The bill in question was initiated as a Private Member's Bill, presented by a small number of Knesset Members. It does not enjoy Government backing and was in fact twice rejected by the Government (on the recommendation of the Inter-Ministerial Committee on proposed Legislation) on 27 January and 5 March 1997, when the Minister of Justice explicitly expressed his opposition to the Bill.
Details of the Bill
Section 7 of the Israeli penal Code 1977, Israel's criminal law codex, includes a section dealing with offences against religious feeling and tradition. This section contains articles which prohibit the damage, desecration or defamation of ritual sites, as well as articles against interference with religious practice, entry without permission into a ritual or burial site and offence to religious feelings
Article 174A of the Penal Code prohibits any inducement (money, advantage etc.) as an enticement for religious conversion, and Article 174B prohibits the receipt of any such inducement in return for religious conversion. These articles constitute part of the 1977 law and are intended to maintain a proper balance between the desire to limit the use of improper means to convince a person to change his religion on the one hand, and the desire not to interfere with freedom of religion and freedom of expression on the other.
The proposed amendment is a response to a crude campaign of aggressive proselytism which has targeted thousands of Israeli families and sent unsolicited literature to their homes. Many members of the Israeli public have found this campaign deeply hurtful, especially those who are descendants of Holocaust survivors or others who came to Israel in flight from anti-Jewish persecution abroad
The proposed amendment would prohibit the dissemination of such unsolicited literature via the postal system. It is solely concerned with this type of material and neither suggests nor implies any ban on the possession of the New Testament or general Christian literature. It would in no way infringe upon the religious life of Christian individuals and communities.
Freedom of religion is entrenched in Israel's Declaration of Independence whose principles received constitutional force both in rulings of the Israel Supreme Court and in Article 1 of the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty.