Did Palestinians Kill Christ?

A few years ago, I wasted lots of time arguing with antisemites on Usenet. They would first claim that Jews killed Christ and then complain about the plot for Jewish world domination detailed in the Book of Deuteronomy. Many of them sounded like ignoramuses trying to imitate fundamentalist Christians and failing. In retrospect, it looks like they were Muslims out to stir up hatred between Jews and Christians.

We can play a similar game. We can look at the major Jewish communities of 2000 years ago and try to identify their descendants. The Jewish community of Mesopotamia became the ancestors of the Jews of the Muslim world. The Jewish community of Rome became the ancestors of the Jews of Europe. (Digression on Roman Jews: The Jewish prayer Nishmat has been attributed to Saint Peter. At the time Christians were merely an eccentric Jewish sect similar to Chabad.) A large part of the Jewish community of Palestine stayed in the area and eventually converted to Islam.

In other words, the descendants of the crowd shouting for Jesus's blood in the Gospels are Palestinians, which means … Palestinians Killed Christ!

Well … yes, that's preposterous but it's no more preposterous than much of their propaganda.

But wait, there's more. If Muslims try reminding Christians of traditional Jew hatred, they might also remind them of traditional Islam hatred. For example, in 1213, Pope Innocent III declared Mohammed to be the Antichrist. (Mohammed might be deceased but his soul goes marching on, so to speak.) If they succeed in reviving Christian bigotry, it won't stop with Jews.