Israeli Politician Wants to Allow Doctors to Deny Care to LGBTQ People
Agreements between Likud and some of its future governing partners indicate plans to amend the law to permit religious-based refusals.
A far-right Israeli lawmaker who is set to be a minister in the new Israeli government has suggested that doctors should be allowed to refuse to provide treatments that violate their religious beliefs, as long as another doctor is willing to provide the same treatment.
Orit Strock, a member of the Knesset, or Israeli parliament, from the Religious Zionist party, argued that doctors may have religious objections to performing some procedures or prescribing treatments, such as providing fertility treatment for unmarried women, for example.
Strock said that religiously observant Israelis should be allowed to exercise those objections, in keeping with legislation proposed by her party that would allow businesses and private enterprises to refuse service based on religious objections, reports the Times of Israel.
“If a doctor is asked to give any type of treatment to someone that violates his religious faith, if there is another doctor who can do it then you can’t force them to provide treatment,” Strock, who is slated to become the minister for National Projects under the coalition government formed by the leading conservative Likud party and other right-wing parties, told Kan public radio.
“Anti-discrimination laws are just and right when they create a just, equal, open and inclusive society,” she added. “But there is a certain deviation in which religious faith is trampled upon and we want to amend this.”
According to Strock, the legislation her party is planning on advancing as part of the new government would allow providers to refuse service if they feel providing a particular service would violate their religious faith — as long as there is a similar service available to those they turn away within reasonable geographic range.
“The State of Israel is the state of the Jewish people, a people that gave up its life for its religious faith,” she said. ‘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.'”
Strock’s comments were denounced by several liberal politicians, and even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu distanced himself from her remarks, denying that the new governing coalition would allow such a law permitting denial of care.
However, according to Kan, the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, the coalition agreements state the intention of the new government to amend the country’s existing discrimination law to allow business owners to refuse service to customers based on their religious beliefs.
“MK Orit Strock’s words are unacceptable to me and my colleagues in Likud,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “The coalition agreements do not allow for discrimination against LGBT people or for harming the right of any citizen in Israel to receive service. Likud will guarantee that there will be no harm to LGBT people or any Israeli citizen.”
We cannot discriminate against LGBTQ or harm the rights of Israeli citizens. There will be no situation in a country that I lead that any person, either a him or a her, LGBTQ, Arab, ultra-Orthodox or any other, will go to a hotel and not be served or go to a doctor and not be treated. This hasn’t happened in the last 15 years of my premiership, and it won’t happen now.”
Despite Netanyahu’s comments, Kan journalist Michael Shemesh tweeted an image of the clause in question of the coalition agreement, which states that the law against discrimination will be amended “in a way that will prevent injury to a private business which refrains from providing service or a product due to religious faith, on condition that it is a service or product which is not unique and for which an alternative can be found nearby and for a similar price.”
That clause reportedly appears in every coalition agreement between the Likud and the other parties of the incoming government, although only the deal between Likud and Agudat Yisrael, one half of the United Torah Judaism faction, has been formally signed thus far.
Current Israeli law prohibit discrimination by those providing public services or products on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and other protected characteristics, and those found in violation of the law can be fined.
Strock’s fellow Religious Zionist MK Simcha Rothman defended the proposal to allow business owners to discriminate in to whom they provide services based on their religious beliefs, although he refused to say how one would determine such purported beliefs were genuine.
“The law states that a business cannot discriminate for a whole variety of reasons. This [proposed] bill seeks not to abolish the general prohibition on discrimination but says that when there is a religious obstacle for someone to do something, it will be permissible for him to withhold service — rather than force him to do something that contravenes his beliefs,” Rothman said.
Regarding Strock’s assertion that medical professionals should be able to deny care, Professor Zion Hagay, the chair of the Israel Medical Association, insisted that doctors in Israel would defy attempts to permit discrimination against patients.
“Doctors in Israel are committed to the doctor’s oath and will not allow any person or any law to change this fact,” Zagay tweeted. “We will not allow foreign or political considerations to be introduced between doctors and patients. The health system has always been an island of sanity, a symbol of coexistence, a place in which Jews and Arabs work shoulder to shoulder, with the value of equality a guiding light for them.
“The Hebrew doctor’s oath says explicitly, ‘You shall help a sick person since they are sick, be they a foreigner or a non-Jew, and be they a citizen, despicable or honorable.’ And in Maimonides’ doctor’s prayer it is written, ‘I will only see the human in a sick person.’ That is how it always was and how it will be forever,” Hagay added.
According to The Associated Press, Tel Aviv-based Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital in Israel, released a video on Instagram featuring health care workers from around the country saying: “We treat everyone.” Similar statements were made by doctors and administrators at Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa and Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.
Hila Peer, the chair of Aguda, the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, condemned Strock and Rothman’s respective comments, calling the proposed revisions to the nondiscrimination law “un-Jewish” and disgraceful and demanding that Netanyahu oppose such changes.
“MKs Strock and Rothman want to mark out LGBT people so that we’ll remain in our homes as in the dark days of humanity. We will not agree to this in any way,” Peer said.
In response to criticism, Strock said: “No one intends to discriminate against LGBT people because of their identity or what they identify with. Not in medical treatment, or any other manner. LGBT people are human beings deserving of respect and love like anyone else.”
However, she insisted that if there is “medical treatment that contravenes Jewish law, a religiously observant doctor will not be forced to give it, regardless of the identity of the patient.”
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