Nearly four years after Israel’s Education Ministry issued unprecedented guidelines meant to protect LGBTQ students, the ministry is now moving to revise them under pressure from anti-LGBTQ groups. The project has been assigned to psychologist Hila Mordechai, who has said gender identity is a “symptom of a passing illness.”
In a meeting with investigators posing as parents of a 14-year-old boy struggling with gender dysphoria, Mordechai rejected the teen’s gender identity and urged the parents not to validate his feelings. “Usually when this happens in adolescence, the overwhelming majority of cases pass,” she said. “If you do not encourage it and do not allow it... it is a symptom, like a fever or something under the surface. You need to see what is underneath, not necessarily an LGBTQ identity of one kind or another.” She also said, “If we do not want to worsen this dysphoria, then we should not cooperate with it. We need to say clear things, that he is a boy and that is not something that can change.”
Mordechai further told them, “You will not pretend for him that reality is different,” and referred the parents for more advice from figures known for opposing the LGBTQ community, including Rabbi Yigal Levinstein and Dr. Tal Kroitru. The review comes as new data from the LGBTQ youth organization IGY for 2024 shows fewer students are coming out to school staff, 11% in 2024 compared with 21% in 2016, while reports of verbal abuse and LGBTQ-phobic remarks from educators have increased. More than a quarter of LGBTQ students said they felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation.
The Education Ministry did not respond. Mordechai said the report presents “a deliberately distorted picture” and defended her work as clinically and professionally based, adding that any harm to her reputation would be dealt with legally. IGY said it was unacceptable for the ministry to let someone who allegedly sends youth to conversion therapy with Levinstein, and who denies LGBTQ identity itself, rewrite the only document meant to protect LGBTQ youth in the school system. The group called on Education Minister to intervene immediately and stop the process, while making tolerance and protection programs mandatory in every school.
