The Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu has affirmed that he would prevent the passage of a proposal by a powerful ally in his governing coalition to punish Christian proselytizing with jail time.
Reports have it that the proposal had raised an uproar with evangelical Christians — one of Israel’s strongest and most influential supporters in the United States.
It could be recalled that the bill was introduced in January by a pair of ultra-Orthodox Jewish lawmakers, including Moshe Gafni, who heads the parliament’s Finance Committee.
The bill states that soliciting someone to convert their faith should be punishable by one year in prison and solicitation to convert a minor would be punishable with a two-year sentence.
It said “Recently, the attempts of missionary groups, mainly Christians, to solicit conversion of religion have increased”.
Though the bill was never advanced, it drew widespread attention in the American evangelical world after All Israel News, an evangelical news site, reported on it.
Reacting to the development, Netanyahu in a Twitter post announced that: “We will not advance any law against the Christian community.”
Harping on the development, Gafni said he had introduced the bill as a procedural matter, as he has done in the past, and there were no plans to advance it.
It was gathered that Evangelical Christians, particularly in the United States, are among the strongest backers of Israel, viewing it as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, with some seeing it as the indication of a second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of days.
Records have it that Israel has long welcomed evangelicals’ political and financial support, and it has largely shrugged off concerns about any hidden religious agenda.
However, it is believed that most Jews view any effort to convert them to Christianity as deeply offensive, a legacy of centuries of persecution and forced conversion at the hands of Christian rulers and because of those sensitivities, evangelical Christians rarely target Jews.
