature” inclined to include as many as I can. This is certainly reflected in my scholarship, publications, and friendships, where I often include numerous perspectives. I try to live by the words of Ben Zoma from Pirkei Avot, “Who is a sage? He who learns from everybody, as it is said, From all my teachers I have gotten understanding (Ps. 119:99).” But there is a limit. The Talmud also teaches that “Cursed is the man who teaches his son Greek philosophy.” Even progressives who supposedly believe in “inclusion” have a limit to whom they include at the table. Those they deem as not “inclusive” are not welcomed and are declared illegitimate. Even for the most inclusive people, inclusion always includes exclusion. So the question must be raised: Does every perspective, voice, and group of people have a legitimate right to have their perspective heard and listened to? 

Many would quickly answer yes, but as we mentioned above, in reality, this “yes” is always with a caveat. But hypothetically, if the answer was a full-stop yes, we would be taken to some pretty dark places. Such a full-stop yes would have us give legitimacy to the voices of German Christian pastors and lay people that were either supportive of the Nazis at some level or were themselves officially members of the Nazi Party. It would mean that American White supremacist Christians who are members of say, the KKK had a right to be heard at the table, to have their voice and perspective listened to. Some might say these are extreme examples, so that when they say, “everyone has a right to a seat at the table,” they don’t mean these racist hate groups. 

But that is precisely my point. “Palestinian” Christians and Muslims are, in reality, racist hate groups. They are in fact ideologically kindred spirits to these groups. One only needs to briefly peruse the Palestinian Media Watch to find this is true. So why do we include and legitimize their perspectives? Let’s be honest, it’s because the “Palestinian’s” enemy is the Jewish people. If any other people group were the enemy of the “Palestinians,” it’s likely “Palestinian” racism would not be whitewashed, swept under the rug, or ignored. The Western cultural psyche, being socialized through centuries of anti-Judaism, has come to believe that the Jew is always the oppressor and never the victim. Thus, in any conflict where the Jew is concerned, the Jew must always be at fault.

Now, people are often shocked when I say that “Palestinians,” whether Christians or Muslims, do not have a legitimate perspective or right to have their voice heard, to be included in the conversation. So allow me to be clear. I do in fact, mean that. But that is not the same thing as saying that Arab Christians as a whole don’t have a right to be heard at the table. In a moment I will explain more what I think about Arab Christians and the question of the legitimacy of their perspective, but for now we need to tackle the fictitious nature of the “Palestinian” people as it relates to this question of who is legitimately included at the table. 

As I and others have written on elsewhere, including “Palestinians” themselves, the “Palestinian” identity was invented in the latter half of the 20th century as an inherently anti-Jewish, racist, and colonial identity created to delegitimize the indigenous Jewish right to self-determination in our ancestral homeland. Constructed to erase Jewish history, particularly the history of our connection to the land of Israel, and to replace that history with a novel fictitious history of a newly invented “Palestinian” people. It is a radical form of replacement theology in which they essentially become the “new Israel,” replacing the “old Israel.” Different from historic forms of Christian replacement theology since they acknowledged the history of Jews in the land of Israel, whereas this new form pretends that Jews were never in the land of Israel, thus completely ignoring and erasing that history. 

Moreover, the “Palestinian” national identity was created to reassert Arab and Muslim colonial hegemony in the land of Israel. Thus, when Christians identify as “Palestinian,” they’re inherently participating in a racist identity created to erase the Jewish people, spiritually, historically, and physically. When Christians identify as Arab rather than “Palestinian,” this is a whole different thing. It is not an inherently fictitious racist identity, at least not in the same way. While Arabs, as noted below, certainly have a history of racism towards Jews, the Arab identity is not fictitious nor inherently racist. Although it seems they likely forced their Arab identity onto others who were in truth not Arab. Nonetheless, Christians identifying as Arabs rather than “Palestinians” may legitimately have a right to a place at the table, so to speak, so long as their perspective is not racist and does not share the same values and agendas of the racist “Palestinian” identity. Those are the kinds of Christians that Jews can live with in peace in the land of Israel. So long as they recognize Jewish indigeneity and their own place as honored guests in a land not their own. 

