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Abstract
This essay explores representations of Palestinian physicians in the Israeli health-care system during the Covid-19 pandemic and the dynamics that have played out in that system during the public health emergency from the perspective of a Palestinian physician. It argues that the health-care system, an essential pillar and infrastructural foundation of the settler-colonial project, is naively imagined as an apolitical, neutral sphere. As the site of a metaphorical battlefield against Covid-19, it has been window-dressed as an arena for brotherhood between Israeli Palestinians and Jews, and fantasized about as a gateway to political gain or equality for the Palestinian citizens of Israel (PCIs). Throughout the process, settler militarism, settler symbols, and settler domination have continued to be normalized.
Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank Katharina Konarek for her general support and editing assistance.
Notes
1 i24NEWS, “Israel Dedicates Independence Day Flyover to Nation's Hospitals,” 29 April 2020, https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/1588151454-israel-dedicates-independence-day-flyover-to-nation-s-hospitals.
2 Under Israeli law, the distinction is made between the citizens of Israel and the people of Israel. The latter is a term used to refer only to the Jewish population living inside, and sometimes outside, Israel. This reflects the tension and contradictions between Israel's definition of itself as a Jewish democratic state and not as the state of its citizens. For further reading see Azmi Bishara, “Zionism and Equal Citizenship: Essential and Incidental Citizenship in the Jewish State,” in Nadim N. Rouhana and Sahar S. Huneidi, Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 137–56.
3 Efrayeem Shtayen, “Nahriya demands a flight salute to the corona fighters” (in Hebrew), Mirkaz Hainyanim, 27 April 2020, https://bit.ly/2X6kOdH.
4 Shtayen, “Nahriya demands a flight salute” (in Hebrew).
5 The IAF later addressed the grievance and, at 12:35 p.m. on 29 April 2020, four T-6 Texan aircraft flew over the hospital, among other places, drawing hearts in the sky as the crew waved Israeli flags.
6 Nathan Jeffay, “Video Saluting Israel's Arab Medical Professionals during Crisis Goes Viral,” Times of Israel, 27 April 2020, https://www.timesofisrael.com/video-saluting-israels-arab-medical-professionals-during-crisis-goes-viral.
7 Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge Press, 2007), p. 3.
8 Further references on this appear in n38.
9 Jean Comaroff, “The Diseased Heart of Africa: Medicine, Colonialism, and the Black Body,” in Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock, eds. Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 305–29; Warwick Anderson, “The Colonial Medicine of Settler States: Comparing Histories of Indigenous Health,” Health History 9, no. 2 (2007): pp. 144–54.
10 Dafna Hirsch,“We Are Here to Bring the West, Not Only to Ourselves: Zionist Occidentalism and The Discourse of Hygiene in Mandate Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41, no. 4 (November 2009): pp. 577–94, quote at p. 581.
11 David Israel, “After Years of Struggle, Ariel University's Medical School Begins Teaching New Doctors,” Jewish Press, 28 October 2019, https://www.jewishpress.com/news/israel/religious-secular-in-israel-israel/after-years-of-struggle-ariel-universitys-medical-school-starts-bringing-up-new-doctors/2019/10/28/.
12 One way that Israel creates facts on the ground and consolidates them is by turning what was once a remote settlement established by radical religious settlers into a normal-seeming town with access to trains, a university with Jewish and PCI students, international conferences, and so on. No longer a small hilltop outpost, the settlement becomes accepted as a normal and permanent place. This was clearly the case with Ariel, where the Israeli Council for Higher Education initially refused to recognize the university because it was located in a West Bank settlement, but eventually did so after a protracted battle. The same was true for the cultural center in Ariel. To start with, some Israeli artists refused to perform there, but as the settlement grew and became indistinguishable from large towns or cities such as Tel Aviv, it became normalized. The university and medical school in Ariel were major aspects of this normalization, especially as a result of cultivating international ties. For further information, see the Ariel Municipality's website and its History page at https://www.ariel.muni.il/english/10/.
