The hospital is the last bastion of equality. Leave it alone

A hospital is one of the last bastions where the miracle of democracy occurs and where the value of equality is put into practice. A place where a person's well-being is examined long before their origin, race, religion, or gender. Before their status, money, or proximity to the plate. "What hurts" comes before "who are you". We have all collected hospital hours during our lives. Whether we accompanied parents, family members, spouses, or visited friends and war wounded. Some of us even had the privilege of eating the flagship dish of the breakfast meal ourselves: a hard-boiled egg and laban.

Despite the justified complaints about the many shortcomings of public medicine, I assume that many of us have had the chance to wonder, if only for a moment, about the miracle of solidarity that exists in this sterile space. A space that seems to have detached itself from the Israeli reality and manages to rise above it. For moments, a person feels as if they have arrived in Japan. "Ah, so actually it is possible to live and behave like this," a strange thought will pass through their mind. After all, only in a hospital will an ultra-Orthodox person who insists on segregated studies agree to be examined by a female doctor, a woman giving birth from Kafr Yasif will exchange breastfeeding tips with a woman giving birth from Kibbutz Yehiam, and a nurse of Russian descent will exchange recipes with a male nurse of Turkish descent.

And then came the case at Rambam. Last week, a 26-year-old fighter who was seriously wounded in a battle in Lebanon arrived at the hospital in the north, sedated and ventilated, suffering, among other things, from burns. According to the family, on one of the nights, the family was asked to leave the ward and was not allowed to return. His brother said that after he returned anyway, he found his brother crying for help and begging for water and that the staff treated him brutally. A heavy claim. Shocking. But even before it became clear what happened during that shift, the public learned another detail: the staff members were Arabs. Logical. A quarter of the staff at Rambam Hospital are Israeli Arabs.

From here, Israel has already taken off to a place familiar to it, and the national identity of the caregivers quickly turned from a biographical detail into the heart of the story. In the headlines and studios, it was emphasized again and again that it was an "Arab staff" and "Arab nurses". Itamar Ben Gvir demanded to check if it was harassment on a nationalist background. MK Nissim Vaturi asked why fighters should "meet an Arab staff in a hospital" and demanded that wounded fighters be treated by Jewish staff only. In short, in less than a day, we went from a complaint about a specific incident to the question of whether Arabs should treat Jews. With the speed at which the flames are rising here, another moment, a few more dangerous studio ramblings, one or two more ministers who will ride this new demon, and a bill for building segregated hospitals could already be drafted.

It is impossible to heal the wounded, clogged heart of our sick country in an intensive care unit "for Jews only". And the proof: did anyone in the studios bother to investigate the staff members? Did anyone check the cameras, the medical file, the version of those who were in the room? And the hospital itself, after saying it investigated the incident seriously and deeply, rejected the claims of inappropriate treatment. Not good enough? Rely on the law enforcement authorities - Israel Katz called on the army to enter the incident - so that the case will be investigated in depth and if those responsible are found, they will be punished. Dragging Israeli medicine, which has proven its dedication in treating thousands of war wounded, into the racist discourse and shattering the democratic foundations of medicine - this is not only a terrible mistake that destroys hope, it is also dangerous to health. Something, after all, must be learned from history.