Tel Aviv Hospital Under Fire For Violating Apartheid Policy

According to those officials, Assuta, a private Tel Aviv hospital, has allegedly violated the principles of Apartheid, which would require separating Arab and Jewish patients, or perhaps wholesale denial of treatment to Arabs.

During the initial stage of searching for three missing Jewish teenagers in the Hebron area, Amina Abbas, wife of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, underwent orthopedic surgery at the hospital.While her room was guarded around the clock by a private security detail, the surgery was performed in one of the regular operating rooms of the hospital, which does not segregate patients other than by gender, thus raising concern in Palestinian and leftist circles that equal treatment of such a high profile Arab in an Israeli medical setting could wreak havoc with claims that Israel is an Apartheid state.

A spokeswoman for the Palestinian Anti-Apartheid Defamation League (PAADL), spoke with PreOccupied Territory by phone. “The continued practice of admitting Arab patients from Occupied Palestine and critically wounded Arab fighters from Syria to Israeli hospitals without regard to their virulently anti-Israel positions is seriously disrupting PAADL’s efforts against the occupation,” said Um Deyidis. “Praise be to Allah that few people noticed.” She said the hospital administration had been contacted to demand an explanation, but none had been forthcoming as of this morning.

The surgery, which took place over the first weekend of the hostage crisis, has apparently not been reported outside of Jewish and Israeli news sources. Most media attention has been focused on Israeli efforts to locate and rescue Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frankel, and Gilad Shaar, ages 16-19, with non-Israeli media all but ignoring Palestinian efforts to hinder that mission and to celebrate the kidnappings via the distribution of sweets and the use of small children in gloating poses online.

Palestinian activists have repeatedly expressed frustration at Israel’s continuing refusal to hew to the Apartheid image, a refusal that complicates their efforts to depict the Jewish State as irredeemably evil. Allowing that Israel has positive qualities might imply consideration for Israelis as humans deserving of rights, a notion that would also imply the possibility of compromise on the demand that all Jews leave or be subject to oppression and massacre. Palestinian leaders explicitly aim to implement Apartheid in their hoped-for state, but it would discriminate against Jews, which is OK.

Amara Abbas returned quietly to her home in the West Bank following the procedure. She appears to be doing just fine. The three teenagers are still missing.