TomGrossmedia.com: “In a broadcast just before Christmas, the BBC claimed that the historical trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem made by Jesus’ parents, Joseph and Mary, would have been rendered impossible today, due to Israeli army restrictions.” According to Gross, a reader of an Israeli newspaper had a response very similar to mine (and others) when I first heard this story: “What the BBC doesn’t tell us is that Jesus’ parents would have been murdered by Palestinian groups just like any Jews would have if they went into PA-occupied areas.” It’s rather bizarre that the BBC seems to think of Joseph and Mary as Palestinian Arabs (especially as there was neither any such geographical entity as Palestine nor any Arab residents of Judea at the time), not Jews.
It’s also not clear what the BBC is talking about in a more general sense: though they claimed to follow an Israeli-Arab carpenter from Nazareth as he tried to get to Bethlehem, Israeli army restrictions keep Arabs from Bethlehem from coming into Israel to prevent suicide bombings, but Jews (and Arabs) from Israeli cities like Nazareth can travel to the West Bank (I was just driving on the road from Jerusalem to Bethlehem two weeks ago, though I got off several miles before Bethlehem), though it would be suicidal for an Israeli Jew to go to Bethlehem right now. Nor is Bethlehem enclosed by a security fence, though there is a barrier on the side facing Israel. And, in any event, thirty thousand tourists did make it to Bethlehem on Christmas.
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