The Los Angeles Times has converted Judah Ben-Hur, the fictional enslaved Jewish nobleman who serves as a protagonist in Charles Heston's 1951 Hollywood blockbuster, into a "Palestinian nobleman." Today's paper reports:
Based on the novel by Lew Wallace, the period drama revolves around Judah Ben-Hur (Heston), a Palestinian nobleman who is enslaved by the Romans, engages in one of the most thrilling chariot races ever captured on screen, and even encounters Jesus Christ.
Of course, there was no such place as "Palestine" in the time of Jesus, since the Romans didn't rename Judea as "Palestina" until a hundred years after the death of Jesus (a fact that even the New York Times had to correct).
In earlier coverage, the Los Angeles Times had correctly described Ben-Hur's Jewish/Judean identity. For instance, a March 15, 2001 article referred to "the rich, honorable Jewish man Judah Ben-Hur"; a June 17, 1994 article correctly described him as "the Judean"; and a Sept. 14, 1990 article referred to him as "prince of Judea."
Perhaps the paper's 2011 remake of Ben-Hur, the Judean, into Ben-Hur, the "Palestinian," is testament to the success of ongoing efforts to misleading the masses into believing that a sovereign Palestinian entity did in fact exist before 1948, either in antiquity or in more recent history.
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