So the primary and foundational reason that the “Palestinian” Christian or “Palestinian” identity has an inherently racist perspective is that it is an inherently racist identity, similar to the Nazi identity, which was also inherently racist. The only way a Nazi could have fully given up their racism was by discarding their constructed Nazi identity. In a similar way, the only way a “Palestinian” can fully give up their racism towards Jews is to discard their constructed “Palestinian” identity. In this way, the “Palestinian” perspective should no more be given legitimacy or a voice at the table than the Nazis should have been allowed or given legitimacy. Besides the foundational aspects of the identity that make such calls for legitimacy and inclusion problematic, at least a sizable portion of “Palestinian” Christians as part of that identity seek to erase Jesus’ Jewishness and pit him against his Jewish people. 

For instance, Naim Ateek, an Anglican priest and founder of the “Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center” in Jerusalem, is guilty of this when he writes, “Jesus Christ, living in our country as a Palestinian under occupation…Israel has placed a large boulder, a big stone that has metaphorically shut off the Palestinians in a tomb. It is similar to the stone placed on the entrance of Jesus’ tomb…” and in a sermon he continued this theme, writing, “In this season of Lent, it seems to many of us that Jesus is on the cross again with thousands of crucified Palestinians around Him…The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily.” In other words, Jesus’s Jewishness is erased, making him into a Palestinian, so that once again Jesus can be used to falsely claim that Jews are an evil people guilty of murdering him. History is once again conveniently rewritten, to the effect that the Romans are not the occupiers and crucifiers of countless Jews, including Jesus, but Jews are the occupiers and crucifiers of countless Palestinians, including Jesus, both 2,000 years ago and today. Similarly, “Palestinian” Anglican Hanan Ashrawi falsely claimed that the “first Christians were Arab.” An absurd statement, given all of Jesus’ first followers were Jewish, and his movement did not become majority Gentile until decades after his time, probably in the next century. 

Now, regardless of what the vast majority of Jews may or may not think about Jesus, it is a reality that the erasing of his Jewish identity throughout the centuries has been for the intended racist purpose of demonizing the Jewish people. The further one distinguishes him from his Jewish people, the easier it is to use him to delegitimize them as we see in these “Palestinian” Christian examples above. Max Nordau, who was a faithful collaborator of Theodor Herzl, once wrote, “Jesus is the soul of our soul, as he is flesh of our flesh. Who then would want to exclude him from the Jewish people?” The answer to his rhetorical question is those who wish to demonize the Jewish people. This is the purpose of his dejudazing that “Palestinian” Christians are guilty of. 

Furthermore, some “Palestinian” Christians claim Jews are not the “real” Jews and thus not really from the land of Israel. This despite the fact that until the 20th century, everybody, even our enemies, recognized that Jews were the real Jews and as such were from the land of Israel. Building on this claim, they pretend as if they, “the Palestinians,” are the real Jews. Writing from this racist perspective the “Palestinian” Lutheran Mitri Raheb says, “This is the crux of the problem: the natives [Palestinians] of the land have been made strangers in order to make room for an invented people [Jews] to occupy the land.” Elsewhere, he claims that the “Palestinians” are the real Jews, a kind of colonialism utilizing the logic of replacement theology to replace the so-called “invented” Jews with “Palestinians.”

Moreover, “Palestinian” Christians accuse Jews of the same racist libels as people have been doing for centuries. Included among them are the following historic libels: Accusing us of being warmongers and bloodthirsty, an accusation that goes back centuries to late antiquity. The accusation of the genocide libel, which dates back to the Middle Ages when European Christians charged Jews of causing the Black Plague in their supposed attempt to murder all European Christians. The accusation that we are child murderers goe back to the Middle Ages. That Jews are oppressive is an accusation the Nazis made and which also goes back to the Middle Ages. All of the accusations made by many “Palestinian” Christians, namely that of genocide, colonialism, apartheid, racism, etc., have their roots in historic delusional anti-Jewish racism and, like their historic counterparts, are rooted in racist imaginary delusions created to incite and justify violence against the Jewish people. The accusation of genocide in the Middle Ages led Europeans to burn Jews, and in the contemporary world, as we saw in Boulder, Colorado, that same accusation leads people to burn Jews. 

One only needs to read the Kurios document or its sequel to see that “Palestinian” Christians, across the denominational spectrum of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant, are in fact deeply racist toward Jews, completely in tune with the racism found in the more problematic aspects of Christian history. That racism contradicts the very nature of Christian theology, given that they profess to worship not only the God of Israel, but a God who became a Jew. Yet it has nonetheless existed in tension with that theological DNA rooted in the Second Temple period.

