Arab medical resident at Shaare Zedek suspended for anti-Israeli Facebook posts
Dr. Haitham Rajabi’s Facebook account describes him as a Shaare Zedek physician who worked in the private Terem urgent care center.
By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICHShearei Tzedek(photo credit: FACEBOOK)
Shaare Zedek Medical Center director-general Prof. Jonathan Halevy on Monday suspended an Arab medical resident who had passed on to Facebook friends anti-Israel statements and ghoulish photos of dead Gaza children.The posts, written in Arabic, also condemned IDF soldiers for their “massacre of Gaza” and presented Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a werewolf.When Halevy’s office received complaints about Dr. Haitham Rajabi’s Facebook account, the office had the posts translated into English. Halevy then summoned Rajabi to his office to hear his side of the story.Rajabi “has been working in our emergency department for three years and shown professionalism and devotion to each patient regardless of religion, race and nationality,” Halevy said.The doctor “expressed sorrow and regret for the messages sent to him and that he found it necessary to share these posts with the social network. He reiterated his commitment to continue to provide professional and dedicated care,” said Halevy.“However, in taking such action, the resident overstepped the boundaries in the system of confidence between doctor and patients in general and especially in these difficult days,” the director-general said.Halevy added further steps will be considered “after seeing what [Rajabi] will do to express his positions, among others in the social networks, as he expressed in his conversation with me,” such as apologizing and denouncing what appeared on his Facebook account.The director-general continued that at Shaare Zedek, “Jews and Arabs have been working alongside one another for generations, all united in their desire to care for all. Hospital management will not allow any violation of this reality.”Meanwhile, the Hadassah Medical Organization on Monday filed a complaint with the police against a man calling himself “Wissam Hashleman” who falsely claimed to be a Hadassah doctor and spread “offensive and inciteful material” via Facebook.HMO management checked and found the man is not a Hadassah staffer and not a physician.
