Reuters Calls Bethlehem Judea 2,000 years ago but now says it's "occupied..."

[Binyamin Yisrael]

Reuters calls Bethlehem Judea 2,000 years ago but now says it's "occupied 'west bank'". It's now PLO occupied Judea. They make it look like Judea was a Roman land.

Pope, Netanyahu spar over Jesus' native language

Reuters

May 26, 2014 10:00 AM

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Pope Francis and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traded words on Monday over the language spoken by Jesus two millennia ago.

"Jesus was here, in this land. He spoke Hebrew," Netanyahu told Francis, at a public meeting in Jerusalem in which the Israeli leader cited a strong connection between Judaism and Christianity.

"Aramaic," the pope interjected.

"He spoke Aramaic, but he knew Hebrew," Netanyahu shot back.

Like many things in the Middle East, where the pope is on the last leg of a three-day visit, modern-day discourse about Jesus is complicated and often political. [ID:nL6N0OC0X6]

A Jew, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the Roman-ruled region of Judea, now the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He grew up in Nazareth and ministered in Galilee, both in northern Israel, and died in Jerusalem, a city revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims, and to which Israelis and Palestinians lay claim.

Palestinians sometimes describe Jesus as a Palestinian. Israelis object to that.

Israeli linguistics professor Ghil'ad Zuckermann told Reuters that both Netanyahu, son of a distinguished Jewish historian, and the pope, the spiritual leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, had a point.

"Jesus was a native Aramaic speaker," he said about the largely defunct Semitic language closely related to Hebrew. "But he would have also known Hebrew because there were extant religious writings in Hebrew."

Zuckermann said that during Jesus' time, Hebrew was spoken by the lower classes - "the kind of people he ministered to".

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by Louise Ireland)

[muman613]

Par for the course for Al Reuters...

The political bias revealed through the loaded words used by the media is so thick you can smell it.

'West Bank' is a media invention. There never was a country called 'West Bank' nor a city called 'West Bank'. It is the new name used by the media for Historic Judea and Samaria. Just as Palestine was an invention of the Romans used to destroy the Jewish state, so too these made up words for the Jewish peoples heritage are explicitly meant to separate the Jews from their land.

[Binyamin Yisrael]

The Jordanians invented the term "west bank" following the beginning of their occupation of Judea and Samaria. They also changed their name from Transjordan to Jordan at the same time. It meant Jordan was made up of the "east bank" and the "west bank". They should change their name back to Transjordan to make it more accurate. The "west bank" of the Jordan River is the only "river bank" that includes mountains. The Jordan Valley is the only bank of the Jordan River. The mountain range above is not a river bank. I guess you can call it affirmative action geography. It's even crazier when they say "on the west bank" because you would say "on the river bank" but for the name of a geographical land mass you would say "in", not "on".

[Joe Gutfeld]

Of course, it's occupied, Jews live there!