Jerusalem, June 28: Israeli Deputy Health Minister Ya’acov Litzman has come under fire for delaying funds to an Arab-run facility and his racist comments against the Palestinian man.
The Israel Medical Association (IMA) charged Litzman on Sunday with holding up ministry budgets from Nahariya’s Western Galilee Hospital because its director general is an Israeli Arab.
Litzman had recently accused Dr. Mas’ad Barhoom, the only Arab director to run an Israeli hospital, of not allowing his Jewish employees to pray in the hospital, pointedly noting that Barhoom “isn’t a Jew.”
The deputy minister’s recent statements in the Israeli parliament (Knesset) about the hospital “raise the smell of racism,” The Jerusalem Post quoted IMA chairman Leonid Eidelman as saying.
Eidelman dismissed Litzman’s claim about preventing prayers as absolutely unfounded and said his verbal attacks on the Palestinian doctor were baseless.
In a letter to Prime Minister and Health Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Eidelman said that “decisions about the future of Israeli citizens and residents of the periphery are based on the personal views of the deputy minister.”
He further described hospital directors as devoted professionals who work according to ethical principles and serve patients despite budgetary challenges.
“At the minimum, I would have expected that he who heads the health system would give them full backing and appreciate their work,” the IMA chairman said, callin the ministry to develop resources to support Nahariya’s “strategically important” hospital.
——–Agencies