Israel is the Only Country in the Middle East that Respects Freedom of Religion
Israel extends the fundamental human right of freedom of conscience to members of the majority religion – the Jews (81 percent), and Israel‘s minorities (19 percent) – on institutional and personal levels.
Israel guarantees freedom of religion in its Declaration of Independence, and that freedom1 operates on two levels. In the private sphere there is absolute freedom for all residents – Jews and non-Jews – to be as religious or irreligious as they wish, both at home and in public. In the public sphere, certain aspects of the practices and composition of public bodies and state institutions reflect the fact that Israel was established to serve as a Jewish state by the League of Nations as stated in the ―Mandate for Palestine,‖ an historical League of Nations document, that laid down the Jewish legal right to settle anywhere in western Palestine, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea:
―Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favour of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.‖
Israel has never imposed legal restrictions2 on establishment of non-Orthodox institutions,3 such as places of worship or educational institutions, nor has it prohibited non-Orthodox religious ceremonies or secular substitutes, although certain sensitive public religious sites such as the Western Wall and the Temple Mount require specific rules of behavior for all visitors.4 While Orthodox Jews still monopolize certain state-established and state-supported institutions, such as the Chief Rabbinate, liberalization and pluralization are occurring in many domains. Women and representatives of non-Orthodox movements, for example, now sit on local Jewish religious councils, and female litigators appear in religious courts, where religious divorce cases are settled.5
Beyond laws that guarantee religious freedom, a broad public consensus in Israel supports pluralism and freedom of conscience for the individual and opposes coercion.
While unrestricted abortion concerns observant Jews and their leaders, not a single case of arson, threat or murder of physicians performing abortions has been reported in Israel. The ultra-feminists and ultra-Orthodox reached a middle-of-the-road solution that they both can live with.6
Minority faiths,7 Islam, Christianity, Druze and Bahai sects also enjoy institutional autonomy to serve their members‘ needs that is based on a system of recognized religious communities inherited from Ottoman law.8
should be as a society.‘ The answer is left open to interpretation and issues are hammered out by Israeli Jews – an exceedingly heterogeneous community whose worldviews and practices reflect more than 70 different diaspora communities and whose degree of religious observance ranges from ultra-secular to ultra-Orthodox.
Disagreement among Israelis about what it means when Israel is defined as ‗a Jewish state‘ is heated; however, issues are settled in battles within the legal and legislative system. At times, avid public debate and civic action, from lobbying to public demonstrations, occur – but without religious warfare and violence.10 This kind of pluralism is not new and has been part of Jewish life in the diaspora for generations prior to the establishment of Israel.
The following three areas represent matters of conflict or disagreement in the public sphere:
1. Sabbath observance by public bodies – from TV transmissions to public transportation and the national airlines, and retail commerce;
2. Recognition of non-Orthodox religious functionaries who act as ―agents of the state‖ (to conduct marriages, divorce proceedings, etc.) and apply non-Orthodox criteria to certain personal status issues for Jews;
3. Criteria for deciding nationality (who is a Jew from a civil, not religious standpoint) – a necessity in determining eligibility to immigrate under the Law of Return and to register as a Jew in the State‘s Population Registry.
Religious issues generate heated discussion in the media and spark legal battles in the courts and the legislature.11 Among them: Whether Israeli TV should be broadcast on Friday night (the beginning of the Jewish Sabbath), a case heard in 1969; whether local religious councils were obligated under law to accept women as members (the Court in 1987 ruled they were); and whether the government during the 1991 Gulf War had to supply special gas masks for religious men who maintain beards out of religious conviction (the Courts said it did). Another heated case in 1996 revolved around whether traffic could pass through a main Jerusalem artery in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood (the Court ordered a public committee to hammer out a live-and-let-live solution).
The ―status quo‖ concept is a modus operandi [In Latin: method of operating] agreed upon by religious and non-religious Jews that places controversial or insoluble issues on hold so that they do not cause constant friction. The ―status quo‖ covers a host of unsettled issues, from military exemptions on religious grounds and Sabbath observance in the public sphere to the interpretation of who is a Jew. Yet the ―status quo‖ is dynamic and changes as crises arise and reality rears its head.
Attempts to paint Israel as increasingly religious or intolerant and theocratic are unwarranted. Consider some of the changes Israel has made over the past 62 years. Ultra-Orthodox residents rioted in Jerusalem in the late 1950s when a public co-ed swimming pool was opened. Today, discos and pubs are packed on Friday nights in Jerusalem, and cheeseburgers, by definition non-kosher, are sold in the heart of the city.13
Some of the arrangements may seem strange to American observers, but they faithfully reflect the quirks of Jewish community life and Jewish values. The modus operandi hammered out – through the courts and legislation, public debate and public protest, ad-hoc committees and detour mechanisms – reflect Israeli society‘s resilience and its ability to find creative solutions for social engineering.
More to the point, these social practices underscore Israel‘s overriding tolerance as a society, despite Israelis‘ public and often fiery debates. Ultimately, these mechanisms, based more on consensus building than raw power plays,14 have allowed Israel to maintain a strong common denominator and sense of social unification.
It is important to realize that in many cases, religious debate often ignites strong emotions, and sometimes violence, in a pluralistic society. In Israel, there has not been religious warfare or serious violence instigated by religion. That is partly because of a host of public-spirited frameworks that proactively reduce tension and prevent polarization by nurturing dialogue, breaking down stereotypes and encouraging empathy and respect for ‗the other.‘15
In the past decade, Israeli society has shown an admirable degree of willingness and flexibility in solving religious problems in the wake of the influx of one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia. The solutions were based on a ‗live-and-let-live‘ philosophy.
