ISRAELI Education Minister Rafael Peretz claimed at the weekend that gay “conversion” therapy works, adding that he believes in it because he has conducted it on his students.

The Orthodox rabbi and leader of the ultra-nationalist United Right party told Israel’s Channel 12 on Saturday that he has “very deep familiarity” with conversion as he has “also done this.”

Mr Peretz, who joined Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet last month, described the method he had used to supposedly convert a young gay man away from his sexuality.

He said he had first embraced him and told him “very warm things. I told him: ‘Let’s think. Let’s study. And let’s contemplate.’ The objective is first of all for him to know himself well … and then he will decide.”

He later attempted to clarify his comments, saying that he did not mean that gay children must be sent to “conversion therapy.”

Conversion therapy, which seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity through psychological, spiritual or even physical means, has been widely discredited by scientists and health professionals and associations.

But the so-called therapy has still not been outlawed in most parts of the world.

Israeli LGBT advocacy group the Aguda demanded that Mr Peretz be sacked for his “benighted” views.

Nitzan Horowitz, who leads “left-wing” social democratic party Meretz, called the therapy “a dangerous practice which causes extremely severe circumstances for youths, including suicide.”

Earlier this week, Mr Peretz reportedly told other ministers that the intermarriage of Jews and non-Jews is equal to a “second Holocaust.”