Gideon Levy’s article, Israeli Doctors Who Betray Their Training, http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/israeli-doctors-who-betray-their-training.premium-1.513345 in Ha’aretz, no longer shocks because of the way the US has gotten used to torture by American intelligence agencies and the collaboration of psychologists in the American Psychological Association.
Israeli doctors who betray their training
by Gideon Levy|April 4, 2013|Ha’aretz
From the prison guards and from Shin Bet personnel nobody expects any measure of compassion or humanity. But where are the doctors?
They studied medicine. Perhaps their parents pushed them to be doctors or perhaps they had a burning desire to enter this profession from the time they were children. They certainly thought about a career but they also thought about the sanctity of this profession, about the noble aspiration to save lives and cure the sick. They certainly read the Hippocratic Oath, which is a very moving document. In the oath’s Hebrew version, which was composed by Prof. Lipman Halpern in 1952, they also swore that they would “help all sick people irrespective of whether they are strangers, or Gentiles, or humiliated citizens, or respected ones.”
They studied medicine in Jerusalem, in Moscow, in Budapest and in Odessa. They dreamed of a career but, in the end, they found themselves working as physicians in the Israel Prison Service or in the Shin Bet security service, although even there they had no reason to be ashamed of their profession. Some of them certainly encountered the case of Maysara Abuhamdieh, a prisoner who was serving a life sentence. In August 2012, Abuhamdieh complained of sharp pains in his throat. Only after six months (!) − that is, only last February − was he diagnosed as suffering from cancer of the esophagus. Only after two additional months had already elapsed − that is, on March 30 − was it decided that he would be hospitalized in Soroka Medical Center in Be’er Sheva. He died two weeks later.
During those critical months, his desperate family appealed to Physicians for Human Rights – Israel: Their beloved Maysara could barely speak any more because of the pain and they shuddered to consider the possibility that he might not receive proper medical care. A month ago, a representative of that organization submitted to the prison service’s top medical officer, Chief Superintendent Dr. Liav Goldstein, the urgent request that the prisoner receive medical treatment. Goldstein did not even bother to reply.
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