Sheba doctor’s plea to Biden: Child captives need vital treatment

“We provide care to patients from the West Bank, Gaza, Israeli Arabs, and Jews, and we treat all of them without distinction,” explained Dr. Jordanna Koppel, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center, in a conversation with President Joe Biden on Wednesday.

“When I receive a call in the middle of the night, and I’m told, ‘We need you here urgently because someone’s condition is unstable,’ I don’t ask questions,” she emphasized. “We have children in Gaza who are not receiving medical attention. No one has visited them, and we have not received any updates.”

Koppel was one of 10 individuals selected to meet with the president during his whirlwind solidarity mission to Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre on October 7. She said she wanted the president to understand that “we do not differentiate between them and our children when it comes to treatment, and we expect the same thing for our children from them now.”

On October 7, Koppel was among the first to treat wounded children in Sheba’s emergency room, and she told The Jerusalem Post that she did not mince words in describing to Biden the atrocities she witnessed that day in the hospital.

“I was triaging patients at the hospital entrance. I stayed up all that night as the children poured in with horrific stories and trauma that will stay with them forever.

“Teenagers were lying under the bodies of their dead friends for six hours at the Re’im music festival,” she continued. “Siblings hid under the bed while terrorists walked around their house and were burned alive in their rooms until they could escape and get help.

“I met infants burned in their mother’s arms,” she recalled. “I feel like my role was to be there and tell him of the atrocities I saw firsthand.”

Koppel, who moved to Israel eight years ago from Manhattan, said, “We felt an incredible humanity” from Biden. She said that meeting Americans on the frontlines here was essential to Biden, who spoke briefly with the victims in front of the media but then asked to talk to them privately.

“He wanted to hear our stories and what we had gone through,” Koppel shared. “It was incredibly unique.”