Rep. Ilhan Omar is facing criticism for suggesting that Jesus was Palestinian and not a Jew.
According to CBN News, Omar retweeted a tweet from Omar Suleiman, an American Muslim scholar and civil rights activist.
Suleiman said in his tweet: "I was once asked by a relative who is a Palestinian Christian why the Christian right in America largely supports their oppression," Suleiman wrote. "Don't they know we're Christian too? Do they even consider us human? Don't they know Jesus was Palestinian?'“
Suleiman seemed to be responding to a New York Times piece that said: “Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.”
In response to Omar’s retweet, Michael Dickson, executive director of StandWithUs-Israel, said Jesus was a Jew.
"No, @Ilhan Omar, Jesus was not a 'Palestinian', he was a Jew born in Israel under Roman occupation and your need to misrepresent history and misappropriate his background to further a political cause says more about you than it does about anything else," he said.
Said Amir Tsarfati, an Israeli Bible scholar and founder of Behold Israel Ministry: “I suggest that she reads the #Bible and see for herself that the Lion from the tribe of #Judah that came from the house of David was definitely a #Jew who taught in #synagogues and not #mosques!"
Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey also criticized Omar.
“People who call Jesus a 'Palestinian,' despite the fact that the geographical region of Palestine didn't exist until years after his death, are simply projecting modern-day intersectionality onto him in order to make their 'wokeness' seem biblical. This is idolatry," she said.
Photo courtesy: Getty Images/Alex Wong/Staff
