Yeshivas declared a boycott: Not to donate blood to MDA because it canceled 'Father and Mother'"

October 27, 2021   

Extraordinary boycott: Starting yesterday (Tuesday), hundreds of students in religious yeshivahs - as well as many Haredim - are refusing to donate blood, due to a change in the MDA medical questionnaire forms, where "father's name" and "mother's name" appear as "Parent 1" and "Parent 2", as an act of support for the LGBT community. According to a report in Israel Hayom, sources claim that hundreds of appointments for blood donation have been canceled since yesterday, due to the change in the document. Recently, the MDA decided to change the registration document for blood donation. This is a step that was taken in several government offices and the IDF even earlier, and is defined as controversial because it legitimizes the values ​​of the LGBT community. In the past, various protests were held to shelve the change in these documents, but now this protest is spilling over into an active step. Several yeshivahs, including the Beit El, Har HaMor, Mitzpe Ramon, Ramat Gan and other yeshivahs, have announced that they will stop donating blood to the MDA mobile units that come to them every three months. Sources at the yeshivahs told Israel Hayom: "In the yeshivahs, blood donations are regular. This is a procedure that is done regularly, once or twice a month at the yeshivah, and everyone comes to donate – 300-400 people a day. During the coronavirus, special blood donations were also made." According to them, yesterday everything went wrong: "People came to do a good deed and discovered right in front of their faces that they were being given an agenda for blood tests. While donating, they discovered the change in the forms in one of the yeshivahs, and approached a well-known rabbi with the question. He said that anyone who wanted to donate could do so, provided they sent a letter of protest explaining why." Yitzhak, an ultra-Orthodox who is strict about donating blood, tells Haredim 10: "This is crazy. I donate blood at least twice a year. For many years. There is no way I will donate in this situation, and I told them so.". And what did MDA tell you? ""They told me it was in 'treatment'." Besheva reporter Dvir Amar, who first published the protest, quoted a statement published in one of the yeshivahs: "In the MDA medical questionnaire forms, instead of 'father's name' and 'mother's name', 'parent 1' and 'parent 2' appear. By order of the Maran Rosh HaYeshiva Shlita, all blood donations from the yeshivah are canceled, and no young man or woman, even privately, may go and sign this form until it returns to normal." We asked for MDA's response - and it will be published when received.