Soroka – targeting Israel’s most vulnerable

If you need to ask the question whether Israel’s war against Iran is just, you can look no further than today’s deliberate attack on Soroka Hospital.

One of the most multicultural facilities in the country, Soroka Hospital treats patients from all over Israel’s south, from Ashkelon to Eilat, over one million Israelis, and has the busiest ER in Israel. The intended number of casualties from this attack was enormous, the intended victims were Israel’s most vulnerable.

I visited the hospital last month, where I met with staff and saw the healing gardens that JNF Australia had recently funded. What struck me most when I entered the hospital was the diversity of the staff and patients. This is a place where division is left at the door; it could have been any multicultural hospital, anywhere in the world. Arab doctors operate alongside their Jewish colleagues, patients from Druze villages sharing wards with Jewish, Christian and Muslim patients.

Soroka’s medical staff have had extensive experience treating victims of terror and those injured in war since its inception in 1959. This was the main hospital that treated victims of October 7^th, more than 800 patients in the first 24 hours, losing some of its own staff during the onslaught and the days after. It is also, ironically, the hospital that treated terrorists and their families. It is where Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7^th, had life-saving surgery.

This is the place that the Iranian regime chose to attack.

An hour after the attack, I spoke to Michael, an orthopaedic surgeon from Soroka who is currently doing his residency in Australia. “Being away from Israel at a time like this is so hard,” he told me. “I’ve been messaging with my colleagues. We’ve been very lucky. One of the buildings that was hit, the old surgical building, had already been evacuated, all the patients had been moved out.” He sent me a video of the doctors’ office in his department. Windows blown out, splintered cupboard doors scattered across the room, the floor covered in debris that was once a ceiling. It looks like a war zone.

“This is not an attack against Jews, it’s an attack against all Israeli citizens. The hospital has a lot of Arab, Bedouin, Christian staff and patients.” Today, Michael tells me, was something they’ve never had to deal with before. “We’re all experienced in operating under war conditions; we treated the injured on October 7^th …this is different.”

While the hospital is reeling from today’s attack, many people are choosing to focus on the positive. The miracle that the floor that was hit was already evacuated, saving countless lives. While Israel targets military and nuclear facilities, Iran has deliberately murdered civilians, among them four Arab-Israeli women, a Ukrainian family whose seven-year-old was in Israel for cancer treatment, an elderly couple, and now Soroka.

The resolve to see this war through, to ensure that Iran can no longer be an existential threat to the State of Israel, is reinforced every time Iran’s drones and missiles deliberately target civilians.