Revelation 6:3-4 NCV When the Lamb opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, "Come!" Then another horse came out, a red one. Its rider was given power to take away peace (prosperity, rest) from the earth and to make people kill each other (butcher, slaughter, to maim violently, in streets), and he was given a big sword (assassins sword, terrorist, loud, mighty, sore afraid).
The former Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister has criticized controversial new health guidelines that could, in theory, lead to Israeli paramedics treating wounded terrorists before their victims.
Avigdor Liberman called the Israeli Medical Association’s reported decision “shameful” in a translated posting on his Facebook page and said those behind it “just don’t live in reality.”
He was reacting to an article in the Israel Hayom newspaper that said the Israeli Medical Association’s Ethics Committee issued a new directive that revised the guidelines for triage.
The new rules, the newspaper reported, instruct paramedics to treat patients solely based on the severity of their injuries. Previously, there was a provision called “charity begins at home” that allowed paramedics to delay treating perpetrators even if their victims were less seriously hurt.
But the watchdog group Physicians for Human Rights filed a petition that sought to abandon that policy, Israel Hayom reported. The major argument for the change is that it’s not up to the health professionals to levy guilt in an emergency situation; that duty lies with the legal system.
“Doctors are not judges. Leaving the directive as it is means doctors have to determine guilt and penalize the guilty party by withholding medical care,” the association’s ethics director, Tammy Karni, told Israel Hayom, noting it would be easy for someone to mistake a victim as an attacker.
Some critics, though, believe that the new rule — if followed by the letter — may create situations where severely injured terrorists will receive treatment before their less-severely injured victims. In extreme cases, a terrorist’s life may be saved and a victim may die because of treatment order.
Rav Yuval Cherlow, who heads the Ethics Committee of Israel’s Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, told the Jewish news agency JNS.org that victims should always be treated before terrorists, unless there are some circumstances where it’s not easy to determine who was the assailant. In those cases, Cherlow said emergency personnel should treat victims based on wound severity.
But Israel Hayom reported that all Israeli emergency personnel are now required to follow the rules set by the Israeli Medical Association, which governs medical ethics throughout the nation.
