Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, an attorney who heads Hiddush, a nonprofit that fights for freedom of and from religion in Israel, called for Health Minister Yael German to "issue regulations which will impose deterring fines on HMOs and other health institutions over the exclusion of women. It's time to make it clear to the HMOs that there is price for surrender, and it will be a painful one," Regev reportedly said.
HMO In Beit Shemesh Publishes Picture Of Every Doctor On Staff – Except For Its Only Female Doctor – In Order To Appease Haredim
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The Meuhedet Health Maintenance Organization has sparked controversy by publishing a brochure to promote its new clinic in Beit Shemesh, a bedroom suburb of both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and a hotbed of tensions between haredim and almost everyone else.
The brochure’s problem?
According to Ynet, the Meuhdet brochure depicts pictures of every male doctor it has but not the clinic’s lone female doctor, Karen Lewis – who is also one of the most senior doctors in the area.
And while the booklet's front cover has a picture of a male doctor, its back cover has a picture of a young boy wearing a black yarmulke, and male doctors are pictured throughout the brochure – no females of any age are depicted anywhere inside the brochure or on its cover.
This type of gender exclusion has already been ruled illegal by Israel’s High Court of Justice, but High Court rulings in Israel are widely ignored – largely because the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely enforces them.
Meuhedet defended its booklet’s exclusion of women.
"As the booklet was issued for a certain clinic whose public is only haredi, and because we respect our clients and their lifestyles, the booklet does not include photos of women, and this does not lessen our respect for the women doctors. Because these women work at the clinic, they know that this does not lessen their professionalism or our pride in them,” the HMO said in statement.
Over the past several decades, haredi publications have increasingly blotted women out of news photographs and ads, with the level of gender exclusion increasing to a point where some publications haredi publications refuse to depict female babies.
Yet 75 years ago, it was common for haredi couples to pose for joint photographs and even senior haredi rabbis were sometimes photographed with their wives.
In recent years, the haredi community’s increasing gender exclusion and segregation has drawn comparisons to the treatment of women by the Taliban and other Islamic extremist groups.
Reform Rabbi Uri Regev, an attorney who heads Hiddush, a nonprofit that fights for freedom of and from religion in Israel, called for Health Minister Yael German to "issue regulations which will impose deterring fines on HMOs and other health institutions over the exclusion of women. It's time to make it clear to the HMOs that there is price for surrender, and it will be a painful one," Regev reportedly said.