Eyal Katvan, “‘Policy Makers’: The genealogy of the immigrant’s ‘Health Card (1926)’”, 171 Cathedra (2019) (in Hebrew). 

 

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Eyal Katvan, Nadav Davidovitch, “Between Health, Politics and Professionalism: Medical Examination of Emigration Applicants to Pre-State Israel, 1925-1928”, 11 Israel (2007) 31 (in Hebrew). 

The article focuses on two instances when physicians were dismissed from their position as medical examiners in the Warsaw Eretz Israel office in 1925-28. These two related episodes serve as a case study for placing the medical examination of Jewish immigrants to Palestine by the Zionist movement in a broader social, political and professional context. Apart from their important public health function, Zionist physicians and administrators viewed the medical examination as an important vehicle for acquiring political and professional authority, which created constant tensions among political, ideological and medical considerations. An analysis of the various interests involved can help to understand the interaction between Zionism and public health during a decisive period when the basis for the medical selection of immigrants by the Zionist movement was being laid.

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Eyal Katvan, “”The Country is Our Battlefront and We Must Be the Guardians of Health”: The founding of the “Medical Office” and the system of medical diagnosis of prospective immigrants to Palestine (1934-1939)”, 18 Iyunim Betkumat Israel (2009)167 (in Hebrew).

When immigration to Eretz-Israel resumed in 1919, Zionist organizations required prospective immigrants to undergo medical and mental examinations in their country of origin, as a prerequisite to immigration. Further examinations were held soon after they reached Eretz-Israel. The links between both sets of medical examinations were loose and relied on different and inconsistent instructions. It was only in 1934 that the Medical Office was founded alongside the Zionist Immigration Department, and the administration of immigrants to Eretz-Israel was placed in the hands of a central authority. This was also a significant step towards the foundation of a wideranging system based on a holistic view of its authority in relation to the medical treatment (including physical examination) of immigrants. This article centers on the foundation and operation of the Medical Office, focusing on the hygiene-related program, in general, and the medical examination of immigrants and prospective immigrants, in particular. Looking into the scientific and bureaucratic foundations of the establishment of the Medical Office provides a chapter in the history of medicine and the foundation of medical organizations in pre-State Israel. Furthermore, the discussion throws light on the history of Zionism and immigration policies at the time. The article proposes that during the period in question, the aims of the medical examination of immigrants changed from a medical tool whose main goal was to select prospective immigrants, to a medical tool within a complex mechanism of education, assimilation and ‘normalization’ of immigrants to Eretz-Israel. The reasons for this shift stem from a change in the nature and composition of immigration, as well as from personal and individual interests of those associated with establishing this mechanism.

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Shnoor Boaz, Eyal Katvan, “The Ringworm Victims Compensation Law – 1994: Legislation and Court Decisions – between Rhetoric and Compensation”, RINGWORM - THE INTERNATIONAL  AND THE ISRAELI SAGA, (eds: Shvarts S, Sadetzki S.,  Ben Gurion University Publication) (2018) 459 (in Hebrew)