PA Art Exhibit to Depict Palestinians as Suffering Jesus during Pope's Visit

(JNS.org) The Palestinian Authority-sponsored Palestinian Museum has commissioned an art exhibit featuring famous pieces of art of Jesus’s suffering modified to depict Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

According to the museum, the images will be on display in Manger Square in Bethlehem during Pope Francis’s upcoming visit in order to highlight “the tension between the popular image of the Holy Land and Palestine's ongoing history of suffering under occupation and oppression.”

The modified images include several famous Baroque paintings of Jesus such as Raphael’s The Deposition or Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, which have been juxtaposed on alleged images of Palestinian suffering.

According to Palestinian Media Watch, which has documented several previous instances of Palestinian officials misrepresenting Jesus as a Palestinian, the exhibit “reinforces the pretense that Jesus was a Palestinian by visually merging the image of Jesus in classical art with pictures of Palestinians.”

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Bethlehem on May 25 and will conduct a mass at the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.