The game show “Jeopardy!” has come under fire for not accepting “Palestine” as an answer of where Jesus Christ was born during a show that aired on Friday.
The $200 clue in the category “Where’s That Church?” was “Built in the 300s A.D., the Church of the Nativity.”
Contestant Katie Needle buzzed in and answered, “What Is Palestine?”
Host Alex Trebek, 79, rejected her answer and accepted contestant Jack McGuire’s answer of “What Is Israel?”
The Church of the Nativity, which Christians believe is the birthplace of Jesus, is located in Bethlehem, which is under control of the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) as part of the 1995 Oslo Accords that designated the city as Area A, which gave the P.A. full civil and security control of the city.
“Unacceptable!! Bethlehem is in the Palestinian territories which Israel illegally occupies (Katie Needle got the correct answer & was robbed). @Jeopardy owes an apology for endorsing Israel’s universally condemned illegal takeover of Palestinian lands,” tweeted Arab American Institute deputy director Omar Baddar.
Unacceptable!! Bethlehem is in the Palestinian territories which Israel illegally occupies (Katie Needle got the correct answer & was robbed). @Jeopardy owes an apology for endorsing Israel's universally-condemned illegal takeover of Palestinian lands.https://t.co/Ym99YziM4k
— Omar Baddar عمر بدّار (@OmarBaddar) January 11, 2020
The answer has caused controversy and a social-media uproar.
One of the oldest cities in the world, Bethlehem, which is called Bet Lechem in Hebrew or “House of Bread,” was part of the ancient Kingdom of Judah.
The Christian Bible in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke attributes the city as the birthplace of Jesus during the first century C.E., which at the time was a Jewish client kingdom of the Roman Empire. The city is also the burial place of the Jewish matriarch Rachel, the birthplace of King David and the site of the story of Ruth, a Moabite who marries an Israelite.
