Israeli MK and Former Lawmaker Call to Remove Arab Doctors From Hospitals After Unverified Nurse Complaint

A soldier wounded in Lebanon was treated at Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa. His uncle, Yehoshua Shani, chairman of a forum that opposes the Gaza ceasefire, later posted on X that the nurses on duty were "Arabic speakers" who ignored the patient's requests for water and turned him in his bed "like a sardine," striking his head against the frame. Rambam's hospital administration rejected the claim that the patient had been treated inappropriately.

The dispute did not end there. It moved onto Israeli television and social media, where the question quickly shifted from what happened to one patient to whether Palestinian citizens of Israel should be allowed to practice medicine, or even speak Arabic, in Jewish hospitals at all.

A video connected to the controversy, circulated as the story spread online, captures the tenor of that public debate rather than the hospital incident itself.

Israeli journalist Boaz Golan told viewers that a wounded soldier "shouldn't have to hear in a hospital the language of those he's fighting against."

"A soldier alone in the room, everyone Arabic speakers... what's happening here in this country has simply become crazy." - Boaz Golan, Israeli journalist

Likud MK Moshe Saada framed the issue as one of policy, pledging to act against what he called "the damaging discrimination that harms our serving children." He said he would "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."

Osnat Mark, a lawyer and former Likud MK, went further, calling for the removal of Palestinian doctors, pharmacists and nurses from the health system entirely. "We simply need to Judaize this profession of medicine," she said, adding that hospitals now feel like "you're in Ramallah."

Palestinian citizens of Israel make up roughly 27 percent of the country's physicians, 27 percent of its nurses and dentists, and just under half of its pharmacists, according to a study cited in the reporting. Even as those numbers have grown, Palestinian doctors describe a shrinking path into the profession, with internships closing off and, according to the reporting, thousands of trained physicians unable to find work.

The political rhetoric has a documented institutional counterpart. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has tracked disciplinary hearings against Palestinian medical staff since October 2023 across at least 15 hospitals and all four of Israel's health maintenance organizations. In an April report, the group concluded that the 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."

One Palestinian doctor, speaking on condition of anonymity, described a patient who reacted to his Arabic name with mockery and refused treatment, making what the doctor called "disgusting racist remarks" in front of the full medical team. He reported the incident, with the patient's name and ID number, to his manager. Nothing happened. When a complaint was later filed against the doctor, he said, hospital staff treated it seriously even though it contained no accusation of racism at all.