Hayne, who is deeply religious and attended the Hillsong Conference in Sydney recently, tweeted to his 120,000 followers: “Jesus wanted to help people but was killed by his own people.”
The tweet immediately attracted dozens of retweets, favourites and comments, including plenty of people who argued the point.
Even for Hayne’s standards on social media, it attracted a lot of attention.
In a later tweet, he said “The Jews were the people who took him to the Romans n forced them to give the order because they couldn’t.”
The Jewish News reported that leaders in the Jewish community were outraged at the former Eels superstar’s comments.
“Mr Hayne’s damaging, painful and irresponsible statement is not just historically wrong, but resuscitates the dangerous age-old anti-Semitic falsehood that the Jews are guilty of killing Jesus,” said Chairman of the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abramovich.
“For thousands of years Jews were held in contempt and were persecuted and murdered because they were labelled as Christ-killers.
“It’s a pity that Mr Hayne is so ill-informed that he doesn’t know that in 1965 the Vatican rejected this charge and that Pope Benedict XVI in his book Jesus of Nazareth concludes that there is no basis to the notion that Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.”
Jesus wanted to help people but was killed by his own people.
— jarryd hayne (@jarrydhayne_1) July 1, 2015The Jews were the people who took him to the Romans n forced them to give the order because they couldn't. https://t.co/wDmxUvEnMW
— jarryd hayne (@jarrydhayne_1) July 1, 2015