xjwsforChrist

They distribute ballots to elect the 'Savior."

By: Tzvi Ben-Gedalyahu
Published: February 18th, 2015

Missionaries have been exploiting the elections campaign and Israel’s frustration with unwanted candidates by distributing fake election ballots with the letters of a fictional party that translates into English as the “Savior,” meaning Jesus.

The anti-missionary organization Yad L’Achim said hundreds of complaints have poured in about Jehovah’s Witnesses and Messianic Jews who have arrived in Israel to “campaign” for JC.

Given the low-level campaign that has focused on no substantial issues other than how low below the belt candidates can slug each other, the missionaries know they have a waiting audience for someone who introduces a new candidate.

Since many voters are so sick of Bujie, Livni and Bibi, the missionaries are a big problem. They hand out brochures with the headline “The government has fallen again and we have elections again.”

The brochure continues:
Why elections again? Because corruption is rampant? No
Because violence is increasing? No.

The government has fallen again because everyone is only concerned with keeping his seat of power and does not care about us, the plain citizen.

After setting up the naïve voters, the brochure offers “hope” in the party of the Messiah, not to be confused with Bujie, Livni, and Bibi and let’s not forget the Haredi parties.

So what do the missionaries want from the Israeli voter? They want exactly the same thing that Bujie, Livni and Bibi want. Just believe them, and the brochure, like the political leaders, lie by insisting it is telling the truth, to wit:
Unlike all the politicians, the Messiah really does care about you. He invites you to place all your worries on him…
Therefore, all we have to do is to believe – vote – for Messiah.

The missionaries hand out fake ballots with the acronym for the “party” spelled with four Hebrew letters – Yud-Shin-Vav-Ayin- which spell Savior.

The election system in Israel features each party with an acronym of up to three letters. For example, the Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) is known by the Hebrew letters Tet-Bet. The Herzog-Livni combo retains the former Labor party’s letters of Aleph-Mem-Tuf.

It is not enough that Herzog-Livni have called themselves the “Zionist Camp” but they also go by the Labor acronym, which in Hebrew reads “emet,” or “truth.”

It would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that there are enough gullible people who allow the party to give the Likud – Mem-Chet-Lamed – a good run for its money.

Perhaps President Barack Obama sent the missionaries in retaliation for Netanyahu’s speech in Congress next month on the Iran nuclear threat.

More likely, they were sent by the JC crowd, which is roaming around the streets of Jerusalem, metropolitan Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva and other cities.

Yad L’Achim reported that one of those who protested the missionaries’ presence was none other than the deputy mayor of Haifa, Rabbi Aryeh Blitental, who wrote, “Missionaries in Haifa are acting in a very conniving way Its dubious activities include placing Hebrew flyers in residents’ mail boxes. They take advantage of innocent Jews, who are not knowledgeable about Jewish practices, to preach to them about abandoning their religion. They act with cunning and deceit, and, to our great sorrow, have seen no little success.”

He asked for Yad L’Achim to help counter the missionaries, and the organization promptly launched a PR counteroffensive.

It sent out teams of activists who distributed material that exposed the lies of the missionaries and announced plans to expand the activities of its Haifa branch in order to serve as a counterbalance to the mounting missionary presence in the city.

Missionaries are a disease in Israel. Unlike politicians, nothing discourages them. They accept failure as the test of JC to suffer.

A 1977 anti-proselytizing law prohibits any person from offering or receiving material benefits as an inducement to conversion; however, there have been no reports of the law's enforcement. A bill that would have restricted proselytizing further was promulgated in 2000; however, similar bills did not reach a final vote in the past and local observers do not believe that this bill will be enacted. Christian and other evangelical groups asserted that the draft bills were discriminatory and served to intimidate Christian groups.

Missionaries are allowed to proselytize, although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) voluntarily refrains from proselytizing under an agreement with the Government.

Proselytizing is legal in the country and missionaries of all religious groups are allowed to proselytize all citizens; however, a 1977 law prohibits any person from offering material benefits as an inducement to conversion. It was also illegal to convert persons under 18 years of age unless one parent were an adherent of the religious group seeking to convert the minor. Despite the legality of proselytism, the government has taken a number of steps that encouraged the perception that proselytizing is against government policy. For example, the MOI has detained individuals suspected of being “missionaries,” and required of such persons bail and a pledge to abstain from missionary activity, in addition to refusing them entry into the country. It maintained denunciations of such activity from antimissionary groups like Yad L'Achim in its border control databases. The MOI has also cited proselytism as a reason to deny student, work, and religious visa extensions, as well as to deny permanent residency petitions. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) promised the Knesset in 1986 to refrain from all proselytism voluntarily in conjunction with receiving a building permit for its Jerusalem Center following protests from the Orthodox community.

Societal attitudes toward missionary activities and conversion generally are negative. Israeli Jews frequently are opposed to missionary activity directed at Jews and occasionally are hostile toward Jewish converts to Christianity. Such attitudes often are attributed to the frequent periods in Jewish history in which Jews were coerced to convert to Christianity.

Christian and Muslim Israeli Arab religious leaders complain that missionary activity that leads to conversions frequently disrupts family coherence in their community. Muslims consider any conversion from Islam to be apostasy.

In recent years, evangelical Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Reform and Conservative Jews complained of incidents of harassment, threats, and vandalism directed against their buildings, and other facilities, many of which were committed by two ultra-Orthodox groups, Yad L'Achim and Lev L'Achim. There were no such incidents reported during the period covered by this report.