Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Hadassah Hospital Hid Illegal $370M Deficit From Public — Report

The Hadassah Medical Organization hid its illegal 2014 deficit from the public, government agencies and its creditors, an investigation has found.

Separately, Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein has been asked to look at irregularities dating back decades.

On the deficit front, Army Radio in an investigative report put the shortfall at $370 million — an amount that violated its corporate guidelines and broke Israeli law for nongovernmental organizations.

Hadassah accountants said in a letter to Israel’s NGO registar’s office in September that the economic situation at Hadassah “raises serious doubts as to whether the hospital can continue to operate.” But Hadassah delayed turning the letter over to the office.

The chair of the Hadassah board of directors, Erez Meltzer, told Army Radio that it had “inaccurate information” and that the hospital did turn over the letter, but the registar’s office delayed making it public. He also told Army Radio that the hospital is in no danger of closing.

Meanwhile, the Calcalist business newspaper reported Tuesday that Israel’s state comptroller has recommended that Weinstein launch an investigation into the withdrawal of funds by Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, from the Hadassah Medical Association in the 1990s.

The women’s organization denied the charges, according to Calcalist, and pointed out that the comptroller, Joseph Shapira, never contacted the organization to gather information before making his recommendation.

The organization also pointed out that in the 25 years since the alleged withdrawals, it has given “hundreds of millions of dollars beyond that to the hospital.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.