The New Dark Age

Monday, 7 September 2026 — Middle East Eye

Lubna Masarwa, Jerusalem Bureau Chief

The destruction of the healthcare system that Palestinians can access is by no means limited to Gaza or the 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.

Rambam sparked a national debate about whether Arabs should be allowed to practice 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 Knesset played on the words for affirmative action by substituting it with “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,” the Israeli member of parliament Moshe Saada said.

Osnat Mark, a lawyer and former Likud MK, called to remove all Palestinian doctors and health officials from the health system: “We simply need to Judaize this profession of medicine… Judaize the profession of medicine – pharmacists, nurses. You arrive at hospitals and you almost feel like you’re in Ramallah.”

Mark was talking about about one quarter of the physicians, 27 percent of the nurses and dentists, and just under half of Israel’s 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

Those working in the system have been experiencing a wave of racist attacks.

There is no official data, but the human rights group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has tracked disciplinary hearings against Palestinian doctors since the war started in October 2023, in at least 20 medical institutions.

”Israel’s public healthcare system experienced a wave of persecution targeting Palestinian personnel, including hearings, disciplinary inquiries, sanctions, and dismissals in response to expressed views or social media activity,” their report in 2025 concluded.

I spoke to Palestinian doctors and, on condition of anonymity, this is what one of them told me.

“I once had a patient who came for treatment and, upon seeing my name and realising it was Arabic, reacted with shock. He began saying mockingly, ‘An Arab wants to treat me! I don’t want him at all.’ He then went on to make arrogant, disgusting racist remarks against me that I would rather not repeat.

“What disturbed me even more was the sense of entitlement he displayed. He felt completely comfortable saying all of this in front of the entire medical team, without any embarrassment or hesitation.”

The doctor reported the incident to his manager, gave him the patient’s name and ID number, but nothing happened. The manager was still willing to receive and treat him.

By contrast, the secretary of the hospital had a very difficult reaction when a complaint was filed against the doctor by a patient. The secretary suggested the complaint may have stemmed from racism on his part.

“Everyone began treating the complaint ‘seriously,’ even though the complaint itself did not contain any accusation of racism in the first place,” the doctor said.

There were increasing attempts to file complaints against Palestinian doctors.

Patients who speak Hebrew react with surprise when they hear Arabic spoken.

“Personally, I see absolutely nothing wrong with speaking Arabic. On one occasion, someone asked me, ‘Why are you speaking Arabic in front of me?’ I replied, ‘Why are you speaking Hebrew in front of me? Go and learn Arabic if you want to understand’.”

This doctor was adamant he would continue to speak Arabic in front of Jewish Israeli patients.

“I see no reason for us to justify our position with carefully polished words in Hebrew. Anyone who wants us to serve merely as a workforce under hospital management has no right to demand that we justify our Arabic language to them,” he told me.

Another Palestinian doctor who has Israeli citizenship told PHR:

“The system tells you… You can be Arab… but you need to be… ‘good Arabs’. The Arabs that do manage to build a career and get to a more senior position… need to be fine with the flag and the soldiers and the magnifying glass they’re constantly under.

“You need to accept that because you’re Palestinian, your career development will be more difficult, and you shouldn’t complain about it.”

I usually avoid historical comparisons. Every conflict has its own horrors, but it’s almost impossible not to think about how, at the start of 1938 and 1939, the German authorities restricted Jewish doctors to only treat Jewish patients, and how the Nazis later stripped Jewish physicians in Germany of their licenses to practice medicine.