Mary and Joseph “Palestinian refugees”
A New Zealand Greens Party MP has upset the New Zealand Jewish Council by naming Joseph and Mary as Palestinian refugees.
Golriz Ghahraman
Golriz Ghahraman had tweeted of the parents of Jesus: “They were literally Palestinian refugees. And she (Mary) normally had her hair covered because that’s what modesty looked like in her culture…”
She had been answering a tweet suggesting that by the New Testament, the parents of Christ were refugees.
Spokesperson of the New Zealand Jewish Council Juliet Moses told J-Wire: “Calling Mary and Joseph Palestinian refugees is ahistorical and disrespectful to the Jewish community, and no doubt the Christian community too. Jesus and his family were Jewish.
They lived in Judea (where Jews come from), they went to synagogue, they followed the Jewish law. The Romans called him “King of the Jews”.
Judea was renamed Palestine by the Roman Empire, long after Jesus’ death, in order to erase any Jewish connection to the land.
Juliet Moses
Ms Ghahraman, by refusing to acknowledge that Jesus was Jewish, including when many people pointed out her error, is continuing to erase that connection, a favourite tactic of those who aim to delegitimise the modern day Jewish presence in the land. This is an ongoing pattern of disrespect to and marginalisation of the Jewish community by Ms Ghahraman, which at this point must be assumed to be deliberate and antisemitic. It is well past time the Green Party leaders addressed this behaviour.”
Media reports that a spokesperson for Green Party co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson said Ghahraman was going to work with Jewish communities to improve dialogue.
“Golriz has unreservedly apologised for her poorly worded remarks and we support her.”But Juliet Moses said: “There has been no apology from Ghahraman that I’m aware of. “
The Flaxmere Christian Fellowship Church in the NZ city of Hastings commented: “Rubbish—this is another desperate attempt by those who hate the Jewish people and the Jewish State to try and distort the well known historical account. Ghahraman and others like her will never succeed in erasing the truth.
The New Testament clearly teaches that Jesus was a born a Jew and he died with a sign above his head saying “This is Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews”. The name “Palestine” was an unknown entity in those days and now unfortunately has become a name that is synonymous with distorting both history and the truth in order to push a one-sided political agenda. Perhaps she could begin redeeming herself from such a display of ignorance by picking up a Holy Bible and reading it.”
