Palestinian political and civil society activists within the 1948 territories continue to condemn the Israeli attack on Arab medical staff at Rambam Hospital in Haifa and express their solidarity with them. The family of an Israeli soldier who arrived at the hospital's intensive care unit a few days ago, after being wounded in Lebanon, claimed that the medical staff treating their son were Arab and mistreated him, failing to provide him with appropriate care.
Israeli officials and media figures, including Defense Minister Yisrael Katz and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, quickly launched an incitement campaign against Arab doctors at the hospital and in all hospitals.
Haifa Deputy Mayor Fakher Bayadsa, from the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, along with a number of Arab activists, arrived at the hospital today and affirmed their solidarity with the medical staff, denouncing the Israeli campaign of incitement and intimidation against them.
Addressing the medical staff at the hospital in Haifa, Biadsa said, “First, I want to commend and support the medical staff at Rambam Hospital, both Arab and Jewish, for their tireless work day after day to save lives and treat people as human beings, without discrimination based on nationality, religion, or language.” He emphasized that this is the spirit upon which the healthcare system in the country and the world is founded, and this is the spirit we must preserve.
He continued, “I condemn all forms of racism and incitement against medical staff, and I support the responsible and rational stances of the hospital administrations and the medical staff themselves.”
In response to a question from Al-Quds Al-Arabi, the deputy mayor of Haifa said: “We must strengthen the voices calling for coexistence and preserve the delicate fabric of trust and relationships between Arab and Jewish medical staff, and between them and their patients, both Arab and Jewish. The timing of this incident, and the attempt to transform it into a racist incitement campaign on the eve of the Israeli general elections, cannot be overlooked. This is a blatant attempt to gain political advantage at the expense of medical staff and the health system and its delicate internal relations. We affirm that our staff will not be easy prey for racists.”
He continued: “Simply speaking Arabic is not grounds for suspicion or evidence of guilt, especially when we are talking about doctors, nurses, and medical staff who wear their uniforms and dedicate their work to treating and saving lives. Language, identity, or affiliation should not be used as grounds for suspicion or accusation.”
With roses in the face of incitement
The Jewish-Arab movement "Standing Together" organized a solidarity visit today to Rambam Hospital in Haifa, joined by other activists and groups, to protest the escalating incitement campaign against Arab doctors and medical staff at the hospital.
The initiative, titled "Stop the Incitement Against Doctors," saw participants distribute roses to medical staff as a gesture of solidarity and to emphasize their rejection of the incitement and racism targeting Arab healthcare workers.
"Standing Together" stated that the move was a response to the escalating incitement and dissemination of false information against Arab doctors at Rambam Hospital in recent days.
It was founded before the Nakba by the Lebanese doctor Hamza
The movement added that "medical staff are now being targeted by racism directed against the Arab community in Israel," criticizing the participation of government officials in the incitement campaign against hospital workers.
"We Stand Together" emphasized in its statement that doctors and medical staff work to save the lives of all patients without discrimination, stressing that the language a doctor or nurse uses cannot be used as a pretext for inciting against them or questioning their professionalism.
Additional groups and activists joined the solidarity campaign in a joint statement affirming the need to protect healthcare workers and confront racism and incitement against Arab medical staff.
The late Lebanese doctor, Dr. Nayef Hamza
It should be noted that there are several public and private hospitals in Haifa, which is home to approximately 40,000 Arab citizens out of a total city population of around half a million. A significant number of doctors and support staff work in these hospitals, comprising about 40% of the workforce in most facilities.
The percentage of Palestinian Arabs working in medicine and nursing within Israeli hospitals has increased over the past two decades, largely due to many Jewish students switching from medicine to high-tech fields for economic reasons.
Hamza Hospital is being transformed into "Rambam"
The hospital was founded by the late Lebanese physician, Dr. Nayef Hamza, and retained his name until the Nakba in Haifa, when it was renamed Rambam Hospital.
Hamza was born in 1895 in the Lebanese village of Abey, the hometown of the late former prisoner Samir Quntar. In 1919, Nayef Hamza graduated as a physician from the American University of Beirut, specializing in surgery and gynecology. He was a distinguished student, as attested by some of his classmates. Like many Lebanese intellectuals, he emigrated from his homeland to neighboring Palestine and resided in Haifa, Beirut's sister city, for many years until the Nakba. He then moved to Nablus before returning to Beirut. He held a medical license number 193.
According to archival sources, Dr. Nayef was appointed as a doctor within the British Army in 1920, and practiced medicine in the countries of the region, the last of which was Sudan, before he reached Jaffa, Ramallah and Jerusalem, and finally Haifa and Nablus, where he established a Haifa clinic and quickly became famous as a distinguished and skilled doctor, and patients from all over the country visited his clinic.
The red-tiled building that now houses Hamza Hospital is the former Monastery of the Visitors, built by Carmelite nuns in 1894. During World War I, the Ottoman authorities converted it into a military hospital. After the war, it reverted to a monastery until 1936, when the nuns moved to a new monastery in French Carmel.
The British Mandate used it as a dispensary for several months to serve the ruling elite in preparation for World War II. In 1938, a new hospital with 225 beds was built next to it, an initiative spearheaded by Dr. Nayef Hamza, who served as the hospital's chief surgeon until 1942. He was then appointed hospital director until the Nakba of 1948.
Historian Professor Qais Farou, a native of Daliyat al-Karmel, shortly before his passing that his father, Madi Hamza, owed his life to Dr. Hamza, who performed surgery on him in 1939 and also saved his brother, Mu'in, when he was just one year old, in 1947.
Among Hamza's fellow physicians was Dr. Abdul Latif al-Yashruti, Abu Omar, originally from Acre and residing in Ireland. During a visit to the country, he told us that Arab, foreign, and Jewish doctors worked at Hamza Hospital without discrimination of any kind. He mentioned some of the Arab doctors, including Simon Batish, head of the health department, Shafiq Haddad, and the surgeon Dr. Nayef Hamza.
colloquial poet Saud Al-Asadi
The Palestinian colloquial poet Saud al-Asadi, originally from Deir al-Asad and now residing in Nazareth, had a story with Dr. Hamza. At the age of four, he contracted typhoid fever, a disease for which medicine was scarce at the time.
When his mother wanted to take him to Hamza Hospital, his father hesitated, doubting his chances of recovery: "Don't trouble yourself... the boy is either dead or alive." But she was determined. She took him by bus from Deir al-Asad to Acre, then to Haifa at the Eastern Railway Station, and finally walked to Hamza Hospital.
Al-Asadi recounts his mother's words: "I visited him daily despite my suffering. Sometimes I had to climb the hospital wall and jump over it to reach my son's room, as I would arrive late and the reception hours had ended."
He recounts that the typhoid patient was quarantined in "Azra'in's room," the room of death, as his case was considered hopeless due to the scarcity of medicine.
He adds affectionately, "But I kicked Azra'in in the face and said to him, 'Aren't you ashamed of yourself?' So he tucked his tail between his legs and ran away, and I escaped death."
With the fervor of the late Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al-Shabbi, al-Asadi asks, "How can I fear death when I am nourished by al-Mutanabbi and al-Ma'arri?"
Saud al-Asadi alludes to this incident in his poem "Like Two Ripe Figs," quoting his mother's confirmation that Dr. Nayef Hamza was kind and generous, forgiving his patients who couldn't afford treatment.
He says that he was a man of noble character, and Palestine bears witness to his status as its premier physician and his benevolent contributions to its poor.