13 Palestinian doctors, and native doctors in general, are often considered by the settler project as loyal colonial civil servants. For further reading, see Liat Kozma and Yoni Furas, “Palestinian Doctors under the British Mandate: The Formation of a Profession,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 52, no. 1 (February 2020): pp. 87–108; also see the intimate writings of Sherene Seikaly on her great grandfather and how doctors of his generation were considered “passive, apolitical and white-adjacent”: Sherene Seikaly, “The Matter of Time,” American Historical Review 124, no. 5 (December 2019): pp. 1681–88; and on the dual and ambiguous role of the native clerk in colonial Africa, criticizing colonial rule, sharing some of its ideas, and materially enforcing it, see Jonathan Derrick, “The ‘Native Clerk’ in Colonial West Africa,” African Affairs 82, no. 326 (January 1983): pp. 61–74.
14 Hassan Jabareen, “Hobbesian Citizenship: How the Palestinians Became a Minority in Israel” in Will Kymlicka and Eva Pföstl, eds., Multiculturalism and Minority Rights in the Arab World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 189–218.
15 The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, “Population of Israel on the Eve of 2020,” press release 413/2019, 31 December 2019, https://www.cbs.gov.il/en/mediarelease/pages/2019/population-of-israel-on-the-eve-of-2020.aspx.
16 Lee Yaron, “Arab Israelis Fight Coronavirus as First-Class Doctors but Second-Class Citizens,” Haaretz, 17 March 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-arabs-in-israel-fight-pandemic-as-first-class-doctors-but-second-class-citizens-1.8681493.
17 Lana Tatour, “Citizenship as Domination: Settler Colonialism and the Making of Palestinian Citizenship in Israel,” Arab Studies Journal 27, no. 2 (Fall 2019): pp. 8–39.
18 Ilan Pappe, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oxford: Simon and Schuster, 2007).
19 Bnai Zion Medical Center, “Bnai Zion Medical Center's History,” https://www.b-zion.org.il/pages_e/1213.aspx.
20 Tal Rosner, Heroes of Health: Israel's Healthcare System as a Model of Jewish-Arab Coexistence, Israel Religious Action Center and Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, December 2016, https://www.iataskforce.org/sites/default/files/resource/resource-1496.pdf.
21 Dina Kraft, “Meet the Majadlas: An Arab Family of Doctors on Israel's Coronavirus Front Lines,” Haaretz, 21 April 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-an-arab-family-of-doctors-on-israel-s-coronavirus-front-lines-1.8786492; Phil Schneider, “Israeli and Arab Doctors Break Every Steretype in the Middle East,” Israel Unwired, 15 August 2018, https://israelunwired.com/israeli-and-arab-doctors-break-every-stereotype-in-the-middle-east/.
22 Steve Hendrix, “An Arab Doctor and an Ultra-Orthodox Jew Find Common Ground in a Covid Ward,” Washington Post, 25 April 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/an-arab-doctor-and-an-ultra-orthodox-jew-find-common-ground-in-a-covid-ward/2020/04/25/d3ef284c-7f39-11ea-84c2-0792d8591911_story.html.
23 Harvey Skinner et al., “Promoting Arab and Israeli Cooperation: Peacebuilding through Health Initiatives,” The Lancet 365, no. 9466 (April 2005): pp. 1274–77; Harvey A. Skinner and Abi Sriharan, “Building Cooperation through Health Initiatives: An Arab and Israeli Case Study,” Conflict and Health 1, no. 8 (2007): pp. 1–9.
24 Emek Medical Center, “Coexistence through Medicine: Emek, Coexistence and a Beacon of Light,” About Us page, 30 June 2020, https://hospitals.clalit.co.il/emek/en/about/Pages/Coexistence_Through_medicine.aspx.
25 Joshua Levitt, “AIPAC's Largest-Ever Policy Conference Kicks Off in Washington,” The Algemeiner, 2 March 2014, https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/03/02/aipacs-largest-ever-policy-conference-kicks-off-in-washington; Chana Roberts, “‘Your Business Is National Pride,’” Israel National News, 10 April 2017, https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/227991; Shiryn Ghermezian, “New UN Exhibit Shows Israel's ‘Above and Beyond’ Humanitarian Efforts around the World,” Jewish News Syndicate, 29 March 2019, https://www.jns.org/new-un-exhibit-shows-israels-above-and-beyond-humanitarian-efforts-around-the-world/; and Richard Horton, “Offline: People to People,” The Lancet 384, no. 9951 (October, 2014): p. 1332.
