There is hope

I have heard from many of you regarding the potential bill becoming law that would criminalize sharing of the gospel in Israel. This was brought forth by two ultra-orthodox, anti-Messianic politicians. I’ve known about this for over a week, but did not write about it because I knew that it had very little chance of ever being passed. This bill has come up many times and has never passed. What made this time different is the fact that this is probably the most anti-Messianic government in Israel’s history, where close to half (maybe more than half) of the coalition members are religious.

However, many of you were hearing about this. Thus, I wrote a blog yesterday. We had an email ready to be sent when Prime Minister Netanyahu sent out a tweet that made the issue mute. I want to share that with you because people are still asking me if Israel is really going to outlaw sharing the gospel.

Earlier this week All Israel News/Joel Rosenberg publicized the issue. Joel is well-known in the evangelical world and no doubt, people began to bring this up to the prime minister. Newsmax picked up the story and broadcasted it to millions. Even with the PM’s tweet, Times of Israel is reporting that this has become a thorn in Bibi’s side at the worst time.

“On Wednesday morning, the Foreign Ministry began receiving calls from heads of parliamentary friendship groups, diplomats, Christian Zionist leaders, and Jewish leaders around the world, an Israeli diplomat said.

“Foreign Ministry staff prepared reports on the fallout of the bill for Foreign Minister Eli Cohen … the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.”

Netanyahu is in a huge battle right now, being pressured by extremists in his coalition to change how the Supreme Court functions in Israel. They want to take away the Supreme Court’s authority to declare a law the Israeli equivalent of “unconstitutional.”

Netanyahu is under even more pressure from the Israeli public not to do it, not to mention leaders from around the world. He has been warned that such a move would have drastic economic implications. The shekel has already lost about 10% of its value in the past month and a Unicorn (that is, a tech company worth more than a billion dollars) is leaving Israel taking $500 million with them. Many other tech firms and investors are threatening to pull their funds out of Israel.

“An examination of dozens of public and private high-tech companies, whose aggregate value is $40 billion, also suggests that they are refraining from transferring a total amount reaching $2.2 billion into the country.” (source)

The last thing the prime minister needs is people around the world thinking that he is going to put people in jail for preaching the gospel—at a time when people are saying his coalition is threatening Israel’s democracy. It would confirm their fears. It seems that he not only sent out the tweet but gave the bill’s backers a tongue lashing, as the normally brash and unapologetic Moshe Gafni also put out a statement saying that his own bill had no chance of passing.

“As mentioned, the bill was again placed on the Knesset table procedurally only with the convening of the current Knesset more than four months ago and is not planned to move forward at this stage, so dealing with it now is irrelevant.”

So please spread the word: Israel has no plans to criminalize sharing the Gospel. There are a small number of extreme religious politicians who would like to, but they have never been able to find any support outside of their own parties.

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