Christians could face one year prison sentence for encouraging conversion to their faith, according to a new controversial legislation being introduced in Israel. The legislation which is being proposed by ultra-Orthodox members of Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition would also proscribe Christians from engaging in religious discussion with Jews.
Titled Proposed Penal Law: Amendment – Prohibition of Solicitation for Religious Conversion – 2023, the legislation is introduced by United Torah Judaism's Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Asher. The law would apply to anyone who would attempt to persuade someone to change their religious beliefs, however the legislation specifically mentions the Christian faith, saying that "recently, the attempts of missionary groups, mainly Christians, to solicit conversion of religion have increased."
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Israel sucks but so do Christian missionaries. I would specify all missionaries but it's not like I have to listen to Jainists yell into megaphones on the street. The one time I was approached by some Hare Krishna weirdo I was frankly delighted for the change of pace
You have to consider how this is going to be used and abused and how it's probably just one more step on the way to creating a state with enforced ethnicity and faith. Just talking about the nature of the divine between a Christian and a Jew could be criminalized by this. And how handy would it be for Israelis to be able to claim that their Arab neighbor tried to convert them?
:this: there is 0 chance the reasoning behind the bill doesn't involve justifying their genocide further
it appears that the users in this thread don't know that Palestinian Christians exist and are obviously also oppressed by :israel-cool:
or maybe even that there are Christians who aren't rightwing white western evangelicals
I approve of this for that reason, in an accelerationist sort of way. If they go mask-off fascist even against Christians, they're alienating a huge part of their base of supporters here in the US. Which is bad for Israel, which is a good thing.
they have been oppressing Palestinian Christians for quite some time now
I'm afraid you're overestimating the amount of agency devout Evangelicals have. I joke in my own comment about how the ones who hear about it will be shocked that their Zionist buddies would do such a thing, but in actuality I don't think they'd turn on Israel for anything short of a drastic change to Evangelical theology
Zion is part of their apocalypse setup - they need it to exist for their god to finally come back, so they'll support it to the literal end of time
How many of these people pull the levers of power in the DC regime? You can round that number off to zero without losing much accuracy. Nobody needs them. Israel needs them about as much as a basketball team needs its fans. I.E. it doesn't. Can win perfectly well without them.
I think the motive is actually different. I think this law is being put out there pre-emptively, with the goal of allowing evangelical Christians to immigrate and take part in the Zionist colonial project as settlers.