To the editor,
Obsessed with what she perceives as Israeli inability to see themselves
as anything but victims, Alice Rothchild (Pitching for Health in the West
Bank, March 6) is blinded to the fundamental truth of the ongoing Arab war
to destroy Israel. It is, in fact, the Palestinians and their misguided
supporters, who refuse to identify the Palestinian Arabs as anything but
victims, even as they have killed and maimed thousands of Israelis in
premeditated attacks. She cites as accurate, although how such a survey
could be conducted is beyond imagination, an allegedly high percentage of
West Bank Palestinians that “have not left their villages in three years”.
What is beyond dispute is that prior to three years ago, Palestinians were
able to travel freely throughout the West Bank, and frequently to Israel.
The very hospitals she describes, Hadassah’s two campuses and Shaare
Tzeddek, were well known for delivering care to Arabs and Jews alike,
including those from the West Bank.

This all ended because the Palestinians turned down Israel’s acceptance
of an American plan for sovereignty, rejected the autonomy they already
enjoyed, and chose instead a vicious war to destroy Israel.

I was there in 2000 and saw their physicians sitting together at
Israeli hospitals, treating any patient who came through their door,
regardless of if they were Jew or Arab, or where they were from. This was
just as Dr. Rothchild found on her recent visit. One of those Hadassah
physicians, Shmuel Gillis, was shot dead as he drove home from work on
February 1, 2001. The last patient he treated was a Palestinian Arab.

Dr. Gillis was, unfortunately, just one of many Israeli physicians and
health care workers intentionally murdered at the hands of Palestinian
killers. Dr. Rothchild, however, had one advantage over their surviving
colleagues as she dispensed care to Arabs in Qufor. She did not need to
worry that the round-bellied Palestinian woman approaching her was actually
packing more death and destruction in the form of a concealed nail studded
bomb, instead of an unborn baby.

John R. Cohn, M.D.
Clinical Professor of Medicine
Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Thomas Jefferson University
1015 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215-923-7685