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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I mean, I agree in theory. But also, this just feels like classic "Leopards Ate My Face!" tier shit. You're talking about a group of wealthy expats who routinely travel to Israel in order to foist their religious beliefs on a public that has spent the last 2000 years very publicly rejecting the sales pitch. At the same time, this group is dogmatic in their support of Israeli religious convictions, purely on the theory that the new western colonial enclave will bring about The End Of The Fucking World.
And now they're getting the tiniest taste of the shit that locals unaligned with the current fascist government have been eating for the last century, and we're supposed to discover the problematic nature of religious oppression?
This is literally the "First they came for..." poem, except these people are at the bottom of the fucking list. If nobody is left to speak for the Evangelicals, its because they're a bunch of callous fucks.
Do you think Pat Robertson is going to be impacted by this law? It's going to be used to target Palestinian Christians. It's going to be the same locals unaligned with the current fascist government that get screwed.
Yes, in so far as rounding up a bunch of clueless midwesterners and having them pay him top dollar to visit the Holy Land on The Elder Abuse Crusades will no longer be as viable a scam.
Palestinian Christians have already been eating shit. This expands the scope to anyone the new far-right government doesn't like, including everyone from Eastern Orthodox Slavic migrants to Palestinian-sympathetic Catholics to Americans the government finds annoying.