Israel and Civil Rights

[Giuliano]

What is going on in Israel? Well, first of all, they do not have religious freedom there. Like Communist China, they have laws about religion. Christians are allowed to be Christians but they're not allowed to try to convert anyone.

GOD TV is being banned in Israel. Not that I care that much about GOD TV since the people who run it seem extreme to me; but I still believe they have the right to free speech and freedom of religion. Yet in Israel, this is not the case.

Why is Donald Trump saying nothing about this? It's absurd to say Israel has a good government when it's against the law for Christians to talk about Christianity in a way that might convert others. They don't have either freedom of religion or free speech.

It gets more absurd when Israel says GOD TV was trying to convert people when GOD TV says they weren't.

How can Donald Trump say he's all for religious freedom when he does nothing about this?

Israel pulls the plug on GOD TV, claims it is trying to evangelize Jews

Israel has decided to remove the U.S.-based evangelical Christian station GOD TV from the Israeli cable television provider HOT due to claims that it was trying to evangelize Jews.

Asher Biton, chairman of Israel’s Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, said he told the station last Thursday that it has seven days to halt broadcasting.

“The channel appeals to Jews with Christian content,” stated Biton, as reported by the Associated Press, claiming that the station’s “original request” was to be a “station targeting the Christian population.”

The GOD TV station for Israel, known as Shelanu, has denied that it is in violation of its terms. Ron Cantor, God TV regional director in Israel, told the Messianic Jewish news site Kehila News the allegations against the station are “simply not true.”

“From the first day we met with HOT, it was very clear what we wanted to broadcast: Messianic Jews sharing their faith in Yeshua in a variety of ways, from interviews, to music, to personal stories. And that’s what we do to this day,” stated Cantor.

“Our content providers are Israelis. Sabras. Serving in the Army. Paying their taxes. And we are people of integrity. If we really lied to get a license, of course we would have been caught. It does not make sense. It goes against everything we teach.”

In April, GOD TV launched a Hebrew-language channel on Israeli cable TV called Shelanu, under the condition that it not engage in missionary activities among non-Christian Jews. It had been given a seven-year license from the Israeli Communications Ministry.

Soon after it began airing programming, accusations were made that the station was trying to proselytize Jews, with GOD TV CEO Ward Simpson addressing the matter last month.

“The governing authorities that manage these things have been receiving numerous complaints about our content and about different things with the channel, especially as it relates to the rules and regulations of what can and cannot be said on TV in Israel,” stated Simpson at the time.

“As far as we have been told, the [Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council] would like to shut down the channel. We have a great team of lawyers over there, probably the best in Israel. So they are working with the council now to try and figure out what to do.”

Simpson insisted that the channel was not trying to convert Jews to become Christians. "Our attorneys and our staff over there have all told me that we are in compliance and that we are following the rules and regulations, that we are legal and that there is no way that they can really pull us off the air because we haven’t done it," he said then.

 

[theophilus]

Like Communist China, they have laws about religion. Christians are allowed to be Christians but they're not allowed to try to convert anyone.

The difference is that China wants people to stop being Christians. There is much more freedom in Israel. No country, including the United States, is totally free of placing restrictions on Christians.

 

[Giuliano]

The difference is that China wants people to stop being Christians. There is much more freedom in Israel. No country, including the United States, is totally free of placing restrictions on Christians.

Why is hatred of Christians increasing inside Israel? A court did decide to tell people to stop spitting on Christians; but it's astonishing to me that Jews were spitting on Christians. It's been going on for a while.

Jews move to halt spitting at Christians in Jerusalem

Recently, the Jerusalem Post carried a piece quoting Rabbi David Rosen, a veteran of Catholic/Jewish dialogue, acknowledging that incidents of ultra-Orthodox Jews spitting at priests, nuns and other Christian clergy is “a part of life” in Jerusalem. Such incidents have been occurring for the last twenty years and are now on the rise, according to the story, although they appear to be limited to Jerusalem.

