Two members of Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset, have introduced a bill that would outlaw telling people about Jesus in the Jewish state, and jail everyone who does.
The authors of the legislation Moshe Gafni and Yaakov Asher are ultra-Orthodox members. They are important figures inside the 64-seat governing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
If approved, the punishment for having spiritual conversations with Israelis of any religion would be one-year imprisonment if with an adult, but two years if with someone under 18.
David Parsons is senior spokesman and Vice President of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. He told Premier’s News Hour that this is not the first time Gafni has proposed such a ban.
“He's made a habit every year, every time he gets re-elected in the Knesset to introduce a bill like this. And it never goes anywhere.
“He introduced one back when Netanyahu was prime minister for a couple of years in the late 1990s, because a book translated into Hebrew that was preaching the gospel through the book, was mailed to a million Israeli homes, and there was no way to collect them and throw them away. So he was alarmed and Moshe Gafni introduced a bill that actually would have banned the New Testament in Israel and criminalised possession of the New Testament. That bill got shot down.”
Parsons says that although the bill is concerning, it’s unlikely to go anywhere.
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