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What the Pew Report Got Wrong about Religious Restrictions in Israel
(JTA) Rabbi Avi Shafran - A recently released Pew Research Center report about global restrictions on religion found that Jews are "harassed in 87 countries...the third-highest figure for any religion." The report also claimed that "Israel has almost as many religious restrictions as Iran." Yet the only specific description of religious restrictions in Israel contained in the 126-page report was a single sentence: "In Israel, drivers who operated cars near ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods on the Sabbath reported incidents of harassment." Such behavior, not sanctioned in any way by the state, does not merit Israel's inclusion among a list of countries where religious minorities are interned, as in China, or where police have raided religious minorities' homes and places of worship, as in Iran.