Jarryd Hayne tweeted about how the Jews were culpable for Jesus’ death. Photo: Wiki Commons.

Former Australian rugby player and 2014 NFL grab Jarryd Hayne grabbed headlines and angered Jewish groups over a tweet last week accusing Jews of killing Jesus Christ.

“Jesus wanted to help people but was killed by his own people,” Hayne wrote through his Twitter handle, followed by over 120,000 Twitter users, on July 1.

Unperturbed by the potential for backlash among some of his fans, Hayne went on to tweet the next day: “The Jews were the people who took him to the Romans n forced them to give the order because they couldn’t.”

Hayne, 27, described as a “Christian superstar rugby player,” ultimately deleted the tweets on Friday morning. The Australian native — twice a top player in the NRL — announced a $100,000 futures contract with the San Francisco 49ers in March.

The accusation that Jewish people killed Jesus led to antisemitism and violence against Jewish communities for centuries, mainly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. The Catholic Church signed a document just half a century ago recognizing that Jews were not culpable for Jesus’ death.

Chairman of the B’nai Brith Anti-Defamation Commission, Dvir Abromovich, criticized Hayne for bringing up the thousands-of-years-old accusation, thus “fueling antisemitism.”

“We need sportspeople to be powerful voices in countering racism and Jewish-hatred, especially when attacks against Jews worldwide are on the increase,” he said, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.