It’s hilarious the way that Christians overreact to everything. Take this recent story out of Israel. The small country is getting rather tired of all of these local Churches taking up valuable real-estate and paying nothing back in taxes. Well, that’s something they are planning on changing, and this threat to the Church’s pocketbook is sending all of their hucksters in a tiff.

“We believe these efforts represent a coordinated attack on the Christian presence in the Holy Land,” wrote the heads of the Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches. “In this time, when the whole world, and the Christian world in particular, are constantly following the events in Israel, we find ourselves, once again, dealing with an attempt by authorities to drive the Christian presence out of the Holy Land.”

First of all, I think we can all agree that it would take a lot more than paying for your fair share to drive Christians out of the “Holy Land”. The church claims that the money they save goes to pay for a number of different charitable services. I call bullshit. Like most faiths, they might devote a paltry sum to helping others, but it’s clear to everyone where the money is going: in giant coffers that continue to enrich religious weirdos. In fact, these churches never even bothered to properly register as charities, and instead just benefited from the blanket tax immunity that religions benefit by default.

To compound their little scam, these religious organizations open up cafes and other businesses, still claiming thax exemption for these for profit enterprises. This grift is one of the favorite tactic for American religious groups like Mormonism, which now boasts riches in excess of 100 billion as a result of these financial shenanigan’s. Israel is obviously looking for money to pay for their little war, and I’m sure they are tired of seeing these Christian organization benefit from their largess. I personally welcome the move. There is no universal law that demands that all religious organizations benefit from not paying their fair share. Considering how much money flows through some of these groups, it’s actuall perverse to continue to allow them operate with such impunity.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens. Israel’s government had already proposed this, but backed down after pushback. Now, things are different. They are engaged in a conflict with no end in sight, and I’m sure money is getting real tight. That alone means there will be more pressure to make churches financially accountable, like the rest of us.
https://apnews.com/article/israel-christians-taxes-church-palestinians-ac106bb1d49dd3d0d96613af53d4fcf7