26 Ariela Popper-Giveon and Yael Keshet, “‘It's Every Family's Dream’: Choice of a Medical Career among the Arab Minority in Israel,” Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health 18 (2016): pp. 1148–58.
27 Samir Khatib, “Al-hizb al-shuyu‘i al-Israili wa mashru‘ ibti‘ath al-tullab lil dirasat al-akadimiyya fil duwal al-ishtirakiyya” (The Israeli Communist Party and the plan to send students for academic study in Eastern Bloc countries), Al Ittihad, 23 April 2020, https://bit.ly/332ewPP.
28 See, for example, this page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs website describing as a shining model of democracy a hospital in lower Galilee where 30 out of 160 physicians are PCIs: Karen Kloosterman, “The Poria Hospital is an example of global democracy” (in Hebrew), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 24 May 2009, https://mfa.gov.il/MFAAR/IsraelExperience/SocietyCoexistenceAndPeace/Pages/Israels-Poria-Hospital-is-a-model-for-global-democracy-24052009.aspx; see also, Rosner, Heroes of Health; and Ronny Linder, “Israel's Medical Field: A Model for Jewish-Arab Equality and Coexistence,” Haaretz, 31 March 2017, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-medicine-a-model-of-jewish-arab-equality-and-coexistence-1.5455636.
29 Anat Shemesh, Employment characteristics of physicians in Israel (in Hebrew), Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Health, November 2012, https://www.mirsham.org.il/uploads/n/1557042169.2064.pdf.
30 Zama Coursen-Neff, “Discrimination against Palestinian Arab Children in the Israeli Education System,” International Law and Politics 36, no. 4 (2004): pp. 749–816; Khalid Arar and Mohanned Mustafa, “Access to Higher Education for Palestinians in Israel,” Education, Business and Society:Contemporary Middle Eastern Issues 4, no. 3 (2011): pp. 207–28.
31 Lorenzo Veracini, Settler Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
32 Sarab Abu-Rabia-Queder, “The Biopolitics of Declassing Palestinian Professional Women in a Settler-Colonial Context,” Current Sociology 67, no. 1 (2017): pp. 141–58.
33 See Adalah—The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “Adalah to Nahariya Hospital: ‘Prohibition on Speaking Arabic Violates Rights of Staff and Needs,’” 11 September 2014, https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/8325.
34 Hadassah International, “Prof. Ahmed Eid Was Honored on Israel Independence Day,” 2 May 2017, http://hadassahinternational.org/prof-ahmed-eid-honored-israel-independence-day/.
35 Abraham Fuks, “The Military Metaphors of Modern Medicine,” in Zhenyi Li and Thomas L. Long, eds., The Meaning Management Challenge: Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2010), pp. 57–69; Sarah Chamness, “Ebola the Enemy: How the U.S. Media Militarized the 2014 Ebola Epidemic,” Symposium on Undergraduate Research and Creative Expression, no. 657, Valparaiso University (Spring 2017), https://scholar.valpo.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1623&context=cus.
36 Azeezah Kanji, “War Is Not a Metaphor,” Jadaliyya, 11 May 2020, https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41098.
37 Richard Silverstein, “Israel Is Militarizing and Monetizing the Covid-19 Pandemic,” Jacobin Magazine, 16 April 2020, https://jacobinmag.com/2020/4/israel-military-surveillance-coronavirus-covid-netanyahu.
38 For more on the “brotherhoods-in-arms” phenomenon in settler-indigenous or other racialized contexts, see Ruth Ginio, The French Army and Its African Soldiers: The Years of Decolonialization (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017); Marcus Cox, “The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms (Review),” Journal of Military History 72, no. 4 (October 2008): pp. 1335; Marsha L. Rozenblit, Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Hasburg Austria during World War I (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 252; Timothy C. Winegard, “A Case Study of Indigenous Brothers in Arms during the First World War,” Australian Army Journal 6, no. 1 (Autumn 2009): p. 191.
