Syrian war: Wounded risking retribution to receive medical care from enemy Israel

At first, Ziv hospital in the northern Israeli town of Safed seems like a pretty ordinary facility. But a few floors up, in a special ward guarded by Israeli intelligence agents, are patients from Syria.

"The majority have been severely wounded children from blast injuries," Ziv hospital's senior intensive care paediatrician, Michael Harari, said.

For the last four years, the Australian-Israeli doctor has put his heart and soul into a program that has seen more than 3,000 wounded Syrians receive free medical care in Israel.

"My involvement really started with on particular child. She was the first to expose me [to] all the horrors of the whole enterprise in Syria," 61-year-old Dr Harari said.

"She was an eight-year-old girl who arrived here with her mother. She was quite severely injured, mainly in her legs."

Dr Harari had never seen a child in such a condition. He said she was undernourished and clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

"She had a full blown case of it and was totally withdrawn," Dr Harari said.

"The child was mute, uncommunicative, didn't make eye contact. [She] wouldn't come out from under her blanket, wouldn't eat … she taught us a lot about what we should do with Syrians."


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-20/syrians-wounded-risk-retribution-to-receive-treatment-israel/8543334