A UN Women ambassador has claimed that Christmas is a “celebration of the birth of a Palestinian child.”

Munroe Bergdorf, who is the UN Women UK Champion, compared Gazans with Jesus and drew a parallel between modern-day Israel and the Roman state which killed Jesus.

The post could be interpreted as peddling the conspiratorial myth that Jews killed Jesus and appears to overlook the fact that historians and scholars widely agree that Jesus was Jewish and hailed from the kingdom of Judea. The term Palestine or Palestinian was not used until after Jesus’s death. 

A trans activist, model and broadcaster, Bergdorf has worked with the UN since 2018 across a variety of projects. In November, she was made the first UN Women UK Champion.

In a social media post to raise funds for Medical Aid Palestine, Bergdorf wrote: “Outside the allure of its modern-day capitalist lens, what else is Christmas but a celebration of the birth of a Palestinian child?

“A child who was a refugee, who was denied shelter, then, as an adult, executed by the state.”

The widely shared post was accompanied by a photo of a baby doll in rubble, wrapped in a Palestinian kefir.

Other social media posts by the UN Champion include an Instagram story hours after the October 7 attack in which she wrote: “Much of what’s happening in occupied Palestine will be in future history books as an example of a revolutionary struggle.

“Waiting until the history books tell you what to celebrate is easy.”
On her UN Women UK appointment in November, Bergdorf said, “I will use this role to further advocate for the progress, safety, inclusion and empowerment of ALL women and girls, of all communities and identities.”

UN Women has been criticised in recent weeks after staying silent on the reports of gender-based violence perpetrated by Hamas on October 7.

Bergdorf’s comments also come as New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was criticised for her social media posts which also drew a parallel between Jesus’s persecutors and present-day Israel.

Ocasio-Cortez wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday that Jesus was born in “modern-day Palestine” under a government carrying out “a massacre of innocents.”

She wrote: “He was part of a targeted population being indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power.

“Thousands of years later, right-wing forces are violently occupying Bethlehem as similar stories unfold for today’s Palestinians.”

Former Anti-Defamation League leader Abraham Foxman slammed Ocasio-Cortez's comments, saying: “Comparing the death of Jesus to the current say death of Palestinians in Gaza and Mary and Joseph to current Palestinian refugees in Gaza – she invokes the charge that the Jews are again killing Jesus”.

The JC approached Munroe Bergdorf and UN Women UK for comment.