In a year when some sought distance from danger, a remarkable number of physicians chose to move directly into the heart of Israel’s northern medical front.
Since 2024, more than 1,000 doctors have joined the national health system, and some have found their home at Rambam Healthcare Campus (Rambam), where advanced medicine continues uninterrupted inside the world’s largest fortified underground emergency hospitals.
A Reverse Migration in a Time of Uncertainty
Dr. Ksenia Aaron, a world‑renowned otolaryngologist who left a secure post at the Cleveland Clinic, arrived in December 2025 with her family and a clear purpose. With security concerns escalating and antisemitism rising across the medical world internationally, she chose to anchor her work as Rambam’s Attending Physician, Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, where she felt its impact mattered most. Her new workplace sits three stories below ground: a fully operational, fortified hospital designed to protect patients and caregivers during war or mass emergencies. Here, she says, “we belong.”
Rambam’s Underground Hospital: A Lifeline for a Region Under Fire
The Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital is not a symbolic structure—it is a lifeline. Built after years of conflict affecting Northern Israel and to enable rapid isolation and continuity of care during pandemics, the three‑level, 2,000‑bed facility was designed for exactly this moment: treating trauma, performing surgeries, running ICUs, and caring for newborns, even under sustained rocket fire.
Rambam remains one of the only hospitals in the world able to move in hours’ time seamlessly from routine care to protected, full‑scale wartime operations.
Physicians arriving from abroad consistently describe Rambam’s underground system as a decisive factor in their choice, a fusion of clinical excellence, preparedness, and humanity that simply does not exist elsewhere.
“When the siren sounds, we keep going.” Dr. Lionel Davis describes his new professional reality. At age 62, after a full career in London’s NHS, he immigrated to Israel just before Rosh Hashanah. Days later, he found himself working in Rambam’s Green Wagner Department of Emergency Medicine, then moving underground with hundreds of patients and staff.
The work is intense, but the mission is clear. And the sense of community, he says, is unlike anything he experienced abroad.
Photo: Dr. Ksenia Aaron
Photography: Rambam HCC
Finding Purpose in the Hardest Places
Not all returning physicians arrive from retirement. Many come from the world’s most prestigious institutions such as: Mount Sinai Hospital, New York; Mayo Clinic, Minnesota; The Cleveland Clinic; and Toronto General Hospital, Canada.
Despite the professional prestige—and often far higher salaries—doctors describe a growing sense of dissonance abroad: rising antisemitism, tensions in academic institutions, and a desire to practice medicine where it is available to everyone, not only those who can afford it.
At Rambam, even underground and under pressure, they find the opposite: shared purpose, equal access, and the ability to serve entire communities without discrimination.
A Quiet, Steady Commitment
This movement of physicians toward Rambam isn’t loud. It’s not political. It’s personal.
Rambam doesn’t stand alone. It stands because people—doctors, nurses, families—support it.
This article first appeared in YNet.
