Arab Legitimacy Doesn’t Start and Stop in the Doorways of Medical Institutions

On August 11, Oded Ben-Ami, host of Channel 12’s “Six With Oded Ben-Ami” current affairs program, issued an apology to the medical staff of Haifa’s Rambam Hospital for an item broadcast two days earlier which, in Ben-Ami’s words, “left the impression that the professionalism and dedication of the Arab staff treating IDF soldiers is being called into question.” He went on to say that he has no doubt whatsoever about the professionalism of the Arab staff and the care they provide to wounded soldiers and even conferred upon them the ultimate mark of Israeli legitimacy by noting that some serve in the IDF. Finally, Ben-Ami said he is sorry if any of the Rambam staff were hurt by the item.

One doesn’t need a PhD in psychology to understand the difference between “I’m sorry I hurt you” and “I’m sorry if you were hurt” which, taken together with “left the impression,” paints the report that led to the apology as a misunderstanding, but that is the least of the problem with it.

The item in question was an interview with David Chesterman, brother of one of the soldiers hospitalized in Rambam’s intensive care unit (ICU) after being seriously injured in Lebanon. Chesterman claimed that when the night shift arrived, they made the visitors leave the ICU, locked the doors, and refused to let the relatives back in despite repeated requests. Eventually he broke down the door and, he told Ben-Ami, found his brother begging for water. The wounded soldier also reportedly told Chesterman that the staff had mishandled him, turning him over “like a sardine.” But that was not the worst of their offenses, according to Chesterman.  He began his attack on the Rambam staff with the fact that they spoke Arabic. Period. He described as “completely insane” the situation in which wounded soldiers were left in the care of only Arabic-speaking staff for an entire night.

Ben-Ami Lends a Sympathetic Ear

While Chesterman recounted his version of events, Ben-Ami nodded sympathetically and never questioned the brother’s basic assertion that putting wounded soldiers in the care of Arabs constitutes a serious error in judgment on the part of the medical and military authorities. When Ben-Ami reported that the hospital had rejected the claims of mistreatment on the part of the staff, Chesterman said that even if that’s true, leaving helpless soldiers in the hands of Arabs without anyone watching over them is incomprehensible. To this, Ben-Ami responded that the situation is indeed “frustrating.”

Ben-Ami didn’t even bat an eyelash when Chesterman said he had broken down the ICU door because he felt he had to protect his brother. That silence is telling. It reflects the new normal in which it is okay to resort to violence when faced with even the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing by an Arab. Originally applied in combat zones (not that it’s legitimate in that setting either), that logic has long since seeped into the treatment of Palestinian citizens of Israel. The Rambam staff should actually consider themselves lucky that only the ICU door was broken and not their bones.

Resources Versus Ethnicity

As for the accusations of mistreatment, anyone who has had the misfortune of having a loved one hospitalized in the ICU knows full well that relatives are admitted only for the briefest periods and that locking the doors is standard practice. Actually, anyone who has had a bedridden relative hospitalized in a public ward knows that the medical staff is spread very thin, that sometimes – particularly at night – it is difficult to locate the person on duty, and that, like all human beings, some of the staff are polite, gentle, and patient and some are rude, rough, and short-tempered.

I myself was hospitalized five years ago for an operation to remove a malignant tumor. (No worries; I’m fine now.) I underwent surgery in a private hospital and had a nurse or aide at my side within minutes any time I touched the buzzer. A week after my release, I was hospitalized again because of complications, this time in a public hospital. I can’t say exactly how long I waited for a response to my calls for assistance, but it seemed like forever. I recall my thirst and my frustration when my reach fell just short of the cup of water on my bedstand. I remember the orderly who plunked my pain-ridden body into a wheelchair because I wasn’t moving fast enough, and I remember the nurse who yelled at me because I didn’t have the strength to lift my hips when she brought the bedpan.

And then there were those who offered to brush my hair, who asked if the room was too cold or too warm, if I wanted an extra blanket, if I needed my pillows adjusted. Some were Jewish, some Palestinian, but there was absolutely no correlation between their ethnicity and the treatment I received. That the wounded soldier – traumatized, delirious, and in agony – felt desolate is understandable, and it may be that some of the staff were a little callous in their behavior, but the leap to the conclusion that wounded soldiers need to be shielded from Arab medical staff is outrageous.

