The Arab was then sent home by the authorities.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A patient brought in from the Gaza Strip for medical treatment a few days ago was swiftly arrested Monday after sexually harassing a staffer in the Israeli hospital that was taking care of him.

An intern on duty at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon was shocked by the man, who began stroking her face and hair when she came in to check on him after his surgery.

She ran out of the room and told her superiors, who called for security.

“We immediately involved the person responsible for sexual harassment complaints, the general nurse, and the security team while calming the intern,” the hospital announced in a statement. “Security forces isolated [the man], and the police were called to the scene. They arrested the patient and took him to jail.”

The incident was handled with the involvement of the highest echelon of the hospital’s administration, the statement added.

According to Ynet, the authorities did not hold their prisoner for long, preferring instead to send him back to the Gaza Strip.

He was not a terrorist or a suspect in any nationalistic crime.

A month after the ongoing war broke out following the Hamas invasion and brutal killing spree on October 7, after many citizen protests against treating wounded terrorists in Israeli hospitals alongside their victims, Health Minister Moshe Arbel ordered that they instead be treated in IDF-run or prison clinics.

Despite the directive, there have been periodic reports in the media of terrorists receiving medical attention in regular hospitals.

In December, Channel 12 cited an unnamed official who said that there was a rotation agreement among the Israeli medical centers for treating serious cases, which had been organized together with the Healthy Ministry.

Demonstrations against such a policy were renewed last month, with people protesting in front of hospital gates.

In a video that went viral, one vociferous objector, Herzl Hajaj, the father of a soldier murdered in a 2017 terrorist ramming attack, can be seen trying to enter the room in Hadassah-University Medical Center on Mount Scopus where a Nukhba terrorist was being cared for.

As security personnel hold him back, he yells repeatedly that “You should be ashamed of yourselves” for admitting one of Hamas’ elite fighters.

The Israel Medical Association (IMA) then sent a letter to hospital administrators reminding them that doctors are required by both international and Israeli law to treat all people, “regardless of who they are.” Their only consideration can be “the patient’s medical condition.”

“We will leave it to the judicial system to bring them to justice,” the letter added.

Ministry of Health Director General Moshe Bar Siman Tov also told hospital directors in a Zoom call in April that treating terrorists in fully equipped medical centers “enables Israel’s legitimacy” in the world and also “saves many Israeli lives.”

Following the call, Ynet cited informed sources who explained the latter remark by saying that curing terrorists had led to intelligence information that had helped rescue two hostages, Fernando Marman and Luis Har, in January.

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Har-Lev’s family released a statement dismissing the possibility that he committed suicide and asking the police to investigate the death as a murder.

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

The family of Lt. Col. (Res.) Dr. Avi Har-Lev, who was found dead last week of a gunshot wound in his vehicle in the Lahav Forest, has stated that they reject initial findings that the death was a suicide.

Har-Lev, 50, was the director of the Fertility and IVF Department at Barzilai Hospital in Ashkelon and a prominent researcher who contributed some 45 articles to medical journals.

He was returning to his home in Sansana, a town in northern Judea and Samaria that he helped found, after reserve duty in the IDF when his body was discovered.

Calling their father an optimistic man who had recently made plans for the future, Har-Lev’s family released a statement dismissing the possibility that he committed suicide and asking the police to investigate the death as a murder.

“We reject the unfounded rumors about the circumstances of Avi’s death that have been prevalent since his death,” read the statement. “We were convinced from the first moment that Avi was murdered.”

“We call on the Israel Police to thoroughly examine all directions of the investigation, including the possibility of a nationalist incident.

“It should be noted that in similar incidents in the past (such as in the murders of the late Rabbi Moshe Talbi and the late Yaron Gispen), the initial impression of the investigators, that it was a suicide, turned out to be incorrect.

“Especially in this case, when Avi was on his way from reserve service and wearing IDF uniform, a comprehensive and exhaustive examination is called for,” the statement said.

Mount Hebron Regional Council Chairman Yochai Damari supported the family with his own statement, saying, “I call on the security forces to carefully investigate the possibility that this was [terrorism].

“Lahav Forest is a commonly used route for illegal [Palestinian] residents crossing from the Hebron area [over the Green Line], and it is possible that one of them spotted a Lt. Colonel in uniform and decided to attack.”

Esther Horgan, a mother of six from Tel Menashe, was murdered in a terrorist attack in the Lahav Forest in December 2020.

“Dr. Har-Lev stood out at Barzilai as a beloved man with a huge heart and a captivating personality that impressed and won the hearts of everyone who knew him – staff members and patients alike,” said Barzilai Hospital in a statement.

“Dr. Har-Lev gave wholeheartedly to his colleagues and patients, and everyone who met him could not help but be impressed by his magnetism and personality.”

Har-Lev is survived by his wife, Shulamit, their five children Ron, Moriya, Lavi, Maor, and Hadar Shira, and two grandchildren.

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With Israel under attack, southern hospital moves emergency operations to underground facility.

By World Israel News Staff

As Israelis in several parts of the country went scurrying for cover on Tuesday to protect themselves from Gaza rocket attacks, an 8-year old girl was reported in serious condition after collapsing as she ran for shelter in the city of Holon, south of Tel Aviv.

The girl had lost consciousness, medics reported. She was taken to a hospital in serious but stable condition, they said.

She was responding to a siren that sounded in Holon, warning residents that the city was under attack by Palestinian terrorists.

The girl was in an apartment house. Schools were closed in the region as a barrage of rocket attacks struck southern and central Israel on Tuesday, after the Israel Air Force assassinated a leading terrorist from Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip in a targeted strike at around 4 a.m.

In southern Israel, prematurely-born babies were evacuated from the preemie unit at Barzilai Hospital in the coastal city of Ashkelon. To protect against Gazan rockets, Barzilai constructed an underground facility to ensure that emergency care can continue under such conditions.

A far larger facility was built at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, in northern Israel, in case of rocket attacks from terrorists in Lebanon.

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