Admit it? I'm rather proud of it.
Israel is a nation of laws. If someone can not respect Israel's laws, yes they should be jailed. If evangelical Christians prey on our children trying to convert them I want them jailed if they are Israeli and deported if they are not.
harmless "ecumenical" Christians (the latter being the very ones who lobby loudest for the Palestinians)
Really? All ecumenical Christians (by far the majority in the U.S.) lobby loudly for the Palestinians? If so, how do you account for the huger percentage of Americans who support Israel? The numbers that support Israel far exceed the evangelical and Jewish populations combined.
I actually thought many Freepers support Israel because of our shared national interests in fighting the war on terrorism rather than any religious motivation. I thought shared values and interests and a mutual love for freedom and democracy had something to do with it. Silly me.
As I've said many times, not just on this thread, I DEEPLY DISTRUST the so-called support of Israel by evangelical Christians because it comes with a huge string attached. I think GoldStateGOP put it best: I don't see the difference between the Arab who wants to destroy Judaism by killing us and you who wish to destroy Judaism by converting us. You still both want to destroy Judaism. As such, the price of your support is just too damned high. Indeed, I don't call it support at all, and I consider you, as a group, a most dangerous enemy.
Thankfully I know most Americans, even most American conservatives, are not evangelicals, and indeed many evangelicals don't feel a need to come to Israel to convert Israelis. Those that do, yep, throw them in jail or toss them out on their ears.
I have spoken with evangelical Christians on several occasions and found the support for Israel of those individuals to be sincerely held and with no strings attached. I am grateful for the support of Israel shown by the evangelical community, and I endorse the actions of people like Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein in providing an address for those evangelical Christians who want to show their support for Israel.
Of course, my open embrace of the supportive evangelical Christian community does not include those who try to convert me -- or more significantly, my co-religionists who have not yet come of age or are otherwise vulnerable in their lives.
I don't want to see them jailed in Israel, since they will be thrown into an environment filled with vulnerable Jews. I would like to see Israel pack them onto the next plane and get them out of the Jewish state.
I don't agree with you that most evangelical Christians would initiate a plot to try and convert Jews. However, I don't live in Israel and it may be that more of the evangelicals who go there have a plan to missionize, so I can't comment about your own experience in Israel. Outside of missyme and a few others on Free Republic, I have been solicited for conversion on just two occasions that I recall, one in Philadelphia and one in London, both 20 or more years ago. This has not been enough to color the respect and admiration that I have for the values of the evangelical community and what I view as their honestly-held love of Israel and the Jewish people.
By the way, I appreciate very much your joining this thread and adding "another view" of why we Jews find wannabe soul-snatching so repugnant.