JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Prime Minister-elect Binyamin Netanyahu was quick to condemn a controversial bill submitted by MK Orit Struck (Religious Zionism) regarding the Discrimination Law. Struck proposed that religious people should not be obliged to provide service if it contravenes their halachic conscience. The bill could have many ramifications and sparked an uproar in the Israeli public. Theoretically according to the proposal, doctors could refuse treatment to certain patients on halachic grounds and hotels could refuse to host LQBTQ people out of halachic sensitivity to their status.
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In a 2012 shiur, Shas leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef discussed the situation of “G-d-fearing doctors” who are forced to treat gentiles on Shabbat. Rabbi Ovadia said that the principle of Pikuach Nefesh does not apply to a gentile and therefore Jews cannot perform Torah- oriented prohibitions to save a gentile. Rabbi Ovadia added that the Chafetz Chaim in Mishna Berura ruled that religious doctors who treat gentiles on Shabbat are considered desecrators of Shabbat. However the reality is that they are forced to treat them, as their license requires them not to discriminate against any person.
Rabbi Ovadia suggested that “if a doctor needs to perform an operation, he should do it with another doctor, so that at least it would be “two performing one act”, a rabbinic prohibition. He added that despite the prohibition on these actions, they are permitted for doctors “to prevent hatred”, in order that gentiles should not hate Jews for discriminating against them.
The current bill would enable doctors to decide whether they will treat someone on Shabbat based on their halachic beliefs.
The health establishment also condemned Struck’s proposal. Prof. Tzion Chagai, head of the Medical Union, told Ynet that Struck’s proposal was “miserable” and said that “we as doctors have medical ethics and the Hippocratic oath requires us to treat every patient irrespective of religion, race, gender or sexual identity. We cannot diverge from this even if there were laws discriminating against certain groups.”
Naamat Women’s Rights leader Chagit Peer said that “the statements of some members of the coalition are reminiscent of dark regimes from the previous century. The
In the wake of public outrage, Netanyahu also strongly rejected Struck’s bill. “I totally reject Struck’s words,” Netanyahu said. “We cannot discriminate LQBTQ or harm the rights of Israeli citizens. In the country I am leading there will never be a situation where a person, whether he is Arab, Chareidi, LGBTQ or any other denomination, will enter a hotel and not receive service or go to a doctor and not receive service. It didn’t happen in my 15 years as prime minister and will not happen now.”
Religious Zionism later explained that the proposal “will not apply to doctors but rather to those who provide services, such as a barber who refuses to work on women or a doctor in a private practice. MK Simcha Rothman claimed that the Freedom Of Occupation law allows people to decide who they provide service for and suffer the economic consequences.
The doctors are obligated to treat patients and try to bring them to health. Not mutilate them and harm them.
Though the us Supreme Court has upheld a persons right to refuse to provide service if it’s against their religious or conscience.
But in isreal it’s not?
My body my choice. No one can force me against my will to inject any medication or vaccine into MY BODY!!!
This is a typical Netanyahu to whom we all have become accustomed. When he is running, he is REALLY trying to sound like a decent man. Once safety in the office, he quickly transitions into a centrist. Works every time.
Think of Netanyahu as transcentrist.
The start of a Taliban country
This rebuke of Struck and also Rothman by Netanyahu should have been affirmed instead.
even a so called right winger like BIBI is still an atheist Zionist at heart as he is supporting toeiva which brings destruction to the world. People dont realize how toeiva is a religion of the Gdless decadent west that Putin at least is aganst which gives him a tremendous zchus while the meshumad Zelensky did some shows dressed as a woman
“…two performing one act…” doesn’t help when the action could be performed by one person alone.
Can someone please elaborate what the issue with drs are?
Does it mean that if a gay person has say stomach cancer, drs should have the right to treat him? If so then yes Bibi has a point. Or does it mean that say someone got aids because he had a gay relationship that he then deserves to be denied treatment? I suspect its the latter. if so we have a vaild point.
Now lets go to hotels. Does this include say a guy denying to serve a gay man pizza because he is gay? Then Bibi is correct. Or does it mean that since hotels are a common meeting place for zenus, owners have the right to say I won’t lend out my room as a tool to commit sin? Kind of like his right to deny prostitutes. I suspect once again the later.
The line is clear to me, if by me serving the gay guy I am providing a tool that enables him to commit that sin, its a basic democrtic right for me to have the right to deny him based on my religon. If however, I am not provding any tools for the gay men, I am just selling him pizza, then I should not have a right to discriminate. I think thats true even in the USA, certainly in a Jewish state as well