By Donna Gordon Blankinship, Editor, JTNews
It is with great sadness and some anger that Dr. Shmuel Penchas talks about the new specialty at Hadassah hospitals in Jerusalem. In the past, doctors at the two hospitals funded by the Women’s Zionist Organization of America were known for their research in gene therapy or breakthroughs in the treatment of life-threatening illnesses. Now they are the world-renown experts in treating terrorism victims.
Penchas, former director general for Hadassah Medical Organization, a job he held for 18 years, was in Seattle last week with Hadassah’s national president, Bonnie Lipton, to speak at a garden party membership event for the Seattle chapter. They took a few minutes out of their whirlwind schedule of meetings to speak on the situation in Israel, in particular at Hadassah hospitals.
Hadassah is known throughout the world for building bridges for peace by treating every patient the same and also training Arab doctors and nurses to work in their own hospitals. Penchas and Lipton says those practices remain a reality in Jerusalem today, but the doctors and nurses treating victims of terror are not happy to be treating “homicide bombers” who survive their attacks alongside the people they have injured.
“We treat them if we have to,” Penchas said of the treatment of terrorists. “We overcome our anger, we overcome our unhappiness. We follow the Hippocratic oath — the Hebrew version — and we do the best we can for them.” Terrorists are stabilized and then transferred as quickly as is feasible to Arab hospitals.
Penchas noted that Palestinian hospitals improved significantly over the years before the current problems, thanks in a large part to training by the Hadassah Medical Organization and by Israel government funding.
Lipton pointed out a common misconception of foreign visitors to Hadassah hospitals, including American visitors. They see people dressed in traditional Muslim Arab clothing and assume, wrongly, that these people by working in and be treated at the hospital are all Palestinians. On the contrary, most of these people are Israel’s own Arab citizens, who are guaranteed the same rights and have the same national health insurance as Jewish Israelis. Some Palestinians have become Israeli citizens through marriage to Moslem Arab Israeli citizens, but Israel has a great variety of Arab citizens, she explained. “People need to be educated to know the difference.”
Penchas is not optimistic about peace right now. He believes the current violent situation in Israel, which began nearly two years ago, will go on for a very long time. “There is no solution in sight. Most of us suspect every Arab we look at. The amount of hatred has increased. I don’t think we can work toward real cooperative peace. I would be suspicious of any cease fire,” he said.
Penchas believes Israel is fighting for the survival of the Jewish people and that perseverance is key. “By persevering, we will win.”
Lipton, who said she agrees with everything Penchas said, had one thing to add — a charge to the women of Hadassah.
“Just as the government has to find a way for the people of Israel to persevere, I feel very, very strongly that the women of Hadassah have to fulfil the commitment to our mission … to make certain that the level of medicine, the state of art lifesaving equipment that has become so critical following these homicide bombings is not only the best but there is sufficient quantities of everything that is needed for the largest attacks,” Lipton said. “As Israel’s greatest ally, the Jewish people here and around the world have to do what we can.”
She added that in addition to providing funds for buying this equipment and training doctors and nurses, Hadassah women should wield their influence in the political arena, lobbying their congressmen to continue to support Israel.
Lipton reported that Hadassah efforts to raise money for a new Center for Emergency Medicine — a state-of-the-art trauma center — is going well. Hadassah donors have met the $10 million matching grant put forward by an anonymous donor to match any gift of $5,000 or more to the emergency room campaign. She said the new emergency room should be completed within the next few years.
“The women of Hadassah have always come through. That’s what makes us who we are,” she said.
Lipton, who became national president of Hadassah a few months before the current troubles began, and Penchas, who is now working as a consultant to the organization, are traveling around the country to raise money to buy the equipment needed to fulfil a possibility they would only speak of in euphemisms. She called it “God forbid” and he called it “the big one.”
Penchas was recently elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and only the third Israeli ever elected to this important body. He also lectures in the areas that interest him and he is conducting some research and writing. A major focus on his work is on world health economics and planning.