The Torah in Bamidbar 13-14, describes the story of the 12 spies in which 10 of them deceit Am Israel speaking slander about the land. This causes the people to fear and cry for no reason, leading to the punishment of having to wait 40 more years in the desert until a their generation was replaced by a new one.
After reading this, it becomes clear that it's an extremely serious sin to talk bad about the promised land. But this got me thinking, to what extent is it wrong to talk bad about this land nowadays? There are two hypothetical situations which I thought about:
1)Let's say I'm talking with some friends about studying/living in Israel, can I say, for example, that I think the weather there is bad, or that it's not as pretty as another country?
2)What about saying that the economical or political situation in Israel is bad? Or that the people there are not nice, for example?
Note: The contrast between the two points is that the first one refers to the physical aspect of the land, while the other refers to ideological or social aspects of the State of Israel. Also, just want to make clear that I don't hold this views of the country, it's actually the opposite in both aspects, this is just an hypothetical question.
After reading this, it becomes clear that it's an extremely serious sin to talk bad about the promised land.
Not necessarily. It could be that the problem was more context specific. For example, speaking against the land, when God is taking you there.