Submitted by: M Mulukin
You can’t preach Jesus in Israel ??????.
State forbids preaching to under-18s without parents’ permission
Sun 10 May 2020.
Christian pilgrims from Brazil during a mass baptism ceremony in the waters of the Jordan river – many evangelical groups operate in Israel.
The Israeli government is threatening to take off air a Christian television channel that launched in the country to preach to Jews, warning that it will be barred if it breaks strict rules around proselytizing.
GOD TV, an evangelical media network that broadcasts across the world, signed a seven-year deal with a major Israeli cable television provider, HOT, to host its new Hebrew-language channel that began airing last month.
In a video message, Ward Simpson, the CEO of God TV, said: “God has supernaturally opened the door for us to take the gospel of Jesus into the homes, and lives and hearts of his Jewish people.”
Many in the Jewish state see the conversion of Jews as a threat to the relatively small global population as well as their majority status within Israel. While the country’s laws do not place an outright ban on proselytising, it is forbidden to preach to a person under 18 without the consent of a parent.
Myriad evangelical charities and organisations are active in Israel but clearly state they are against missionary work, even if many carry it out quietly.
However, when announcing the new channel, called Shelanu TV (Hebrew for “Ours”), GOD TV said it intended to produce shows “geared specifically towards the younger generation of viewers”.
Communications minister David Amsalem threatened last week to shut down the channel if it was confirmed to have broken the rules. “We won’t allow any missionary channel to operate in the state of Israel, not at any time and not under any circumstances,” Amsalem, a member of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud party, said in a statement.
The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Council, the Israeli regulatory body, also said it would close down the channel if it broadcast “content that has the potential to influence viewers in an undue fashion”.
Ron Kantor, GOD TV’s Israel director, told the local Haaretz newspaper his company had been given an “emphatic yes” to its work by HOT, who he said told him the “laws have changed”.
“We are not ashamed of who we are and what we believe,” Kantor was quoted as saying. “Certainly, if we were doing something sneaky, we would not have announced it to the world.”
No comments:
Post a Comment