Ilana Cohen, Former Nurses’ Union Chair Who Transformed Israeli Nursing, Dies at 82

Ilana Cohen, the longtime and iconic chair of Israel’s Nurses and Nurses’ Union, died on Sunday. Born in Iraq in 1943 during the Farhud pogrom, she lost her father when she was two weeks old and came to Israel with her mother and sister. Raised in boarding and youth villages, she studied nursing at Assaf Harofeh Hospital, where she later worked as a nurse and ward head.

Cohen became one of the central figures in the nurses’ struggle that began in 1978. Over eight years, she led efforts to secure the first staffing agreement, which for the first time defined the number of nurses needed relative to patients. In 1988, she and fellow nurses set up a protest encampment outside the Prime Minister’s Residence and carried out a 15-day hunger strike, a campaign memorialized by Haim Hefer in his piece “Kama Shavah Ahot” (“How Much Is a Nurse Worth”).

From the early 1990s until her retirement in December 2024, Cohen headed the Nurses and Nurses’ Union, representing about 80,000 nursing workers. During her tenure, hundreds of agreements reshaped the profession, including shortening the workweek to 36 hours, requiring minimum nursing staff per hospital bed, adding thousands of positions, and improving pay and conditions. She also fought to prevent the closure of psychiatric and geriatric facilities and to preserve preventive care for Israeli children.

Between 2003 and 2006, Cohen served in the Knesset for the One Nation faction, using the post to advance workers’ rights. She also led the nurses’ committee at Shamir Medical Center, founded the hospitals division in the nurses’ union, and took part in key Histadrut negotiating teams and public committees that shaped Israeli health policy. She was married to Yossi and left behind three children, Yuval, Shai and Eyal. Her eldest son Yuval died two and a half years after developing ALS at age 52. In a February interview last year, Cohen said, “I made a revolution in the profession among nurses,” and described her guiding motto as, “If it’s not done, do it yourself.”