Israeli doctors reject new PM Netanyahu allies’ anti-LGBTQ stance
- Healthcare workers are speaking out against those politicians who are calling for legal discrimination against LGBTQ people, saying: ‘we treat everyone’
- Netanyahu’s religious and hardline government, which is being sworn in on Thursday, says there’ll be no curtailing of LGBTQ rights
Israel’s largest medical centre and healthcare workers from hospitals around the country have spoken out against remarks by allies of incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a law to allow discrimination against LGBTQ people in hospitals and businesses.
It was part of a broader blowback against remarks made this week by Religious Zionism politicians calling for legal discrimination against LGBTQ people.
Netanyahu’s new government – the most religious and hard-line in Israel’s history – is made up of ultra-Orthodox parties, an ultranationalist religious faction, and his Likud party. It will be sworn in on Thursday.
In recent days two Netanyahu allies from the ultranationalist Religious Zionism party said that their faction seeks to change an anti-discrimination law in a way that would permit businesses and doctors to deny service to LGBTQ people on the basis of religious belief.
Orit Struck, a Religious Zionist lawmaker, said her party seeks a change to the country’s anti-discrimination law that would include allowing religious healthcare providers to refuse to treat LGBTQ patients “so long as there are enough other doctors to provide care”.
Sheba Medical Centre released a video on Instagram of healthcare workers from around the country on Monday saying “we treat everyone”. Similar statements were made by doctors and administrators at Rambam Medical Centre in Haifa and Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon.