all Palestinians, Arabs, I ask?”
And so, I talk about Jesus, God in the flesh, who travels via Samaria to minister to the Israelites and Gentiles in Galilee.
“You know the story … in John 4?” Of course, every Evangelical knows that story.
"Before going to Galilee, Jesus first traverses through Samaria and opens His heart to the Samaritans. What's so significant about Jesus touching the Samaritans”?
Jesus dares to defy the prohibited, forbidden, and outlawed taboo. By Order of the Pharisees, a Judean is barred from coming close, let alone touch and talk to any Samaritan. The ‘Chosen’ Pharisees snub Samaritans as theo-geopolitical and social outcasts, untouchables and worthless; not too different how the present-day Pharisees humiliate today’s native-born Palestinians as an ‘urban problem.’
The Pharisees then insist, “Samaritans will never belong to our exclusive club, the Party of the Pharisees;” a stance indistinguishable of present-day ‘Israel for Jews-only.’ Paradoxically, the Pharisees mindset in Modern Israel, demonstrably denounced by Jesus Christ 2000 years ago, is now calling the shots in the Region.
Nonetheless, the Samaritans choose to follow Jesus, slighting the Pharisees. In 70 CE, the Romans expel the Party of the ‘More Chosen,’ who talk the walk of being Holier –Than- Thou,6 giving the impression they are even holier than the One God in Heaven. As prophesized by Jesus Himself, there is not a stone left after the complete destruction of their Second Temple.
From Samaria, Jesus continues to minister to the Israelites and Gentiles in Galilee. The Pharisees belittle the Israelites in Galilee as the ‘remnants of Israel,’ Israelites married to 'pagan Gentiles' and degrade the Gentiles in Galilee as impure. The pure-bred pedigreed Judeans scorn and vilify the half-breed Israelites and the Gentiles of Galilee.
I remind my group, “You know the story, right?”
“Yes!” Everyone knows the story. But the rest of the story dumbfounds every single Evangelical in the room.
"Who are these new ‘Christ Followers in Galilee;’ these Gentiles; these half-breed Israelites, but Israelites, nonetheless?
"All of them -- the remnants of Israel, the Gentiles in Galilee, the half-breed Samaritans in Samaria and many, many other ethnic groups in the Region make up the rich and vibrant human tapestry, whom I love and admire as my brothers and sisters, the indigenous people of Palestine … Yes! Today’s Palestinians!”
Many are descendants of people living in the Region for millennia before the biblical Abraham has followed God’s commandment to “leave his father’s house” and enter the Region. Abraham, the Patriarch of the Israelites, Christians and Muslims, who reveres and dignifies the local people, accepts their invitation to settle in the Land.
“So,” I ask, “are the Israelites, biblically speaking, indigenous to the Land?”
“No”!
What makes today’s Palestinian Body of Christ so special? Many of today’s 400,000 Palestinian Christians descend directly from Christian converts – Israelites and Gentiles – in the early Church who have been personally touched by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the oldest and perhaps most important Christian institution in the Holy Land, has existed in unbroken succession since the Roman period.
The Prophet Isaiah prophesizes that God would honor the people of the Israelite tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, who are living together side-by-side in Jesus’ times with Gentiles in the Galilee.
Isaiah: “The ‘Israel of God’ will be enlarged, because the Gentiles will respond in faith to the Son of Man [God in the flesh eds.] and his message of the [Spiritual eds.] Kingdom [of God eds.], adding to the Ancient Israel of God” (Isaiah 9: 1-7; Romans 2:28-29; 9:6-8; Galatians 6:15-16 GNT). Matthew tells us this prophecy is fulfilled (Matthew 4:13-14). Also, he confirms the presence of the mixed crowd, the remnants of Israelites and Gentiles, (Matthew 4:24-25).
Rabbinic circles in Jerusalem hold Galilean Israelites and half-breeds and the area in which they live with contempt. Their religious worship does not conform to the standards of the elitist Pharisees. The Pharisees condemn the Israelites in Galilee for their mixed ‘ancestry.’ They are the descendants of the Northern Ten Lost Tribes of Israel that have defected from Ancient Israel and intermarried with pagan Gentiles. Startlingly, Jesus accepts Israelites and Gentiles. Ancestry is not a pre-condition to God’s salvation.7
And now a historic bombshell! These indigenous Palestinians – Israelites and Gentiles, including those who convert to Christianity – have mostly remained in the Land while the Holier- than -thou elitists together with the Pharisees are driven out, expelled by the Romans.
In 1918, two gifted young men, David Green aka David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi, the future Prime Minister and the future President of Israel, state in their book, ‘Eretz Israel in the Past and Present’: “To argue that after the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus [70 CE] and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt [132 CE] Judeans altogether ceased to cultivate the land of Eretz Israel is to demonstrate complete ignorance in the history and the contemporary literature of Israel … The Judean farmer, like any other farmer, was not easily torn from his soil, which had been watered with his sweat and the sweat of his forebears … Despite the repression and suffering, the rural population remained unchanged.”8
In 132 CE, the Romans changed the country’s name from Judea back to Palestine. Palestine has always been a magnet that has attracted people coming from all over. Of course, some Palestinians are Arabs as are many Mizrahi9 or Oriental Middle Eastern Jews. But most Palestinians, an admixture of Israelites and Gentiles, are an amalgam of humanity from all over.
For millennia, the Region greets and meets East and West, with merchants traveling back and forth between Europe and Asia. Many have settled in the Land. Because of this vibrant genetic blend, Palestinians rank among the highly intelligent, the best looking and the stunningly beautiful, some with blue eyes and bronze skin, others with blond hair yet dark skinned; not to mention, some possible descendants of the Crusaders with red hair.
What most Israelis and Jews still deny, a history not taught in Israeli high schools, is that during the 7th Century CE many indigenous people of Palestine, Jews and Christians, have converted to Islam to please their new Arab overlords. As converted Muslims they are exempt from paying the exorbitant extra surtaxes required of People of the Book. Consequently, many indigenous people of Palestine are more Israelite than many present-day Jews who have wandered into the region from Central and Eastern Europe.
“The local population in Palestine is racially more closely related to the Jews than to any other people, even among the Semitic ones. It is quite probable that the fellahin10 [native peasant in Palestine] in Palestine are direct descendants of the Judeans and Canaanite rural population, with a slight admixture of Arab blood …”11
David Green, aka David Ben-Gurion and Itzhak Ben-Zvi continue:
“The fellahin are not descendants of the Arab conquerors, who captured Eretz Israel and Syria in the seventh century CE. The Arab conquerors did not destroy the agricultural population they found in the country. They expelled only the alien Byzantine rulers and did not touch the local population. Nor did the Arabs go in for settlement.
