ISRAEL: Fears that the new government poses an unprecedented threat to homosexual rights have grown after one of Benjamin Netanyahu’s incoming ministers suggested that Israeli doctors should be allowed to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients on religious grounds.
The anti-LGBTQ rhetoric is on the rise. Speaking about it, Israel president Isaac Herzog said, “The racist pronouncements of recent days against the LGBTQ community and other sectors of the public make me extremely worried and concerned.” The president, who holds a primarily ceremonial but significant amount of power.” He added that such language threatened Israeli “moral and democratic norms.
According to coalition agreements that call for altering an anti-discrimination statute and the spirit of legislation her party is preparing, Orit Strook of the Religious Zionist party suggested that Israeli doctors would be free to refuse treatment to LGBTQ patients.
Strook, a prominent member of the illegal Israeli settlement community in Hebron, later tweeted that she had actually been talking about medical procedures that might be considered offensive by some religious traditions, not LGBTQ people, in response to harsh condemnation of her comments.
While stating that it was impossible to make a Jewish doctor break Jewish law in a Jewish state “that was established after 2000 years of exile due to Jews who sacrificed their lives for the fulfilment of Torah,” stating that it was impossible to make a Jewish doctor break Jewish law in a Jewish state
The anti-discrimination statute is being amended by Strook’s party to allow service providers to make exceptions when doing so would offend their religious views. Additionally, Netanyahu’s coalition deals with the ultra-Orthodox Torah Judaism party, including this tenet.
Simcha Rothman, another Religious Zionist lawmaker, stated on Sunday that the modification would allow hotel owners to reject rooms to LGBT organizations.
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