Israeli Hospital ‘Shocked’ by Murder Accusation on Corona Patient’s Gravestone

A spokesperson for Rabin Medical Center in Israel expressed shock after it was discovered that an inscription on the gravestone of a patient who died of COVID-19 accused the corona ward at the center’s Beilinson Hospital of murder. The inscription, which appears in a photo of the gravestone widely circulated on social media, says the patient was “murdered by Beilinson Hospital’s corona ward” and requests divine vengeance for her blood, using a formula commonly invoked in Jewish tradition when a person has been murdered. “The hospital is shocked by the inscription on the gravestone and is disgusted by the severe and inciting words, which have no factual basis,” a spokesperson for the medical center said in a statement. The hospital said the patient, who was in her 70s, was unvaccinated and “was admitted with a heart attack and a pulmonary embolism and died of a serious case of COVID.” While hospitalized, she was treated “with endless devotion, with constant presence and dialogue with her family,” the hospital added. Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash also called the inscription “shocking” and that the public must not “defame medical workers.”