Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming minister has suggested that Israeli doctors should be allowed to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients on religious grounds. The remark made by Israeli Knesset member Orit Strock has heightened fears that the new government poses an unprecedented threat to gay rights.
The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has weighed in to condemn the growing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, saying: “The racist pronouncements of recent days against the LGBTQ community and other sectors of the public make me extremely worried and concerned.” The president, whose post is largely ceremonial but who commands a degree of authority, added that such rhetoric undermined Israeli “democratic and moral values”.
Netanyahu called Strook’s remarks “unacceptable” and said his new government will not pose a threat to gay rights. But critics said he is too weak to control his ultra-nationalist and ultraorthodox coalition partners, pushing Israel to increasingly adopt what they view as divinely ordained religious heritage, reported The Guardian. In a radio interview on Sunday, Orit Strook, of the Religious Zionist party, said that Israeli doctors would be able to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients in accordance with coalition agreements that provide for amending an anti-discrimination law.
Strook specified that a doctor who has to provide some sort of treatment that goes against his religious beliefs “as long as there are enough other doctors who can provide the treatment”, one should not force him.
After sharp criticism of her remarks, Strook later tweeted that she had been referring to medical procedures that would be religiously objectionable, not LGBTQ individuals. However, she did not specify which procedures they might be.
“It is not about the identity of the patient at all, but about the essence of the treatment. If there is a medical treatment that is contrary to halakha [Jewish religious law], an observant doctor will not be forced to give it, regardless of the patient’s identity,” she said while adding, “The State of Israel is the state of the Jewish people, a people that gave up its life for its religious faith. It is unacceptable that, having established a country after 2,000 years of exile and of laying down their lives for the Torah, this country will call religious faith ‘discrimination.’”
Strook’s party is advancing an amendment to an anti-discrimination law that allows exceptions to service providers where religious beliefs of the provider would be violated. This principle is also specified in Netanyahu’s coalition agreement with the ultra-Orthodox Torah Judaism party, reported The Guardian.
Strock’s fellow Religious Zionism lawmaker Simcha Rotman, in an interview, said that this also meant a hotel owner could refuse to rent a room to a gay couple. “Freedom of occupation means that someone is allowed to act not nicely to the assortment of customers and to boycott or not to boycott them,” she said.
Netanyahu reiterated a pledge that his government would not harm the LGBTQ community.
Ofer Newman, the chief executive of Israel Gay Youth, termed the statements and legislative plan “dangerous” and predicted more violence and abuse against his community.
Alon Shachar, executive director of Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, said that the changes that the new government is seeking will lead to a situation in which LGBTQ people return to living in a reality of fear, violence and racism.
