The controversial religious leader Jeremiah Wright compared Native Americans to Palestinians at the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March on the National Mall on Saturday, going so far as to assert that “Jesus was a Palestinian.” Wright, who once served as pastor to President Obama, was one of several hours’ worth of speakers in Washington D.C., for an event called “Justice Or Else!” that sought to channel the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement. Wright placed the event in historical context.
“The same issue is being fought today and has been fought since 1948, and historians are carried back to the 19th century…when the original people, the Palestinians – and please remember, Jesus was a Palestinian – the Palestinian people had the Europeans come and take their country,” Wright said. Wright, who was reverend of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which the president attended intermittently from 1988 to 2008, also accused Israel of being an apartheid state.
“Those Jews have brought back the apartheid and have set us back decades. They have done many wrongs in this world, despite the fact that the majority of the Western world mourns them for the tragedies they have endured during World War II. But, I believe that their misfortune was well deserved. They have systematically attempted to destroy Christianity for ages, way back to the very founder of the religion. They killed, they murdered our Lord Jesus Christ, and everything that has happened to them since then has been his punishment,” Wright claimed.
He added: “They have committed the most heinous crime of all, they have put down a holy man, the son of God, just because they lacked the capacity to see him for what he really was. He was the son of God, and they murdered him in a vicious way, and now they want to be able to live in peace, and still they commit atrocities against Palestinians. They are taking Palestinian lives today just like they have been taking Palestinian lives for thousands of years, just like they have taken the life of Jesus Christ. Their race is doomed and they know it.
All that is left is for them to wither up and perish like dust. And soon, my Palestinian brothers and sisters, that will happen. Very soon. You just have to hold on for a little while longer.”