Such accommodation contrasts sharply with Palestinian society. While the number of Christians in Palestinian-Muslim society has shrunk from 15 percent in 1950 to 2 percent today, Israel has absorbed tens of thousands of non-Jews among the one million immigrants that have come from the former Soviet Union since 1990. The immigrants – mostly non-observant Jews, a significant number with non-Jewish spouses – have made new demands on the system and have sparked social tensions over cultural norms.
communities apart. On local and national levels, ways are being sought to accommodate the needs of non-Jews and Jews who do not meet the Orthodox criteria of who is a Jew, without compromising Orthodox standards that govern state-established religious institutions.
One of the most important solutions was agreement by all, including the Orthodox establishment, to establish non-sectarian cemeteries alongside strictly religious ones. That accommodation allows non-Orthodox or alternative funerals and other burial choices for those who are not Jewish by Jewish law (halacha); for spouses from mixed marriages; and for Jews who prefer non-Orthodox or non-religious arrangements. Similarly, special arrangements were made that allow non-Jewish soldiers to use the New Testament at swearing-in ceremonies. In many development towns, joint committees of tradition-bound longtime Jewish residents and secular newcomers – primarily Jews from Russia – have made arrangements that reduce inter-ethnic tensions.
The growing dialogue among Jews and co-religionists of other opinions, the tolerance Israelis exhibit toward other religious minorities and the Jewish state‘s record of respect for the places of worship and holy sites of other faiths, contrasts starkly with the milieu of intolerance16 and absence of religious freedoms among Israel‘s Arab neighbors.
Reports describe treatment of non-Muslims in Arab lands that range from relegation to second-class-citizen status to stringent restrictions on religious expression in the public domain, and from mild harassment to horrific acts of violence designed to drive them out of Muslim lands.17
One of the worst offenders is Saudi Arabia,18 which prohibits wearing crosses and any form of non-Muslim public worship. The official religion is an extreme form of Islam that takes Islamic Sharia law literally – and sanctions judicial amputation for theft (including cross-amputations of an arm and a leg).19
Because of hostility and discrimination, the number of Christians in the Middle East has dropped drastically as more and more emigrate to the West. Under Jordanian control prior to the Six-Day War, the number of Christians in Jerusalem shrank by 61 percent between 1948 and 1967, due to a combination of demographics and growing hostility toward non-Muslims. Thousands more emigrated to the West after the Palestinian Authority was established.20 Christians are fast becoming an endangered species in Islamic countries, just as the Jews have fled Arab lands since 1948. More recently, areas transferred to the Palestinian Authority have seen a loss of their Jewish populations.
The Palestinian Authority’s Failure to Uphold Religious Freedom
In a series of signed agreements since Oslo, the Palestinian Authority promised to protect and grant free access to all religious sites, but has systematically broken its commitments.
Palestinian political and religious leaders consistently use the media, schools, and the pulpit to disseminate false, slanderous and inflammatory propaganda that claims Jews and Judaism have no historic roots in the Land of Israel.22 They deliberately destroy archaeological evidence, even on the Temple Mount, Judaism‘s holiest site.23 Jewish religious sites in PA-controlled areas have also been ransacked and destroyed.
In the ―Oslo II‖ Accord (Article V of Annex I), the PA signed and guaranteed protection and free access to Joseph‘s Tomb on the outskirts of Nablus and to the Shalom al-Yisrael (Peace on Israel) synagogue built in Jericho in 700 AD. On October 12, 2000, Palestinian Arabs burned the synagogue down, as PA forces physically prevented Israeli firefighters from reaching the scene.
On October 7, 2000, Palestinian Arab mobs, assisted by PA policemen, destroyed and burned Joseph‘s Tomb (described in Joshua 24:32). The PA then built a mosque on the site to neutralize its Jewishness, and has barred Jews from visiting the ruins of the tomb.24 In February 2003, the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, accompanying Israeli troops on a mission to apprehend terrorist cells in Nablus, found that Palestinians had reduced the cenotaph inside the shrine to rubble.
In Palestinian-controlled areas, the PA has often acted like a bull in a china shop, disregarding the delicate arrangements controlling religious sites that for centuries prevented friction among Christian sects. Cynically compromising the neutrality and holiness of monasteries and churches, Palestinian Arabs have forcibly turned strategically located sites into sanctuaries for combatants and gunners‘ nests in order to attack Jewish neighborhoods. Christian Arabs under the PA are increasingly subject to the kind of intolerance common under other Arab regimes, including religious persecution of individuals and political oppression of religious communities.25
Joseph Puder - founder and executive director of the Interfaith Taskforce for America and Israel stated:
―Christian Palestinians have also been abandoned by the international community — by NGOs and human rights organizations. On their own, this educated Christian community has had to endure anarchy and lawlessness, widespread corruption in the PA security and police forces, and a xenophobic and intolerant Muslim majority.
―The American government refuses to acknowledge the medieval abuses of Christians at the hands of the Palestinian.‖26
reins in such employees nor opposes such instances of mob rule. By its own conduct, the Palestinian Authority raises fundamental questions about whether Palestinians can be trusted to protect non-Muslim holy sites – Jewish or Christian.
Muslim religious leaders have compromised the purity of their faith by using fatwas – Islamic religious rulings – as political instruments to sanction terrorism against Israel. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters fail even to respect the holiness of their own religion‘s holy sites and objects, as evidenced by the suicide belts Palestinian terrorists hid in a mosque in Israel in February 2003.27
Lack of religious freedom cannot be viewed in a vacuum or as a problematic issue separate from democratization, or as being immune to the war on terrorism – not when religion is systematically exploited to inflame the Arab-Israeli conflict and fuel hatred of America and the West.‖28
