Pope Francis, Dec 7, 2024 visiting the crib wrapped in a Palestinian keffiyeh,  upon its inauguration in the Paul VI Hall, raises questions about the implications of identifying the baby as Palestinian and the associated religious context. It is important to clarify the historical and factual context regarding Palestine. While some assert a right to existence for Palestine, it is essential to note that its history does not extend back 2000 years. During that time, the region known as Palestine was a Roman colony in Judea, recognized as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, including Jesus, his parents, and ancestors.

As,my teacher Raba Mira Neshama mentions in her weekly thoughts on:

“And Rachel died, and she was buried on the road leading to Efrat, which is Bethlehem.” (Bereshit 35.19)

וַתָּ֖מָת רָחֵ֑ל וַתִּקָּבֵר֙ בְּדֶ֣רֶךְ אֶפְרָ֔תָה הִ֖וא בֵּ֥ית לָֽחֶם

“Writing these lines in a very Parisian cafe, just weeks before what westerners called ‘christmas’, it makes me smile, thinking how a few generations before the child whose birth my christian neighbors are about to celebrate, one of my own foremothers was buried right there, on the road to Bet-lechem.”

On Monday Dec 9 after the several international Jewish organizations protested by the ” historical mistake”, as B’nai B’rith International described feeling “disturbed by the Vatican display of a Palestinian-made nativity scene featuring Jesus on a keffiyeh and the pope’s appearance with it.” The group said the display “isn’t just politicisation, but revisionism. It presents (only) Palestinians as innocent victims—and Jesus as a Palestinian, not a Jew.”

In response the display was removed, David Parsons, senior vice president and spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, noted that “we are relieved at reports that the Vatican has decided to remove the provocative nativity display with an infant Jesus resting on a black-and-white keffiyeh, which is an unmistakable symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

This theological mistake is inconceivable as one more of the world’s lack of understanding how terror and extreme Islamism is using misinformation for their benefit.