Rabbi Dror Aryeh, the former head of the Noam party, announced the formation of a fund to provide conversion therapy for free after a bill which would outlaw the practice passed its preliminary reading in the Knesset Wednesday.
"I am announcing the establishment of a fund that will fund psychological treatments for struggling youth," Rabbi Aryeh stated. "it will be called 'the choice fund.'"
"The people of Israel have always faced harsh decrees and emerged victorious. The very raising of this stupid bill in the State of Israel, in the [3 weeks], is shocking. But we are not afraid. When the people respond to this it will be en masse," he added.
Rabbi Aryeh blamed the Yamina party for the bill. "This is a sad day for a lot of teenagers who have been deprived of the freedom to choose to and to establish a normal home with a father and mother and children. How is it they have been abandoned? There are also religious MKs in Yamina. Shaked, where is your 'mother's mercy?' Why are you denying them the right to seek psychological help? Who will protect them? They have been condemned to be cannon fodder for the LGBT organizations of the New Israel Fund."
"There is nothing Jewish or normal about this law," he said. "It is coercion which takes away patients' freedom of choice. It violates human dignity and liberty."
"All the rabbis who supported Yamina in the previous elections should see now who they were really representing, how Bennett and Shaked abandoned the troubled youth and allowed a law which is a death sentence to their ability to start a normal family. This is a decree that that will only increase suicides and depression among the youth. Sexual reassignment surgery? That's ok. Psychological treatment? That's forbidden," Rabbi Aryeh said.