"I want to show you a short video," my doctor friend, Dr. Basheer Karkabi, said to me, adding: "This was broadcast last week on Channel 14." I glanced at the doctor's phone and remembered having seen Raviv Drucker criticize the video on Channel 13 .
"Apropos of antisemitism," opened a panelist named Micah Avni, "here in Israel, in our hospitals, there are Arab doctors and nurses who poison Jews and hush it up on a daily basis." The man who founded the Stop Incitement movement, which fights incitement on social media, ruled that there are "quite a few cases of terrorism inside hospitals."
It's interesting how this same Avni would react if he needed complicated surgery and, after checking who the best specialist in the country was, discovered his name was Prof. Ahmad Haj-Yehia, or his anesthesiologist's name was Maysa Khoury.
I suggested to my friend that he organize a class-action lawsuit against these scoundrels for incitement, as well as a libel suit. "Put us aside for a moment," said the doctor. "I'm thinking about my patients, who hear on TV and read on social media that Arabs – first and foremost the Arab MKs – are terrorism supporters."
There's diplomatic terrorism, educational terrorism, economic terrorism. Why not medical terrorism? Imagine the following scene: A senior doctor prepares an elderly Jewish patient for open-heart surgery. The patient glances at the tag on the lapel of the white coat and realizes his life depends on an Arab doctor. At that same moment, a nurse wearing a hijab sanitizes the man's arm, inserts a cannula and connects him to the IV bag. "I hope I didn't hurt you," the young nurse says upon seeing the man's terrified face.
The man's eyes dart back and forth between the television above his bed and the IV bag. The camera focuses on a businessman named Micah Avni. According to what he's saying, it's entirely possible that the nurse put poison into his IV bag. He must know what he's talking about; otherwise, they wouldn't have invited him to appear on television. His fellow panelists don't correct him. And how can one trust an Arab surgeon not to intentionally sever an artery? What can be done? Maybe ask to check the bag, and replace the surgeon. Terrifying.
This image is not entirely imaginary. Since October 7, hospitals have reported patients and relatives of hospitalized individuals demanding that only Jews treat them. It's hard not to recall the "revelation" by the Soviet newspaper Pravda in 1953 that Jewish doctors, headed by Josef Stalin's personal physician, conspired to poison leaders of the Soviet regime and military – which led to the Doctors' Plot, a show trial conducted against them. Media outlets in the Soviet Union accompanied the publication with a campaign against "enemies of the people," which increased hatred toward the Jewish minority. Several of the doctors were arrested and tortured.
In fact, long before that, for centuries, in Europe Jews were accused of poisoning wells and murdering children to use their blood for baking matzot.
The chairman of the Israeli Medical Association, Prof. Zion Hagay, demanded that Abu Yonatan-Yair (Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu) condemn the incitement against Arab medical teams. This is akin to asking a pyromaniac to extinguish the fire he lit. The Arab doctors and nurses come from the same voter demographic that headed to the polling stations "in droves" and threatened the rule of the right (according to Netanyahu in a previous election).
What value is there in a condemnation coming from a criminal defendant who entrusted Israeli Arabs' safety to a person who built a career on hating Arabs? Unfortunately, even the "moderate" politicians from the political center are people who are willing to entrust their hearts to Dr. Karkabi, but deny a citizen from his community into their Zionist club.
Over the weekend, Gadi Eisenkot, the leading opposition candidate in the election campaign, pledged that the United Arab List, headed by Mansour Abbas, "will not be part of the government" led by him. Disqualifying the Joint List has become taken for granted. Democrats party chairman Yair Golan supported disqualifying Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh.
Those poisoning the relations between Jews and Arabs are a group of cowardly politicians and pathetic media figures. Dr. Karkabi and the thousands of Arab doctors and nurses who treat human beings without asking about their ethnic origin prove every day that civic partnership between the two peoples is still possible.
