Bat-Sheva Sadan, the daughter of Rabbi Eli and Dina Horowitz who were murdered by Arab terrorists in their home in Kiryat Arba on a Sabbath eve back in 2003, has weighed in on the controversy regarding shared maternity wards for Jewish and Arab women.
After Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) on Tuesday called the practice of separating Jewish and Arab mothers "racist," MK Betzalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) said there should be an option to receive separate rooms while noting on noisy Arab post-birth parties.
Later Smotrich doubled down on his comments, saying that many Jewish women including his own wife "wouldn’t want to lie down (in a bed) next to a woman who just gave birth to a baby who might want to murder her baby twenty years from now." In response his party chairperson Education Minister Naftali Bennett condemned him and rejected the idea of "hating Arabs."
In a Facebook post Sadan took on the topic, and noted on her own traumatic experience in a maternity ward shared with an Arab woman.
Her post reads as follows:
A year and a half ago I was hospitalized, after an exhausting night in the emergency room I was brought up to the ward while connected to an IV and hazy, I was happy that now that there was a diagnosis and treatment I would be able to rest a bit.
Two minutes later a nurse came in and asked that Mr. Kawasmeh leave the room for a moment because she needed to treat Mrs. Kawasmeh.
Yes you heard right, Kawasmeh - my heart started pounding because a few years earlier a terrorist named Kawasmeh murdered my father and mother, and several months earlier a terrorist named Kawasmeh murdered the three youths (Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Sha'ar, Eyal Yifrah - ed.).
I'm not racist and I think that Arab nurses and doctors are professional and humane just like our Jewish brothers.
But the thought that the brother or father or cousin of the terrorist who murdered my parents was on the other side of the partition shook my soul. In tears I asked the nurse to let me change rooms, and even though she explained to me that there was no separation policy in the hospital she agreed.
It seems to me that my emotional health is no less important than physical health, and therefore I prefer not to feel panic and have horrific experiences. Thank God I healed among Jewish women, and my soul bonded with theirs as happens in this sort of meeting.