Health And Zionism

The author investigates the political and social forces that influenced Israel's health care system and policy during the early years of state building. Among the struggles Shvarts explores in this penetrating study are the debate over immigration health policy and the Law of Return, enacted in 1950; the battles over universal health care between the Workers' Health Fund and the Israeli government led by prime minister Ben Gurion; the urgent organization of military medical services during wartime; and the contested establishment of renown civilian medical facilities. These early conflicts have had far-reaching implications that continue to be felt throughout Israeli society. While many European countries successfully established unified, state-run health care systems, Israel's political rivalries and social turbulence gave rise to a m'elange of "sick funds," large and small, public and private, that influence and complicate the delivery of health care to this day. This book sheds light on the major conflicts, leaders, and historic events that shaped the current Israeli health care system, and has relevance to developing health care systems worldwide.

In its early years, Israel's dominant ideology led to public provision of health care for all Jewish citizens-regardless of their age, income, or ability to pay. However, the system has shifted in recent decades, becoming increasingly privatized and market-based. In a familiar paradox, the wealthy, the young, and the healthy have relatively easy access to health care, and the poor, the old, and the very sick confront increasing obstacles to medical treatment.In Circles of Exclusion, Dani Filc, both a physician and a human rights activist, forcefully argues that in present-day Israel, equal access to health care is constantly and systematically thwarted by a regime that does not extend an equal level of commitment to the well-being of all residents of Israel, whether Jewish, Israeli Palestinians, migrant workers, or Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Filc explores how Israel's adoption of a neoliberal model has pushed the system in a direction that gives priority to the strongest and richest individuals and groups over the needs of society as a whole, and to profit and competition over care.Filc pays special attention to the repercussions of policies that define citizenship in a way that has serious consequences for the health of groups of Palestinians who are Israeli citizens-particularly the Bedouins in the unrecognized villages-and to the ways in which this structure of citizenship affects the health of migrant workers. The health care situation is even more dire in the Occupied Territories, where the Occupation, especially in the last two decades, has negatively affected access to medical care and the health of Palestinians. Filc concludes his book with a discussion of how human rights, public health, and economic imperatives can be combined to produce a truly equal health care system that provides high-quality services to all Israelis.

The Hadassah Book covers the topics of women, public health, and Zionism. The book focuses mainly on the unique endeavor of the members of the Hadassah Women's Organization, who took upon themselves the mission of building modern public health services for the Jewish community in Palestine under British rule, based on their American experience in that field. During these first ten years, public health services were provided to 46,000 pregnant women, 53,000 infants, 700,000 house visits were made by nurses, and 1.7 million visits were made to the 44 maternal and infant welfare centers that provided services nationwide. Thanks to these services, infant mortality in the Jewish community dropped significantly from 144:1000 in 1922 to 54:1000 in 1939 (compared to 50:1000 in the U.S. and 53:1000 in the U.K.). No other similar endeavor has achieved such remarkable results in such a short period of time. All public health services provided under the umbrella of Hadassah were equal to all, including the Arab community. The mission was based mainly on the Zionist ideology of building a new nation healthy in body and mind. The public health mission of these American women was an integral part of the Zionist mission and activities at that time. However, unlike other fields of Zionist activity in Palestine during this period, it was led completely and only by women. This book is the story of these determined American Zionist women and their remarkable achievements and contributions to the health of the Jewish community in Palestine, which was the early offspring of a nation in building. The Hadassah Book also includes original pictures that were discovered only a few years ago in one of the old Hadassah storage rooms in Jerusalem by Prof. Yoel Donchin, and they are currently displayed at a special exhibition in the Jerusalem Theater. About the Authors Shifra Shvarts, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of the History of Medicine at Ben-Gurion University, and a researcher at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research, Sheba Medical Center. She specializes in the social history of medicine and public health in nineteenthto twentieth-century Israel. She has published six books on the development and history of the Israeli health care system. She is also the author of the Israeli HMO indices in the Israeli Medical Encyclopedia and in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Zipora Shehory-Rubin, Ph.D., is a Senior Lecturer at Kaye Academic College of Education in Beer- Sheva, Israel, where she teaches the history of education and Hebrew language. She received her Ph.D. in history from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev after completing her dissertation on Hadassah's educational enterprises and health activities during British Mandatory rule over Palestine. Her publications include books and articles on various aspects of the history of education and the history of medicine. Prof. Yoel Donchin, M.D., is a Clinical Professor of Anesthesia and Intensive Care at the Hadassah Medical Center, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. After graduating from Hadassah Medical School, he continued his residency at Hadassah, where he is now the head of the Patient Safety Center. He also rescued and preserved more than 1,000 photographs from Hadassah's early years and films created during that period. Currently he is the president of the Israeli Society of the History of Medicine.

