End the violence
Increasing violence against healthcare professionals is plaguing Israel. This requires the government to crack down on those who harass, intimidate and cause violence at health facilities across the country.
The public deserves to be safe at hospitals and this should be obvious, considering that we only recently came out of a pandemic. We must treat the vulnerable and those who provide care to them, with dignity. But despite that simple fact, and our country’s seeming understanding about the importance of public health, for too long, lawlessness and violence have become the norm across Israel.
Attacks on doctors and nurses, as well as brawls at hospitals, have become frequent because there are parts of this country where people believe they have the right to live outside the law and believe that violence is a viable option. Shoving, shouting, cursing and using physical force, these people feel, is legitimate when they don’t get their way.
We also lack enforcement to detain and charge people in cases where health professionals are attacked. It’s time the government pass laws that make attacks in hospitals and clinics, and violence on these premises a special punishable offense, similar to hate crimes legislation and anti-terror laws.
For instance, staff at a hospital in northern Israel were recently attacked by members of a family. There was a strike by some workers in response, but they shouldn’t have to live in fear of the public.
Angry families of people who storm hospitals in gangs – as if they own this country – are often appeased. They are allowed to shout and curse and destroy things, attacking members of the public and staff, and even when it is caught on video, the authorities turn a blind eye.
The message is not to “offend” the people who use violence, not to upset the status quo that exists as if a large sign hangs over our health institutions saying: There are no laws here; you can attack people and you won’t be prosecuted.
In another reported incident, dozens of people tried to break into a trauma room at the Galilee Medical Center in Nahariya. For too long, we have decided that Arab “families” and “clans” which come from lawless areas of the country in the North and South, where there is policing is lax and where gun violence is the norm, can do as they want, as long as there are enough of them.
Why do armed hospital guards have to pepper spray gangs of men? Why do other patients have to live in fear and cower as hospitals appear to be run more according to Taliban justice in Afghanistan than in a country that calls itself the “startup nation.”
Too often, this country is only the start-up nation for the privileged. If a person is poor, or a member of a minority group, they are often left to face lawlessness in parts of the country. On Saturday night, we saw Gerrer Hassidim break out in violence in Jerusalem because of a dispute involving two rabbis. Once again, there were no law enforcement officers to quel the lawlesness.
Doctors are striking because of the violence. Israel has not put in place recommendations made in 2017 to halt it and our doctors and nurses are working in fear instead of being able to focus on treating the weak and saving lives.
Our hospitals are no longer places of recuperation, health and peace; they are places where every citizen has to be on guard in case of violence, and where our health workers are randomly attacked and terrorized by thuggish “families” of the patients who seem to run things rather than by the silent majority who are at their mercy.
Guards at hospitals don’t have the resources or the law on their side. It’s time to put an end to this.
Violent people should live in fear of facing special charges that go further than current punitive measures allow and they must be barred from entering health facilities.