The parents of Alta Fixsler had appealed doctors’ views all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel New

Alta Fixsler, a toddler whose Hasidic parents who live in Britain had fought a legal battle all the way to the European Court of Human Rights to leave her on the machines keeping her alive, died Monday after doctors disconnected her according to court orders.

“Sad news, little Alta Fixsler’s life support was turned off this afternoon and she died at the hospice with her parents by her side,” said representatives of Chaya and Abraham Fixsler.

The Orthodox Hamodia news site reported that a quorum of ten Jewish men had first filled Fixsler’s room and sang spiritually uplifting songs before her parents kissed the little girl and allowed the medical staff to disconnect her. She died about an hour and a half later.

The two-and-a-half-year old had suffered irreparable brain damage at birth and could only eat and breathe with the aid of machines. The Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, the hospital system responsible for her care, had long wanted to remove Fixsler from the life support, arguing that it was impossible for her condition to improve and that she was in pain, so she should be allowed to die for humanitarian reasons.

The courts agreed with the hospital, but her parents did not, as Jewish law forbids the disconnection of life support machines in such cases. In appeal after appeal to ever-higher courts, from Great Britain to Europe, their arguments that this move contradicted their religious beliefs came to naught, as did the testimony of doctors who said their child was not feeling pain.

The courts also rejected on allegedly humanitarian grounds the parents’ request to bring Alta to either Israeli or American hospitals that had agreed to care for their child. She could not even be brought home to die, as the legal authorities rejected the family’s final appeal, deciding earlier this month that she had to be disconnected in a children’s hospice.

Political pressure also bore no fruit.

American and Israeli government officials got involved in the case as Fixsler’s mother is Israeli and her father is Israeli-American. Among other efforts, former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin wrote to Crown Prince Charles, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer made several appeals on the parents’ behalf, including to Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month.

He reacted sadly to the news of her death, saying, “I extend my prayers and support for the Fixsler family during this very difficult time…. I continue to believe the policy followed here was wrong on many levels and regret that our multiple, and legally and morally, well-grounded pleas were unheeded by the British authorities.”

MK Yisrael Eichler (United Torah Judaism), who also tried to help the Fixslers, compared the court decision to that of “Sodom and Gomorrah,” cities cited in the Bible that were infamous for having made cruelty legal and thus deserving of Divine destruction.

“We tried to appeal to presidents, ministers, jurists and all who have a human heart. But no one was able to withstand the legal force of the ‘religion of compassion,’” he said.

“The ruling of the British court to execute a tormented girl, out of ‘compassion’, opens up a hell for all the terminally ill, the poor, and anyone who has no money and power to defend against his ‘merciful’ killers,” he added.

An American rabbi who had lobbied strongly on Fixsler’s behalf, Moshe Niederman, also took issue with the medical system that had opposed the parents.

“Instead of following the Hippocratic oath to ‘do no harm or injustice’ to their patients, doctors today took an action that resulted in their patient’s death,” he told Hamodia. “This utter travesty against this helpless, pure, lovely child, will never be forgotten. A country that supposedly doesn’t have capital punishment, today enacted a death penalty couched in fancy legalese.”

Seven hundred people attended Fixsler’s funeral Monday evening in the study hall of the Belzer Hasidim in Manchester. She is to be buried Tuesday in Israel.

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The parents of Alta Fixsler have lost numerous appeals in Great Britain for their religious right to keep their daughter on life support.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The European Court of Human Rights has rejected a religious Jewish family’s last of many appeals to keep their British toddler on life support machines against doctors’ considered opinion that she should be disconnected.

By doing so, they supported the May 28th ruling of the High Court of London that sided with the Manchester Royal Children’s Hospital that has been caring for two-year-old Alta Fixsler since complications during birth left her with irreparable brain damage. Her doctors have testified that they believe she is in persistent pain, has no chance of recovery, and that it is in her best interests to let her die.

Her hasidic parents have argued that Jewish law dictates that it is forbidden to pull the plug, and they have neurologists who reject the hospital’s contention that their daughter is feeling pain.

Their lawyer, David Foster, said on Wednesday that their religious beliefs had “not been adequately taken into account.” He also said that he had argued in court that “Alta would feel no more or less pain being transported to a hospital in Israel than she would lying in a bed in Manchester but her chance of further treatment has been denied her regardless.”