39 Yossi K. Halevi, “Israel's Arab Moment,” The Atlantic, 30 April 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/israels-arab-moment/610918/.
40 Joshua Mitnick, “In Israeli War on Coronavirus, Arab Doctors Rush to the Front,” Christian Science Monitor, 16 April 2020, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2020/0416/In-Israeli-war-on-coronavirus-Arab-doctors-rush-to-the-front; also see an interview with Arsulan Abu-Mokh where a Palestinian physician describes the mixed feelings he has as a proud member of the Arab-Jewish medical corps hearing the racist comments of Israeli politicians on television. Abu-Mokh describes the health-care system as an excellent example of coexistence that politicians should learn from: “Partners in fate: The outcry of the Arab medical staffs” (in Hebrew), YouTube video, posted by Ynet, 4:26, 30 March 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikvH4xmwyes.
41 Hannah Arendt, “A Special Supplement: Reflections on Violence,” New York Review of Books, 27 February 1969, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1969/02/27/a-special-supplement-reflections-on-violence/.
42 See the Partners in Fate, Partners in Government website, About Us page, https://israel.co.il/about-2/; See also Jeffay, “Video Saluting Israel's Arab Medical Professionals, Times of Israel.
43 Several initiatives about the role of PCIs in the Israeli polity and in governance have centered the issues of justice, equal citizenship, national identity, national rights, and the notion of Israel as the state of all its citizens. See in particular, Mada al-Carmel: The Arab Center for Applied Social Justice, The Haifa Declaration, 15 May 2007, https://mada-research.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/watheeqat-haifa-english.pdf; a constitutional proposal for the state of Israel by Adalah, The Democratic Constitution, 20 March 2007, https://www.adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/Public/files/democratic_constitution-english.pdf; and the bill proposed by the National Democratic Assembly, known as Balad, in support of Israel being a state of all its citizens: see The Knesset, “Knesset Presidium Disqualifies Balad Proposal to Legislate ‘Basic Law: A Country of All Its Citizens,’ Because It Rejects Israel's Existence as a Jewish State,” press release, 5 June 2018, https://m.knesset.gov.il/EN/News/PressReleases/pages/Pr13904_pg.aspx.
44 Al Jazeera, “Israel Swears In New Gov't as Netanyahu Pledges Annexation Push,” 17 May 2020, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/05/netanyahu-israeli-gov-annex-illegal-settlements-2005 17102343363.html.
45 Jack Khoury, “Israeli Arab Councils Announce Strike in Protest of ‘Discrimination’ in Coronavirus Funds,” Haaretz, 2 May 2020, https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israeli-arab-councils-to-strike-in-protest-of-discrimination-in-coronavirus-funds-1.8814841; also, see Adalah, Report by Adalah to UN Special Rapporteurs and Independent Experts in Response to Joint Questionnaire on COVID-19 and Human Rights, 4 July 2020, https://www.adalah.org/uploads/uploads/Adalah_UN_COVID-19_Report_with_Major_ Findings_16.07.20.pdf.
46 Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1994), pp. 132–42.
47 Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, p. 145.
48 The conflict between the political commitment of many Black physicians and the pursuit of their careers and fortunes in apartheid South Africa is something that Nelson Mandela pointed out. See Anne Digby, “Early Black Doctors in South Africa,” Journal of African History 46, no. 3 (2005): pp. 427–54 and Anny Digby, “From Mahlangeni to Gumede—The Second Generation of Black Doctors in South Africa (1913–1930),” South African Medical Journal 97, no. 6 (2007): pp. 424–29.
49 An unofficial English translation of the law is available on The Knesset's website. See The Knesset, “Basic Law: Israel—The Nation State of the Jewish People,” 2018, https://knesset.gov.il/laws/special/eng/BasicLawNationState.pdf.
50 Harriet Sherwod, “Israel's Cabinet Meets to Finalise Annexation Plans,” The Guardian, 28 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/28/growing-hostility-may-force-israel-to-pause-annexation-plan.
51 Adalah, “Video of Palestinian Man's Killing at Israeli Hospital Is Hard Evidence of Security Guards Quick to Shoot,” 14 May 2020, https://www.adalah.org/en/content/view/10017.