Hospital, Ministers, and MK’s React

In response to Chesterman’s allegations, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the “heroic IDF soldiers who were injured while defending the State of Israel deserve the best and most dedicated care and respectful treatment for themselves and their families.” Compared to whom exactly? The average Joe who gets hit by a bus? Isn’t healthcare one of the social rights to which all citizens are equally entitled according to the Declaration of Independence? Furthermore, Katz, who dismissed the pursuit of Jewish terrorists in the West Bank as no more than a “chase after boys on the hills” that should be transferred from the IDF to the police, instructed the army to “immediately and thoroughly” investigate the Rambam episode and vowed to “demand answers, draw conclusions, and act to ensure that such an incident does not happen again.” Such are the priorities of the man in charge of Israel’s security.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir went even further, noting that if the soldiers were harassed on a nationalist basis, the medical staff could be found guilty of terrorism, which today carries a death sentence. Let this be a warning to all Arabic speakers working in Israeli hospitals. Don’t lose your patience; it could cost you your life.

As Ben-Ami reported, Rambam Hospital denied the allegations, issuing a statement that “all patients, and certainly IDF soldiers, receive high-quality, professional care from a skilled and experienced medical team.”  Prof. Hagai Levine, head of the Israeli Association of Public Health Physicians, called the accusations “a dangerous blood libel” which, he said, aimed at dismantling the medical system, “the only system that still functions as an island of sanity and equality in Israel.” MK Ayman Odeh said that Rambam “represents professionalism instead of incitement, partnership instead of racism, and humanity instead of barbarism.”  All of this is true, but it misses the point.

Normalization of Discrimination

The finger in this case was pointed at the Rambam medical staff, but the accusation affects every Arab Israeli as it rests on the premise that they are all suspect. This is not a new phenomenon, but it is growing and gaining legitimacy.

In 2016, Bezalel Smotrich set off an uproar when he defended his wife’s remark that she wouldn’t allow an Arab doctor to deliver her baby and supported segregation of Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards. That same year, the Adalah center for Arab minority rights defended Arab employees of the Café Café restaurant in Haifa who were forbidden from speaking Arabic in the workplace. In 2018, the manager of an Aroma branch in southern Israel ordered workers not to speak Arabic among themselves or with customers to “preserve the dignity” of non-Arabic-speaking customers. These incidents were viewed as clear acts of discrimination and were widely condemned, and in the case of Aroma the management of the chain disavowed the practice and said it was not company policy. Things are different today.

A report in the Middle East Eye published on July 27 describes how discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel is spreading and becoming normalized. According to the report, what has changed “is not the existence of discrimination but the confidence with which it is expressed.”  But that is only one aspect of the story.

Related report: What Arab Healthcare Workers in Israel Have Faced Since Oct. 7 (Haaretz, April 29, 2026)

Since the latest Netanyahu government took office, a flood of discriminatory legislation has come up for a vote in the Knesset, and human rights groups have worked hard to bring such laws to the attention of the public. What is not being flagged as racist rhetoric are the daily panel discussions being broadcast in the leadup to the October elections about the legitimacy of a coalition that includes or even leans on the Arab parties. The ease with which the allegiance of Palestinian citizens of Israel is questioned seems to give no one pause. This aligns with an Israel Democracy Institute survey published last December which found that over 70% of the Jewish public opposes the inclusion of Arab parties in the coalition. Even Yair Golan, the only leader of a Zionist party to answer with a definitive yes, has not said that the question itself smacks of racism. Perhaps if one substituted the name Jewish Labour Bund for United Arab List throughout the transcript of the TV programs, Jewish Israelis might begin to understand the problem.

At the end of his television interview, Chesterman asked to be allowed to clarify that he knows that there are competent Arab medical workers and that he was simply raising a matter of concern regarding the care of wounded soldiers in general. Given another minute, he would probably have added that some of his best friends are Arabs. Chesterman’s protestation and Ben-Ami’s lame apology to the Rambam staff instead of the entire Arab population are typical examples of the lack of self-awareness that permeates Jewish society. This subliminal racism is more dangerous than the rants of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir because few see it for what it is – benevolent Jewish supremacy.