Indeed, it has been found through multiple surveys and polls over the years that “Palestinian” society is the most anti-Jewish racist society in the entire world. In the past it may have been Nazi Germany, but today that “honor” of first place goes to the fictional state of “Palestine.” So I find it hard to believe that “Palestinian” Christians living among the most anti-Jewish racist society in the world would somehow be immune to that socialization and the propaganda that the Hamas government and the Palestinian Authority perpetuate on a daily basis. They swim in the anti-Jewish soup created from a mixture of historic Gentile Christian anti-Jewish hatred and historic Arab and Islamic anti-Jewish racism.

So no, a Christian or Muslim who identifies with a 20th-century inherently anti-Jewish racist fictitious identity meant to erase and replace the Jewish people does not have a legitimate perspective and does not have a legitimate right to have their voice heard at any table. Just in the same way that Nazi Germans, whether Christian or not, did not have any right or legitimacy to have their perspective heard since they had an inherently illegitimate perspective and identity. Just as people from the KKK have no legitimate right to have their perspective heard. Although, just as with the Nazis of the past, the “Palestinian” voice is often not only heard but celebrated and uplifted.

None of this necessarily means Arabs are off the hook, that their perspective is automatically legitimate. Arabs in many ways are similar to Western European cultures and their own histories of racism, colonialism, slavery, and genocide. In an attempt to legitimize Arabs, we should never forget or dismiss the reality that Arabs and Muslims colonized much of the world well before Europe did. Indeed, they even colonized parts of Europe, setting up colonial-settler states in Spain. They also were in the slave trade, selling Africans well before Europeans were, and it seems they are potentially still participating in the selling of black slaves. Moreover, they are also guilty of practicing ethnic cleansing of Jews, both back in Mohammed’s own time, and in 1948. The Quran itself holds deeply anti-Jewish racist ideology such that Jews are deemed “the sons of apes and pigs” which is the verse Mohammed recited when he cut the heads off of 600 to 900 Jewish men, subsequently selling off their wives and children as slaves. 

Nor should we ever forget the Arabic language is spoken across Southwest Asia [the Middle East] and North Africa precisely as a result of their colonialism, conquering indigenous peoples all over those lands. Furthermore, some of their own racist statements towards Jews from centuries ago are eerily close to how the Nazis thought about Jews as an inferior race. This history and culture, like that of the various European peoples, cannot be ignored, cannot be shoved under the carpet, as so many are willing to do. Both groups need to be condemned for those actions and need to be called to a process of forgiveness as Rabbi Jonathan Sacks describes in his Essays on Ethics. Namely, a process in which they repent for their actions, confess their wrongdoings, and make atonement for what they have done. This process clears the way for their victims to forgive them, allows the possibility of reconciliation, and makes them legitimate voices at the table.

So while I’m much more open to Arabs having their voice and perspective heard at the table along with European peoples, that is only with the caveat that they are making efforts to repent, confess, and make atonement for wrongs they’ve done not only to the Jewish people but to many other peoples as well. I have certainly known personally and otherwise European peoples and Arabs who have embodied this. I have even been moved to tears when encountering these people.

Yet it’s no surprise to me that both so many Western peoples and Arab/Muslim peoples have sided against Jews and the Jewish state, actively siding with our enemies who, like the Nazis, wish to genocide us. Because both of them have much more in common than they don’t. And both of them have a history that lives in the present, that still needs to be reckoned with and repented of. It does no good to pander or coddle them, pretending as if they’re innocent victims so as to once again make the Jews the problem, just like their ancestors did. Believing that the enemy of the Jew is always the victim of the Jew doesn’t resonate with reality, doesn’t help create a more just world, which is what so many who falsely give legitimacy too “Palestinians” supposedly believe in.

Any group that promotes and platforms the perspectives of “Palestinians,” whether Christian or Muslim, is at best self-contradictory to their desire for a healed relationship with the Jewish people, or at worst they have no interest in pretending that they have any interest in a healed relationship with Jews. While everyone believes that there are some who don’t have a legitimate right to a seat at the table, many are failing to realize that among those who should be excluded are those who identify with the inherently racist Nazi-like “Palestinian” identity. Not everyone deserves a seat at the table; not everyone has a legitimate identity or perspective, and that certainly includes the legitimate heirs to the Nazis, namely the so-called “Palestinians.”