The first study to research the history of the health funds established by Jewish laborers in Israel. The history of Kupat Holim, the health organization of workers in Israel, began at the 2nd Convention of Jewish agricultural workers in Judea in December 1911. Due to the lack of health services within the economic means of the workers, and the refusal of the farmer-employers to extend health services to their employees, the Jewish agricultural workers in Eretz-Israel -- at that time, a distant province of the far-flung Ottoman empire -- decided to establish a workers' health fund [kupat holim in Hebrew]. In the years 1912-15, two funds similar to the ones in Judea were also established in the north and center of the country. In the first years, the health funds did not provide workers with medical assistance on their own. Only in 1913, with the outbreak of the First World War, were the health funds transformed from insuring organizations into ones that provided medical assistance services themselves. With the establishment of the General Federation of Labor [1920], the health funds were amalgamated into a single organization -- the Federation's Kupat Holim [1921]. The unification of Kupat Holim ultimately determined theorganization's future -- transforming it from a small, local, temporary body with a few dozen members into a national entity and a key factor in health services in Israel to this day. This volume seeks to describe the growth of Kupat Holim up to the point where it was transformed into a central health organization in Israel; its relationship with its parent-organization, the General Federation of Labor and its rivalry with its competitor in the health field, Hadassah; its evolution from an organization solely for laborers to one open to all; the efforts on the part of Kupat Holim during the British Mandate [1918-1948] to bring about legislation for a compulsory health insurance law; and the formulation of the basic principle that underlie the work of Kupit Holim to this day -- the principle of national and social responsibility for the provision of equal health services to all. Dr. Shifra Shvarts is the head of the Health Systems Management Department of the Faculty of Health Sciences and School of Management at Ben-Gurion University.

"Requiring no specialized medical or Jewish knowledge, Jews in Medicine will appeal to readers interested in the fascinating history of Jewish contributions to the field. The book focuses on the relationship of Jews and medicine in Islamic and Christian lands, offering a short description of Jewish history followed by accounts of individual physicians and their major contributions. It ends with a description of physicians who were leaders in the Zionist movement and those who contributed to the development of medicine in the State of Israel"--

A novel inquiry into the sociopolitical dimensions of public medicine, Healing the Land and the Nation traces the relationships between disease, hygiene, politics, geography, and nationalism in British Mandatory Palestine between the world wars. Taking up the case of malaria control in Jewish-held lands, Sandra Sufian illustrates how efforts to thwart the disease were intimately tied to the project of Zionist nation-building, especially the movement’s efforts to repurpose and improve its lands. The project of eradicating malaria also took on a metaphorical dimension—erasing anti-Semitic stereotypes of the “parasitic” Diaspora Jew and creating strong, healthy Jews in Palestine. Sufian shows that, in reclaiming the land and the health of its people in Palestine, Zionists expressed key ideological and political elements of their nation-building project. Taking its title from a Jewish public health mantra, Healing the Land and the Nation situates antimalarial medicine and politics within larger colonial histories. By analyzing the science alongside the politics of Jewish settlement, Sufian addresses contested questions of social organization and the effects of land reclamation upon the indigenous Palestinian population in a decidedly innovative way. The book will be of great interest to scholars of the Middle East, Jewish studies, and environmental history, as well as to those studying colonialism, nationalism, and public health and medicine.