Treating Syrians at Ziv Hospital - Honest Reporting

...All patients are given a summary of their medical treatment when they return to Syria. The summary is written in Arabic, on plain paper, with nothing on it to indicate they received the treatment in Israel. I suspect the Syrian doctors know where patients were treated. Injured people could not have found the sophisticated treatment in their home country’s collapsed medical system. And they could not have afforded care in Lebanon or Jordan.

Honest Reporting..
29 Ocotber '17..

The following guest post was written by Yehudit Reishtein, who took part in a special HonestReporting field trip in October 2017 to hear about and meet with Syrian patients being treated in Israel’s Ziv Medical Center.

Healthcare in Syria is almost non-existent after six years of civil war. Fares, an Arabic-speaking social worker at Ziv Medical Center in Tsfat (Safed), cited a few illustrative statistics: “Their medical system is 70% destroyed. About a million people live in the border areas, but there are only seven doctors.” One doctor for every 143,000 people? The number was shocking.

We were on an HonestReporting field trip to learn more about how Syrian casualties were receiving care in Israel. Ziv’s program has evolved in response to a need.

When the civil war started in March 2011, the IDF had a policy of watchful waiting. On Saturday, February 16, 2013, seven badly wounded Syrians crossed the border into Israel. IDF medics evaluated them and then transported them to the nearest hospital. Ziv doctors were called to come in for an emergency. They had no idea who the patients were or what the problem was until they reported for duty and met the wounded Syrians.

Syria has been at war with Israel since May 1948. These wounded men were our enemies. But the doctors did not hesitate—an injured person is a person in need of care. The men were treated. When they recovered, the IDF took them back to the border and sent them home. Since then Ziv Hospital has treated more than 800 patients who have made their way over the border.

We were instructed not to take any photos. Photos could endanger the men and their families. We never learned any patient’s name. All newspaper and TV stories about treatment of Syrians in Israel change patients’ names and either blur their faces or photograph them from an angle that does not reveal their identity.

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