U.S. report criticizes, commends Israeli religious policy

WASHINGTON -- A new State Department report accuses Israel of discriminatory practices against non-Jewish groups.

The second annual report on international religious freedom, released Tuesday, lists Israel among countries whose governments "implemented laws or regulations that favor certain religions and place others at a disadvantage."

At the same time, the report -- mandated by the International Religious Freedom Act passed by Congress in 1998 -- praises the Jewish state for improvements with respect to religious freedom.

Most non-Jewish citizens in Israel are Arabs, and they are subject to various forms of discrimination, the report charges. The Israeli government does not provide Israeli Arabs, who make up 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities and social services as Jews. Government spending and financial support are proportionally lower in predominantly non-Jewish areas than in Jewish areas.

But, the report notes, "it is not clear that whatever discrepancies exist in the treatment of various communities in Israeli society are based on religion per se."

Relations between different religious groups often are strained, both between Jews and non-Jews, as well as among the different branches of Judaism, the report says.

The report says that evangelical Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses and Reform and Conservative Jews suffered some incidents of harassment, threats and vandalism against their facilities, reportedly by fervently religious Jewish groups. Members of these groups have complained in the past that the police have been slow to investigate such incidents.

Other "instances of ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups verbally or physically harassing Jewish citizens for 'immodest dress' or other violations of their interpretation of religious law are not uncommon," the report said.

The number of incidents increased from July 1999 through June 2000, the period covered by the report, but it did not say by how much.

At the same time, the U.S. report says that there were improvements in religious freedom in Israel. It cites the March 2000 visit of the pope for contributing to increased religious tolerance in Israel.

In that same month, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the government could neither allocate land on the basis of religion or nationality. The case involved the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency for Israel, whose bylaws prohibit the sale or lease of land to non-Jews -- although the report incorrectly linked the case to the Jewish National Fund.

In June 2000, the Israeli government proposed a plan to redress spending for non-Jewish areas, which was substantially below that in predominantly Jewish areas. Also, harassment of Jehovah's Witnesses declined in 2000.

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