The piece quoted a Texas-born Franciscan, Fr. Athanasius Macora, who heads the Christian Information Center inside the Jaffa Gate, who said that he’s been spat upon by ultra-Orthodox Jews as much as fifteen times in the last six months – not only in the Old City, but also outside his Franciscan friary.

The Rev. Samuel Aghoyan, an Armenian Orthodox cleric, said he’s been spat upon fifteen to twenty times, most recently in November.

“I was walking back from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and I saw this boy in a yarmulke and ritual fringes coming back from the Kotel, and he spat at me two or three times,” Aghoyan said.

“Every [Christian cleric in the Old City] who’s been here for awhile, who dresses in robes in public, has a story to tell about being spat at,” Macora said. “The more you get around, the more it happens.”

The American media tend to cover interactions between Israeli settlers and Palestinians but ignore how those settlers also treat Christians with contempt.

Christians in Jerusalem's Old City 'under threat' from settlers.

According to church leaders, priests are being verbally abused and spat at, and property vandalised.

Tensions have risen this year in the Christian and Armenian quarters of the 1 sq km ancient walled city, which includes the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the holiest place in Christianity where Jesus was believed to be crucified and resurrected. The Old City is also home to places of critical religious importance to Jews and Muslims.

The churches say they are facing onslaught on three fronts: a war of attrition waged by hardline settlers; unprecedented tax demands by Jerusalem city council; and a proposal to allow the expropriation of church land sold to private developers.

Theophilos III, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem and the most senior Christian leader in the Holy Land, told the Guardian: “Today the church faces a most severe threat at the hands of certain settler groups. The settlers are persistent in their attempts to erode the presence of the Christian community in Jerusalem.

“These radical settler groups are highly organised. Over the last years we have witnessed the desecration and vandalism of an unprecedented number of churches and holy sites and receive growing numbers of reports from priests and local worshippers who have been assaulted and attacked.

“Where the authorities are concerned, this behaviour goes largely unchecked and unpunished.”

At Mount Zion, just outside the Old City walls, undeveloped land owned by the church and often referred to as the “Greek garden” is regularly vandalised, according to Moni Shama, a church caretaker.

Trees have been uprooted, garbage left, graffiti scrawled on stones and paint thrown inside the ancient Chapel of Pentecost, he said. Three years ago, a Greek Orthodox seminary at the site was set alight.

The Greek Orthodox church, the oldest Christian presence in the Old City, is also deeply concerned about attempts to gain control of properties it owns close to Jaffa Gate, the main entrance to the Christian and Armenian quarters.

A court ruling is expected later this year on a disputed sale of the historic Imperial and Petra hotels. The church has challenged a deal made by an official under the previous patriarch, which it claims involved bribery and conspiracy and was therefore invalid. The church has already lost one case on the sale, but it is appealing.

 

[Helen]

Interesting thread...thank you.

 

[Giuliano]

The difference is that China wants people to stop being Christians. There is much more freedom in Israel. No country, including the United States, is totally free of placing restrictions on Christians.

I see Russia hasn't eased up its aggressive policy against Jehovah's Witnesses. Again, the Trump administration is silent. I also have not seen any Western European countries mentioning it.

Russia Halts Early Release of Jehovah’s Witness Dennis Christensen - The Moscow Times

The early release of the first Jehovah’s Witness to be jailed for extremism in Russia has been put on hold after prosecutors appealed the court ruling, the religious organization said Wednesday.

Danish national Dennis Christensen was granted early release last week when a district court ordered him to pay a fine of 400,000 rubles ($5,800) in lieu of his remaining prison sentence. Christensen had been sentenced to six years in a penal colony in 2019 on charges that critics condemned as an attack on religious freedom. . . .

Christensen was arrested in May 2017 at a prayer meeting in the town of Oryol south of Moscow.

Russia outlawed the Jehovah’s Witnesses as an “extremist” organization in April of that year and has since issued a series of lengthy sentences against believers.

 

[Yehren]

The difference is that China wants people to stop being Christians.

Actually, they don't. They merely want proof that the Christians are loyal to China and no other government. Since Christian missionaries in China often aided the western nations against the then-weak Chinese government, there is a tradition of distrust of foreign faiths in China.