Israel

Exact numbers are not known, but it's estimated that as of 2014, there are 300,000 to 500,000 gay people in Israel, not including undocumented gay Palestinians living in Israel illegally (Escaping anti-gay discrimination and violence is is the number one reason Palestinians cross the border illegally).

Illegal gay Palestinian immigrants may add thousands more to that number.

Answer 1

Maybe because Israel is a Jewish Nation. It would make sense that most Jews would want to live safely and securely in a nation that supports their values, if they could.

Note:

Israel is the nation with more Jews among its population than any other nation, but it's not true that more than half the Jews in the world live there. According to figures as of mid-2009, Israel still comprises less than 50% of the world's Jewish population, with the rest spread among roughly 135 other nations.

Answer 2

First of all, most of the Jews don't live in Israel. The Jews living in Israel are still slightly less than 50% of the Jews in the world. But living in Israel has a great traditional value in Judaism, and Israel actively and openly, both religiously and secularly, welcomes Jewish immigrants, and it's expected that the Jews in Israel will be a majority of those in the world very soon.

The reason is very simple, without bending your ear or beating around the bush: Israel is an openly, proactively, ambitiously Jewish state, the place where Jews historically, culturally, spiritually, and secularly belong, and the only place in the world where Jews are welcome, period.

But still, for a short while, slightly less than half of the world's Jews live in Israel. The other slightly-more-than-half of the world's Jews are still spread out among 135 other countries.

Next subject:

This question has been coupled with the question "Why can only Jews live in Israel ?" ...

a question that cries out for a clear response.

It's true that Jews are a majority of Israel's population. But it is not true that any category is prevented from living in Israel. That means no categorical restrictions. Of all places on Earth, Israel understands the evil of restrictions against people based on what they are.

Israel has no official state religion, and no group, class, or category of persons is barred from Israeli residence and citizenship because of what they are. Residents, land owners, home owners, business owners, voters, full passport-holding citizens of Israel include Muslims, Christians, Palestinians, Druze, Seventh Day Adventists, Eastern religionists, non-religious, atheists, blacks, whites, yellows, ethnic Orientals, ethnic Arabs, all citizens have the vote, including their men and their women, and send their voting representatives to their local governments and to Israel's parliament.

The court that found a former president of Israel guilty of corruption and sentenced him to serve a prison term included a Jew, a woman, and a Muslim Arab, and there was no revolution or coup d'état preceding the verdict!

Is it necessary to point out how, in these respects, Israel is quite unlike other

countries in the region ?

There are several commonalities between these countries. They include that:

• They all have had coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea
• Parts of all of these countries were part of the Roman Empire in 100 C.E., under Christian control in 400 C.E., and under Islamic control by 1400 C.E.
• They are all, at least partly, in the northern and eastern hemispheres.
• They are all members or observers of the Union for the Mediterranean.

Until the fourth century, there was surprisingly little interest in knowing of the places associated with Jesus in the Bible. Then, Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, visited Palestine and identified, to her own satisfaction, every important place associated with the life of Jesus. They include the very place in Bethlehem where Jesus was born and the places in Jerusalem where he was crucified and buried. These are now important places of pilgrimage, although New Testament scholars say they are unlikely to have been the actual places where these events occurred.

The veneration of places and people subsequent to the close of the New Testament is a pecularly Catholic practice. Roman Catholics are always on the lookout for miracles and for places where miracles might have occurred, whereas non-Catholics are sceptical of these claims. Other sites include:

· Lourdes, where Bernadette Soubirous reported seeing a "small young lady" who came to be identified as Mary, mother of Jesus. The lack of any corroboration by other witnesses saw the local clergy ridicule her claims but then, as pilgrims began to arrive, they accepted them as true. The Catholic Church soon saw the commercial possibilities of these apparitions and aggressively marketed Lourdes as a place of pilgrimage. · Fatima in Portugal, where once again the Virgin Mary appeared to three small children. · Loreto, where there is a small house that Catholic tradition says was raised from its foundations in Nazareth and transported by angels across the Mediterranean that in May, 1291. Apart from certain documents considered spurious, no writer can be shown to have heard of the miraculous translation of the Holy House before 1472, which is 180 years after the event is supposed to have taken place. This holy site is now considered by some to be a minor embarrasment for the Catholic Church. · Guadalupe in Mexico where, according to the Guadalupe tradition, a poor Indian named Juan Diego saw a vision of the Virgin Mary on 9 December 1531 asking him to have a chapel built in her honour in Tepeyac, Mexico. The story seems to have remained unknown for over one hundred years until it appeared in a remarkable book by a priest named Miguel Sanchez. In 1996, Guillermo Schulenberg, the abbot of the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City opposed the canonisation of Juan Diego and questioned his historic existence, saying that Juan Diego was "a symbol, not a reality."

For more information, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/catholicism/visions-of-the-virgin-mary