The parents are Israeli citizens, and two hospitals in Israel have already agreed to treat the little girl. Former health minister Yuli Edelstein appealed to his British counterpart in June to allow her to travel to receive this palliative care. Israel’s former president, Reuven Rivlin, also asked for Crown Prince Charles to intervene in this “matter of grave and urgent humanitarian importance.”

“It would be a tragedy if these parents’ wishes could not be accommodated in a way that respects both the law and their religious beliefs,” Rivlin wrote.

Fixsler’s father is an American citizen as well, and there are hospitals in the U.S. that have also agreed to admit the child.

The highest political echelon in America has heard of the case. Several Republican senators have asked President Joe Biden to intercede with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on the matter. Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-NY), who is Jewish, got involved some six weeks ago, sending a personal appeal to the UK’s U.S. ambassador.

“I urge that all health decisions that are against the wishes of the family be suspended until the citizenship process is complete and Alta can travel to the US with her” father, he wrote.

Two weeks ago, he secured the necessary American visa, and so now Alta has two countries willing to take her in, if the British authorities would allow her to travel, no matter the court’s decision.

To date, tens of thousands have signed a petition asking that Alta not be disconnected from her ventilator. Some $400,000 has also been raised to cover her travel and care expenses.

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The European Court of Justice held a company’s ban on the Muslim headscarf in the workplace is not direct discrimination, if all employees, regardless of religious background, are treated the same. 

The European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday that companies would not be liable for direct discrimination if they put in place a general ban on employees from wearing religious garb such as the Islamic hijab (headscarf).

“An internal rule of an undertaking which prohibits the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign does not constitute direct discrimination,” the court stated.

“Accordingly, such an internal rule does not introduce a difference of treatment that is directly based on religion or belief,” the court stated. “The rule thus treats all employees of the undertaking in the same way, notably by requiring them, generally and without any differentiation, to dress neutrally.”

The court made its ruling on a case in which Belgium’s Court of Cassation appealed for guidance in determining whether G4S security services was not abiding by a directive on providing equal treatment in employment and occupation.

The complainant, Samira Achbita, who had worked for G4S as a receptionist, was dismissed from her position on June 12, 2006, when she refused to abide by a workplace relations principle officially adopted by the company several weeks earlier that forbade employees from, “wearing any visible signs of their political, philosophical or religious beliefs and/or from engaging in any observance of such beliefs.”

The European Court of Justice noted that although “such a prohibition may constitute indirect discrimination” if “persons adhering to a particular religion or belief (are) being put at a particular disadvantage,” such a policy may be justified by a company if it has a “legitimate aim” in doing so and that “the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary.” The example mentioned by the court of a “legitimate aim” is “a policy of political, philosophical and religious neutrality.”

Nevertheless, in light of its use of the directive mandating a “principle of equal treatment,” the court found that G4S’s prohibition  against “wearing an Islamic headscarf, which arises from an internal rule of a private undertaking prohibiting the visible wearing of any political, philosophical or religious sign in the workplace, does not constitute direct discrimination based on religion or belief within the meaning of the directive.”

Recently, the European Court of Human Rights held that mandatory-mixed gender swimming lessons were justified in schools, despite the religious objections of Muslim parents.

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News

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The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of a requirement in Switzerland that Muslim girls attend compulsory mixed-gender swimming lessons.  

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in favor of Switzerland in a case in which the parents of two Muslim Swiss girls sought redress for being required to have their daughters attend compulsory educational mixed-gender swimming lessons in the city of Basel.

The parents of the girls took their case to the European Court of Human Rights after they were ordered to pay a total of 1,400 Swiss Francs ($1,380, £1,136) “for acting in breach of their parental duty.”

Individuals or states like Switzerland, that are party to the European Convention on Human Rights may seek redresses from the European Court of Human Rights regarding alleged violations of their civil and political rights.

The parents claimed that the financial penalty violated their rights in article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which says that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”

In its ruling, the court acknowledged that the requirement to attend mixed-gender swimming lessons was an infringement on freedom of religion but justified the law by finding that it was crafted in order to “protect foreign pupils from any form of social exclusion.”

“Accordingly, the children’s interest in a full education, thus facilitating their successful social integration according to local customs and mores, prevailed over the parents’ wish to have their children exempted from mixed swimming lessons,” the court added.

The second part of Article 9 in the European Convention of Human Rights specifies instances that justify restrictions on freedom of religion. The article adds that “freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News

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