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Circumstances surrounding the still unsolved shooting death of one of Tel Aviv’s most prominent physicians, while still unclear, may be leading to the possibility that the 57 year old head of Ichilov Hospital’s Pain Treatment Center may have been the victim of a vengeful relative of one of Prof. David Niv’s patients.

Niv, of whom his colleagues and staff associates said had “virtually no enemies”, was found shot to death February 7 in his car after it veered off the road and struck a tree at approximately 1:30 a.m. in the nearby suburb of Ramat Gan.

With an ongoing investigation still in progress, the police have no definite clues as to who the killer or killers might be; or as to why Prof. Niv was targeted for such a brutal fate.
Both members of the medical community as well as government officials are saying that if it is found out that Niv was actually ‘targeted’ for assassination, then it is a circumstance “of the worse type”. The police investigating teams are still trying to put the pieces of this tragedy together, and as a result are pursuing a number of possibilities, ranging from a case of mistaken identity, to revenge, to even an isolated “drive-by” shooting incident. Professor Niv’s positions as being in charge of both the hospital’s emergency department, as well as the department dealing with the treatment of patients suffering from both chronic and severe pain, meant that many patients in the departments under Prof. Niv’s supervision suffer from either life threatening or ‘terminal’ conditions, such as cancer. And no matter how much concern and effort is made in these departments to both ease human suffering, as well as save lives, the reality of it all is that patients do suffer and die, despite all efforts made to ease their pain and prolong their lives.

The possibility that Prof. Niv’s death was at the hands of a patient’s vengeful relative, was pondered by other physicians who were well acquainted with him, including Dr. Yoram Belsher, head of the Federation of Israeli Physicians. Dr. Belsher stated that he hoped that “this event was not an act of violence of a patient or a patient’s relatives”. Knesset member Yitchak Aharonovitch (Israel Betanu) went one step further by expressing his fears that this incident will be “one of the worst types, if proven to be the result of an assassination”.

From a historical perspective, physicians have had to deal with the problem of distraught and vengeful families of deceased patients, ever since the dawn of recorded history. In ancient times, in Babylonia for example, the famous Code of Hammurabi stated that if a physician treated a person and the person recovered, the physician was to be paid the sum of “ten pieces of silver”. If on the other hand, however, the patient died, his relatives had the right to “seek out and slay the physician” who treated him.

It is for perhaps this reason that Prof. Niv was ‘targeted’ for such a fate. And though incidents of this type have been virtually unknown in Israel, the circumstances surrounding Niv’s death are most worrisome in both medical and governmental circles.

When the truth of this incident finally is known, together with the apprehension of Prof. Niv’s killer, we will all have a better understanding as to why the life of such a well liked and prominent physician as Professor David Niv was so unceremoniously taken; and whether the deed was done in respect to the matter of “ten pieces of silver”.