‘Judaise medicine’: Palestinian doctors are under attack in Israel
Lubna Masarwa reports in Middle East Eye on 9 September 2026:
The destruction of the healthcare system that Palestinians can access is by no means limited to Gaza or the occupied West Bank. Alongside the arrests of doctors in the West Bank, a campaign has been launched in the media against doctors who are Palestinian citizens of Israel and work in Israeli hospitals.
The latest campaign was sparked by relatives of a soldier wounded in Lebanon. Yehoshua Shani, the chairman of a forum that opposes the Gaza ceasefire and supports continuing the war, claimed his nephew was mistreated by Arab staff at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. In a post on X, Shani said the nurses on duty were all “Arabic speakers” who ignored the patient’s request for water and turned him over in his bed “like a sardine”, hitting his head against the bed.
The hospital authorities at Rambam rejected the claim that this patient was treated “inappropriately”. That should have been the end of the story. But it wasn’t.
Open incitement
Israel was soon debating whether Arabs should be allowed to practise medicine at all, let alone speak Arabic in Jewish hospitals.
“A soldier shouldn’t have to hear in a hospital the language of those he’s fighting against… what’s happening here in this country has simply become crazy. A soldier alone in the room – everyone Arabic speakers,” said Boaz Golan, an Israeli journalist. One member of the Knesset played on the Hebrew term for affirmative action – literally “corrective discrimination” – recasting it as “damaging discrimination”.
“I will continue to fight for you also on the issue of the Arab doctors and the damaging discrimination that harms our serving children. I will not give up until we fix the situation, cancel the discrimination, and prevent the acceptance of students from terror universities in the Palestinian Authority into hospitals in Israel,” said Likud MK Moshe Saada.
Osnat Mark, a lawyer and former Likud MK, called for the removal of all Palestinian doctors and health officials from the health system: “We simply need to Judaize this profession of medicine… pharmacists, nurses. You arrive at hospitals and you almost feel like you’re in Ramallah.”
Mark was talking about roughly a quarter of Israel’s physicians, 27 percent of its nurses and dentists, and just under half of its pharmacists, according to a study published last year. There had been a rise in the number of newly registered Palestinians, but today increasing numbers are out of work. Up to 5,000 trained physicians cannot find a job, as internships are becoming closed to them, and many are considering emigrating.
A wave of persecution
Palestinians working in the Israeli health system have been experiencing a wave of racist attacks.
There is no official data, but the human rights group Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHRI) has tracked disciplinary hearings against Palestinian doctors since the war started in October 2023, in at least 15 hospitals and all four of Israel’s health maintenance organisations.