The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense subcommittee on Foreign Policy urged the Israeli government Tuesday to garner support from Evangelical Christians around the world, and to strengthen its connection to those outside of the US.

A panel of academics and professionals from Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Services will meet Thursday to discuss the possibility of creating legislation to legally outlaw sects and cultish practices in Israel.

The one-day symposium will explore the ethical dilemma of curbing such groups and attempt to sharpen the definition of what constitutes a cult.

The Israeli government must create comprehensive legislation to combat the phenomenon of cults in Israel and provide a clearer definition of what constitutes cult activity, a report published Monday by a special Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs task force has recommended.

Authored by the team of professionals that dealt with the fallout of Israel’s largest cult to date – that headed by Tel Aviv polygamist Goel Ratzon – the 48-page report focuses on four main areas: preventive action, therapeutic intervention, legislation and government involvement.

Pilgrims are flowing back to the traditional site of Jesus’ baptism on the Jordan River as Israel removes 40-year-old land mines and improves the area, but barbed wire and armed soldiers testify to the area’s tense past.

Located in a closed military area on the West Bank a few kilometers from Jericho, the site — Qasr el Yahud — has been revered since the fourth or fifth century as the place where John the Baptist recognized Jesus as the Messiah

Representatives of a Messianic Jewish community in the southern Israeli town of Arad said Monday, March 21, they face “increased persecution” by ultra-Orthodox Jews who accuse the believers of missionary activities and want them to leave Israel.

In 2008, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that Messianic Jews have the same rights regarding automatic citizenship as Jews who do not believe in Jesus as the Messiah.

Dramatic changes may be coming in Israel: Demographers now estimate about a third of last year’s Jewish babies were born into the ultra-Orthodox community, an insular and devout minority that has long been at loggerheads with the rest of the increasingly modern and prosperous country.

During its six decades of existence, Israel has maintained a shaky alliance with its ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority that allowed most religious men to avoid military service, attend separate schools and get paid by the state to study the Bible instead of entering the work force.

But this system is coming under new scrutiny, pressured by a series of Supreme Court rulings, an ambitious education minister and the hugely unpopular cost of sustaining a fast-growing ultra-Orthodox population that has few skills for the 21st century and now accounts for one in four Jewish first graders – and growing.

Israel’s government is shelving a bill on Jewish conversions that drew sharp criticism from American Jews.

The bill would have strengthened the control of Orthodox rabbis in Israel over the sensitive process of Jewish conversions.

A congregation of Messianic Jews in Israel who recently lost a lawsuit against an ultra-orthodox Jewish group that allegedly incited a riot against them has decided not to appeal their case, the church’s pastor has said.

After meeting with his congregation and members of the Messianic community in Israel, Howard Bass, pastor of Yeshua’s Inheritance church in Beer Sheva, said that although there are strong legal grounds for an appeal, he believes it is not God’s will to do so.

Security forces of Israel’s immigration service broke into an African church in Tel Aviv damaging the ceiling and detaining several worshipers, news reports said Tuesday, December 22.

Immigration officers gathered everyone on the premises and detained those who did not hold papers with a request for refugee status, Haaretz reported. It was not immediately clear how many people were detained.

Many people ask why there are so few Israeli casualties in comparison with the Palestinian death toll. It’s because Israel’s first priority is the safety of its citizens, which is why there are shelters and warning systems in Israeli towns. If Hamas can dig tunnels, it can certainly build shelters. Instead, it prefers to use women and children as human shields while its leaders rush into hiding.

And then there are the clarion calls for a cease-fire. These words, which come so easily, have proven to be a recipe for disaster. Hamas uses the cease-fire as a time-out to rearm and smuggle even more deadly weapons so the next time, instead of hitting Sderot and Ashkelon, they can target Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. [video]

According to Daniel Rossing, former adviser to the Religious Affairs Ministry on Christian affairs and director of a Jerusalem center for Christian-Jewish dialogue, there has been an increase in the number of such incidents recently, “as part of a general atmosphere of lack of tolerance in the country.”

An American evangelical pastor and his wife who have been living in Israel for nearly two decades have been ordered to leave the country within two weeks, after their request for permanent residency was turned down, officials said on Thursday.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which has almost five million members in the US, took a step toward a partial boycott of Israeli goods at its 2007 Churchwide Assembly in Chicago last week.

Israeli cable television is planning to drop a major Christian TV network which runs missionary advertisements directed at Jews. The move has prompted threats of legal action by the station’s representatives.