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Worse than the rest of the middle east? Last I checked Christians were allowed to prostelytize in Israel, while it's illegal in Turkey, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, the West Bank, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the UAE, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Open Doors is a nonprofit that tracks persecution of Christians: Israel did not break the top 50 globally, compared to Saudi Arabia at 12th, Yemen at 3rd, Iraq at 17th, Syria at 18th, Oman at 32nd, Iran at 9th, Egypt at 40th, Turkey at 45th, and Jordan at the #50 spot.
My point being, the Middle East is very hostile to the West in general, and Israel is by far the most pro-Western country in the region and the safest place in the Middle East to be a practicing Christian.
This is, as I understand it, largely correct.
Israel certainly isn't wholly innocent of persecuting Christians. Israel is, intentionally, a country where the normative religion is Judaism, and everything else is subject to a measure of hostility. It is harder to be an Arab Christian in Israel than it is to be a Jew, and obviously that has something to do with the state's constitution. It is, however, still better to be a a Christian in Israel than to be a Muslim, and perhaps more importantly for comparative purposes, it's better to be an Israeli Christian than it is to be a Christian in almost any other Middle Eastern nation.
Again, not perfect, there are difficulties, and Israel is by no one's standards a shining beacon of religious neutrality and liberalism. But Israel is very easily one of the least-bad countries in the region.
As I point out every time this comes up, Christians in Israel are a model minority very similar to eg Chinese-Americans. Israeli Christians generally outperform the Jewish minority but have less political representation, and this is a very common situation in first world countries.
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I don’t see how the presence of non-Jews in Israel can be anything other than a transient state. Jewish nationalism is extremely strongly encoded in its institutions, culture, and constitution such that there will always be an impending threat to its minorities of some sort of fascistic upwelling towards the expulsion of minorities and purification of the state, even if presently this nascent urge (being fundamental to non permeable forms of nationalism) is held in abeyance.
Perhaps, but what you fear may happen in Israel is actively happening in just about every other country in the Middle East. Islam has long agreed that the presence of Dhimmi in the House of Submission must be a transient state.
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