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Jews and Arabs Work Side by Side in Israeli Hospitals
(Wall Street Journal) Dr. Michael Segal - Tensions over the Gaza war have spread to American medical centers, with doctors feuding and wearing pins to express their positions. The hospital at the University of California, San Francisco even had a protest encampment. Yet Israeli hospitals are free of such acrimony. Arabs and Jews work and receive treatment together. A year ago, my 94-year-old mother broke her hip and was treated in Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center, so I spent most of a week there. Many doctors and nurses were Arab. So were many patients - and they shared rooms with Jews receiving treatment. Everyone got along fine. The harmony in Israeli hospitals comes as a shock to many opponents of Israel. When I described the atmosphere to participants in the Harvard Yard Gaza encampment, they were incredulous that Jewish and Arab patients were treated in the same hospitals. The teach-ins they attended told them that there was apartheid in Israel, so they assumed hospitals would be segregated. The writer is a neurologist and neuroscientist.