Father of terror victim calls on Health Ministry to ban hospitals from treating security prisoners

The father of Shir Hajaj, who was murdered in a Jerusalem terror attack in 2017 at the age of 22, calls on the Health Ministry to end the practise of treating terrorists in Israeli hospitals.

Herzl Hajaj’s demand comes after he discovered that a security prisoner was receiving treatment at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, Ynet reports.

Speaking to Ynet about his one-man protest outside the hospital, Hajaj says it’s unreasonable “for terrorists to be hospitalized in VIP rooms in hospitals,” no matter how they are.

“These terrorists murdered, butchered and slaughtered our children, and it’s unreasonable that we should have to treat them,” he says.

Calling for the Health Ministry to put an end to the treatment of terrorists in public hospitals, he adds that “it doesn’t make sense that these terrorists, who have no right to treatment, who are not human beings at all, would occupy a bed in an Israeli hospital.”

In response, Hadassah Medical Center tells Ynet that the Health Ministry is responsible for the decision to send security detainees to Israeli hospitals and that the individual hospital is not granted insight into the decisions or the circumstances of the arrested individual.

In the immediate aftermath of the October 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel, then health minister Moshe Arbel ordered public hospitals and health services to redirect injured terrorists to IDF or prison service medical facilities. However, by December, reports indicated that the order had been reversed and terror suspects were once again undergoing treatment in Israeli facilities.