Designated Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday issued a rare rebuke of his new coalition allies for saying they would advance laws allowing discrimination against LGBTQ people, and pledging that there would be no harm done to their rights by his upcoming government.
Netanyahu is set to form the most ultranationalist and religious government in Israel’s history between his Likud movement and several openly anti-LGBTQ parties. This has raised fears among Israel’s LGBTQ community that the new government, expected to take office in the coming week, could roll back gains they have made in the past few years.
Orit Struck, a Religious Zionist member of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, said her party seeks a change to the country’s anti-discrimination law that would include allowing people to avoid acts that go against their religious beliefs, meaning LGBTQ people could be discriminated against in hospitals.
Photo: Reuters
Struck said in an interview on Sunday with Kan public radio that “so long as there are enough other doctors to provide care,” religious healthcare providers should be able refuse to treat LGBTQ people.
Simcha Rotman, another member of the party, said that private business owners, such as hotel operators, should be allowed to refuse service to LGBTQ people “if it harms their religious feelings.”
Netanyahu issued two statements repudiating Struck’s comments.
Netanyahu said that Struck’s remarks “are unacceptable to me and to members of Likud,” and that the coalition agreement “does not allow discrimination against LGBTQ or harming their right to receive services like all other Israeli citizens.”
As the controversy continued to rage, he later issued a second videotaped statement saying that he “completely rejects” Struck’s remarks.
“In the country that I will lead, there will be no situation where a person — whether he is LGBT, Arab or ultra-Orthodox or any other person — will enter a hotel and not receive service, enter a doctor and not receive service,” he said.
The controversy came days after the Yediot Ahronot daily reported that another member of the Religious Zionism alliance, the far-right Noam faction, once compiled a list of LGBTQ journalists and said that the “LGBT media” amounted to a lobby of “incomparable strength.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog had his own concerns. Herzog’s is a largely figurehead position who is meant to serve as a moral compass and unifying force for the country.
“A situation in which Israeli citizens feel threatened due to their identity or faith undermines the basic democratic and moral values of the State of Israel,” Herzog said. “The racist statements heard in recent days against the LGBT community and in general against different sectors and publics — worry and disturb me a lot.”
It was the latest sign of trouble for Netanyahu’s emerging coalition, which is dominated by far-right and Orthodox partners pushing for dramatic changes that could alienate large swaths of the Israeli public, raise the risk of conflict with the Palestinians and put Israel on a collision course with some of its closest supporters, including the US and the Jewish American community.
The outgoing government took several steps to advance LGBTQ rights, including rescinding a ban on blood donations by gay men, streamlining access to gender reassignment surgery and taking a clear stand against “conversion therapy,” the scientifically discredited practice of “converting” LGBTQ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.
The incoming government includes two Orthodox parties that do not allow female candidates, and Religious Zionism, an umbrella movement whose leaders are vocally homophobic.
Members of the LGBTQ community serve openly in Israel’s military and parliament, and many popular artists and entertainers as well as several former government ministers are openly gay.
Brazil, the world’s largest Roman Catholic country, saw its Catholic population decline further in 2022, while evangelical Christians and those with no religion continued to rise, census data released on Friday by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) showed. The census indicated that Brazil had 100.2 million Roman Catholics in 2022, accounting for 56.7 percent of the population, down from 65.1 percent or 105.4 million recorded in the 2010 census. Meanwhile, the share of evangelical Christians rose to 26.9 percent last year, up from 21.6 percent in 2010, adding 12 million followers to reach 47.4 million — the highest figure
A Chinese scientist was arrested while arriving in the US at Detroit airport, the second case in days involving the alleged smuggling of biological material, authorities said on Monday. The scientist is accused of shipping biological material months ago to staff at a laboratory at the University of Michigan. The FBI, in a court filing, described it as material related to certain worms and requires a government permit. “The guidelines for importing biological materials into the US for research purposes are stringent, but clear, and actions like this undermine the legitimate work of other visiting scholars,” said John Nowak, who leads field
‘THE RED LINE’: Colombian President Gustavo Petro promised a thorough probe into the attack on the senator, who had announced his presidential bid in March Colombian Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, a possible candidate in the country’s presidential election next year, was shot and wounded at a campaign rally in Bogota on Saturday, authorities said. His conservative Democratic Center party released a statement calling it “an unacceptable act of violence.” The attack took place in a park in the Fontibon neighborhood when armed assailants shot him from behind, said the right-wing Democratic Center, which was the party of former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe. The men are not related. Images circulating on social media showed Uribe Turbay, 39, covered in blood being held by several people. The Santa Fe Foundation
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
RSS