By Kitdor H Blah
More than two thousand years ago Christ was born in Bethlehem, in the country of Judea. Judea was ruled by Herod, who was a vassal king of the mighty Roman Empire. The Gospels tell us that there was a mass killing of children surrounding the birth of Christ, as Herod feared that the birth of Jesus would rival his dynasty. More than two thousand years later and Christmas in Bethlehem today has much of the same circumstances.
Bethlehem today is situated in the West Bank which is Palestinian land as per the UN demarcation of 1948. Today Bethlehem and the West Bank are occupied by Israel, which is either a proxy or an extension of a larger empire, the USA and Europe. And just as there was a mass killing of children surrounding the birth of Jesus, even so today, there is mass killing of children surrounding Christmas in Bethlehem.
The Christians in Bethlehem are the same people as the rest of the Palestinians who were displaced from their land in 1948 and who are denied any right of return to their ancestral homeland, while many of those who remain within the borders of Palestine have been internally displaced from their ancestral villages. The Christians in Bethlehem had nothing to celebrate during the Christmasses of 2023 and 2024, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic directly into a carpet bombing of their own people in Gaza that has killed 70,369 Palestinians between October 7, 2023 and December 10, 2025, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. When you see that the Palestinian population is 43 percent children (47 percent in Gaza and 41 percent in the West Bank), then you realise that even a figure of 20,000 to 30,000 children killed is a conservative estimate.
But who are the Palestinian Christians? And who are the Palestinians in general? Are they a recent historical invention? Are they simply Arabs who had been planted in the land and who have no ties to the biblical Philistines or to the people who inhabited the region more than two thousand years ago?
The earliest records come from the Egyptians, who by the 12th century BC already spoke of a land and people called the Peleset, who fought against Egypt during the reign of Rameses III. The meaning of this name could be something like “from the sea” because they came from the region around the Aegean sea and settled in the land historically known as the Levant, which we now call the Middle East. The Levant is the land east of the Mediterranean sea, till the border of Arabia, and includes the land of Palestine and modern day Israel, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and parts of Egypt and Turkey.
The Hebrews of Abraham’s time called this land Peleshet and its people Peleshtim and the Assyrians who conquered it in the 8th century BC called it Palashtu. The Greeks, by the 5th century BC, called the land Palaistine, which was a district of Syria and included the whole land from Egypt to Phoenicia (Lebanon) and they called the people Philistinoi. The Romans later renamed the land as the province of Syria-Palaestina after crushing the Jewish revolt of 135 AD. The people were called Philistinus in Latin and this was adopted in the English Old Testament as the Philistines. The Roman province of Syria-Palaestina was part of an area called Greater Syria, which was Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, parts of Turkey, Judea, Galilee, Samaria, Philistia and Idumea (of the Edomites). Thus, the Roman province of Syria-Palaestina included the land historically known as the Levant, between the Mediterranean Sea and Arabia.
The Arabic name Falastin is not a recent invention but is an adaptation of the Greek Palaistine. What we can see from this brief history is that the name Palestine is not an invention but a historical continuity from the name of the earliest recorded inhabitants of the Levant who came from Anatolia and the name itself often historically included the whole Levant and it always historically included a wider region than just the cities of the Philistines.
“But what’s in a name?” That would be a retort to this brief history. The argument is that the ancient Palestinians had vanished from history and that the modern day Palestinians are Arabs who were planted there, either by the Romans, or the Arab Muslims, or both, and have assumed the identity of the ancient Palestinians out of a hatred for the West or Israel. Against this, I direct them to an article titled “DammiIsraeli : The Genetic Origins of the Palestinians” which was published in The Times of Israel on December 27, 2024, written by a Persian Jew named Jonathan Kohan.
