Israel Saved Its Enemies. Turn Mercy Into Leverage

A former Ichilov Hospital spokesman recently revealed that years ago, at Mossad’s request and with prime ministerial approval, an Israeli physician traveled to Turkey and saved President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s life by treating his cancer. This follows the documented record of Israeli surgeons at Soroka Medical Center removing a brain tumor from Yahya Sinwar while he was imprisoned. Sinwar survived and later became the leader of Hamas in Gaza before masterminding the October 7 massacre.

The pattern extends across multiple fronts. During the Syrian civil war, Israel treated more than 4,000 Syrians—wounded fighters and civilians—in its hospitals and border facilities, including hundreds of children, providing advanced care at no cost. After the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes, an Israeli field hospital treated 470 patients, among them 150 children. Reports also document Israeli hospital treatment for the daughter of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in 2014 and other close relatives.

The State of Israel has repeatedly extended life-saving medical intervention to declared adversaries and their families. Yet our enemies have responded with rockets, tunnels, and the murder of Israeli civilians. International forums and regional actors acknowledge none of this. They condemn Israel’s defensive operations while remaining silent about a humanitarian record that runs only one way.

This trend reflects a distinct Israeli inheritance rooted in Jewish ethical tradition. These standards treat the preservation of human life as a binding obligation, even toward enemies who reject any reciprocal restraint. Such conduct is neither weakness nor naivety but a civilizational choice that stands in direct contrast to the deliberate slaughter of Israeli civilians and the systematic militarization of hospitals by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Geostrategically, unilateral compassion has produced no measurable return. Adversaries treat Israeli medical access as an entitlement while pursuing unchanged objectives. The Sinwar precedent shows that saving one high-value individual can later impose costs measured in thousands of Israeli deaths. The Syrian and Turkish cases demonstrate volume without any moderation in hostile policy.

These gestures have at times bolstered Israel’s international image and internal moral consensus, yet they have failed to moderate enemy behavior or reduce attacks. The Jewish state has subsidized its enemies’ survival without extracting strategic value from the debt.

Two adjustments follow directly from the record.

First, Jerusalem should formalize coordination between medical personnel and intelligence elements whenever high-value adversaries or their immediate family members require treatment. Past interventions have already generated useful access and insight. Institutionalizing this channel under clear protocols would convert episodic contact into systematic human intelligence and potential back-channel utility.

Second, in future conflicts, Israel should link offers of medical treatment for wounded enemies to information operations that publicly document leadership’s dependence on Israeli capabilities. Publicizing verified cases of senior figures or their relatives relying on Israeli hospitals undercuts enemy propaganda and exposes the gap between their rhetoric and their private choices.

Finally, Israel should establish a doctrine of strategic medical patronage. Using intelligence indicators, Israel would identify competing power centers, rival factions, and rising figures inside adversarial organizations and proactively extend offers of advanced care to them and their families through appropriate channels. All clinical decisions would remain unconditional and strictly bioethical; treatment would never be granted or withheld for political reasons. What needs to change is Israel’s willingness to initiate contact and cultivate influence through existing medical channels.

The deterrent effect would come from creating internal competition inside enemy groups for access to Israeli medical care. Beneficiaries would come to see that their own and their families’ health security depends on not destroying the source of that care. This converts episodic mercy into a proactive instrument that fragments adversary cohesion from within, builds influence over rising figures, and aligns the survival interests of key actors inside hostile organizations with Israel’s medical preeminence — a form of statecraft no other nation can match.

The State of Israel has given its enemies the continued gift of life. The time has come to treat that gift as a strategic asset and collect interest on it rather than repeat the same one-sided transaction.

Published originally on July 9, 2026.