In a sad moment in the history of Jewish-Christian relations in the U.S., the leaders of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) have issued a statement accusing Israel of genocide, while also condemning American support for Israel. Mark Tooley notes that, near its end, the statement declares, “We remain in solidarity with Jesus Christ of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jew, and the Prince of Peace.” This reference to Jesus as a Palestinian reflects a disturbing new trend:

Sojourners, a storied religious-left journal, . . . published an article insisting Jesus was Palestinian. The author, who identifies as a Quaker Palestinian in North Carolina, lamented “various fictional accounts found in the Bible, like the story of the Exodus, which some use to justify Zionism and the current apartheid.”

The AME bishops, echoing the Sojourners author, call Jesus a “Palestinian Jew.” Would Jesus have understood Himself in this way? He never referred to it, and Palestine is never cited in the New Testament. Roman soldiers mocked Jesus as “King of the Jews.” He was from Judea. Hebrews of His time did not refer to their land as Palestine. . . . Denying or minimizing Jesus’ Jewishness is unhistorical. It also leads to erasing the Jewish people historically and politically.

Marina Rosenberg, meanwhile, shows us where such attempts to de-Judaize Jesus naturally lead:

During Christmas last year, there was a concerted effort by some Palestinian factions and their supporters worldwide to [convince people that] the current Israel-Hamas war is in fact a Jewish-Christian issue. In the Arab press and across social media, there were invocations of the age-old anti-Semitic trope of deicide—the accusation that Jews killed Jesus—by depicting baby Jesus being targeted by the Israeli army, including when he was born. . . .

These depictions of Jesus also carry the deeper message that as a Palestinian, Jesus was not a Jew.

Such arguments have long been found in the Christian tradition, although they have been routinely rejected by the mainstream. They stretch from the heretical 2nd-century theologian Marcion—who, believing the God of the Hebrew Bible was a wicked lesser deity, wanted to expunge the Old Testament from the canon—to 19th-century German anti-Semites, who argued on pseudo-scholarly grounds that Jesus was not “racially” Jewish. It’s clear that, whatever their form, these trends have always resulted in hatred of Jews.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.