I will extract the article for those who would not read it. The word Arab is a loaded term, almost as loaded as the word ‘Indian’ or ‘American.’ The Lebanese Arabs, for example, are Phoenicians, who are culturally Arabs. In other words, the Lebanese are Arabised Phoenicians. Similarly, the Syrian Arabs are Arameans who have been culturally Arabised. Kohan’s research builds on the premise that all modern day ethnicities are formed from distinct races of hunter-gatherers who eventually mixed with other distinct races of hunter-gatherers and/or farmers. So, for example, the English ethnicity is composed of the following mixture: 47.6 percent Anatolian Neolithic farmer, 44.2 percent European hunter-gatherer, 8.2 percent Caucasus hunter-gatherer. French ethnicity is composed of the following mixture: 59 percent Anatolian Neolithic farmer, 31 percent European hunter-gatherer, 10 percent Caucasus hunter-gatherer.
So, if an English person mixes with a French, we would expect that the offspring’s hunter-gatherer DNA to be an average of the two compositions, i.e. the children would have more Anatolian and Caucasus DNA and less European hunter-gatherer DNA than their English parent. On this same line, the Arabian Peninsula Arab DNA comprises the following mixture: 67 percent Natufian hunter-gatherer, 21.2 percent Zagros Neolithic farmer, 7.6 percent Anatolian Neolithic farmer, 4.2 percent Caucasus hunter-gatherer. However, the Palestinian Christians’ DNA is very much different from the Arabian Peninsula DNA and is composed of the following mixture: 41.8 percent Anatolian Neolithic farmer, 24.8 percent Natufian hunter-gatherer, 23.2 percent Zagros Neolithic farmer, 10.2 percent Caucasus hunter-gatherer. The mainline Arabs have only 7.6 percent Anatolian DNA while the Palestinian Christians have 41.8 percent Anatolian DNA and, while the highest DNA component in the Arabs is Natufian (67 percent), the Palestinian Christians have only 24.8 percent of this component. Clearly, the Palestinian Christians are not Arabs by ethnicity.
When the sea peoples from the Aegean Sea settled in the Levant, they mixed with the local Natufian farmers and created the Biblical Canaanites. Genetic samples from dead bodies from the periods from 1800 BC to 1650 BC indicate that the Canaanites had varied compositions of Anatolia and Natufian DNA, depending on which area in the Levant they were from, with some having more Anatolian DNA and others having more Natufian DNA. Thus, the sea peoples from the Aegean Sea in Anatolia had settled in the Levant as early as the 18th century BC. The Canaanite DNA composition in these samples comprised between 34 to 35 percent Anatolia DNA and 33 to 35 percent Natufian DNA.
Fast forward to the period between the 11th century BC and the 8th century BC (Israelite kingdom of David was established in 10th century BC) and we see that the DNA samples of two Israelites show that the Anatolia component had increased to 37.8 – 38 percent, while the Natufian DNA component had decreased to around 30-31 percent. What we see from this is that as we move forward in time, the DNA of the people of the Levant increases in the Anatolia component and decreases in the Natufian component, which is exactly what we see in the Palestinian Christians today, who are 41.8 percent Anatolian and 24.8 percent Natufian. The DNA composition of the most ancient Peleset, who came from the Aegean sea is 77 percent Anatolia.
Conclusion: Since the Palestinian Christians of today have more Anatolia DNA than even the ancient Israelites, they are highly related to the ancient Peleset. Since their DNA composition is more similar to the ancient Israelites than it is to the mainline Arabs, they are also highly related to the ancient Israelites. There is no doubt but that the Palestinian Christians are not an invention or Arab plants in the land of Israel/Palestine but they are authentic natives of the land of Israel, Palestine and the Levant.
Lastly, the reason why the Palestinian Christians have retained their ancient heritage is because their DNA was frozen around the 12th century after the Islamist conquest, as they did not mix with the Arabs, who were Muslims. The Palestinian Muslims are also descendants of the ancient Philistines but have higher Natufian DNA because of mixing with Muslim Arabs. The presence of the Palestinian Christians serves as a witness against Israeli settler colonialism and the doctrine of Christian Zionism. This year, after five years of having nothing to celebrate (because of 3 years of the pandemic and 2 years of genocide of their brothers in Gaza), the Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem have reignited their faith and hope and again lit up their city for Christmas.
I will end with these words from a Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem: “We the Palestinians will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction as we have always done as Palestinians. But for those who are complicit (in the genocide), I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?”
