The hostility between Jews and Arabs is obvious on the battlefield.
But all this is inconsequential, said Dr. Shmuel Penchas, when it comes to the operating table.
“We don’t put a ‘J’ on the Jews or an ‘M’ on the Muslims,” said Penchas, the former director-general of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem. “Nobody knows or cares what they are — triage is by the severity of the wound.”
Unflinchingly, he added: “By the time they are brought to us they’re usually so mangled we don’t even know if they’re a man or a woman.”
Penchas, who has grown up through the ranks of Hadassah starting as an 18-year-old medical student and retiring after 18 years as its chief operating officer, recently traveled to the United States to meet with Hadassah groups nationwide. This included a mid-June stop in San Francisco.
While here, he answered Hadassah members’ questions about the current intifada’s effect on the hospital, publicized the upcoming Hadassah convention in Israel this summer — where he will receive the coveted Henrietta Szold Award — and emphasized the need for fund-raising during this time of conflict.
“We’re on standby for war,” he explained of the 4,000-person medical and paramedical staff of HMO, whose two hospitals — Hadassah-Hebrew University Medical Center in Ein Kerem and the Hadassah University Hospital on Mount Scopus along with five academic medical schools — span the city of Jerusalem.
“There is a very high cost to maintaining a hospital on a war footing. There’s never a surplus, always a deficit.”
The enhanced internal infrastructure, increased quota of medical supplies and readiness for a possible sudden flare-up, however, has actually, in some cases, proved quite useful.
When 200 people were rushed into the Hadassah emergency room after the collapse of a Jerusalem banquet hall during a wedding in late May, for instance, Hadassah was prepared.
“Had we not been on standby for war, it would have been far more difficult to deal with,” said Penchas, noting, without a hint of cynicism, that it is “probably better” to sustain a crushing injury in Israel than anywhere else in the world.
“Unfortunately we’re experts at dealing with it,” he said. “When was the last time a hospital in Oklahoma City saw a crushing injury before the 1995 bombing? We see it all the time.”
The price tag for such vigilance, however, is hefty.
The primary expense for the hospital — which already treats more than 600,000 patients per year in its 100 general and specialized departments and its 100 outpatient clinics — comes from maintaining a surplus of expensive medicines, for use in case of emergency.
“These medicines have a very short shelf life,” said Penchas. “We end up throwing a lot away.”
The hospital is also constantly topping-up its fuel tank as well as its food reserves.
An easy short-term solution for saving money would be to shut down a line of Hadassah’s extensive clinical or basic research programs, said Penchas. But, as he puts it: “While there’s nothing simpler than closing it down, to reopen it is sheer murder. We’d rather not have to do it.”
During his U.S. visit, Penchas also spent some time on Capitol Hill. Speaking to lawmakers, he emphasized the hospital’s “great strategic importance” to the United States as “the only Rock of Gibraltar it has within the Middle East area.” In other words, Hadassah offers U.S. travelers to the Middle East access to a reliable hospital in case of a medical emergency.
Above all, he emphasized the Women’s Zionist Organization of America’s milestone appointment to the United Nations Economic and Social Council in May, and he thanked 62 U.S. senators for a vote in Hadassah’s favor.
“There was a suggestion that it would be easier to get elected if we dropped the word Zionist from our name, because opponents of Hadassah were constantly attacking Zionist as a racist and discriminatory term,” said Penchas.
“Hadassah is very proud that its name contains the word Zionist. Without it our name would lose its meaning. We said no and we won.”
While in Washington, he shmoozed with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) — who shares the Henrietta Szold Award honor, having received one in 1999 — and others, while lobbying for the organization.
The award — Hadassah’s highest honor — recognizes individuals who represent the humanitarian ideals and beliefs of Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah.
Szold was instrumental in the establishment of HMO in 1912 when she told a group of women at New York’s Temple Emanu-El of the misery, disease and poverty she saw during her visit to pre-state Israel.