The Jerusalem District Court rejected an appeal by gynecologist Guy Rofe to shorten or cancel the five-year suspension of his medical license, the Health Ministry announced Tuesday.
The court found that Rofe used his position as a treating physician to pursue intimate relationships with two patients, mixing medical advice with sexual messages. It also upheld findings that he withheld medical records from investigators and continued advertising himself as a practicing gynecologist despite his suspended license.
“I will examine you as a gynecologist and as a lover,” he wrote to one patient, according to the judgment. She was a 19-year-old soldier whom he treated while serving as a military doctor in the reserves.
In messages to the second patient, he interspersed discussions of blood tests, pregnancy and contraception with comments about her appearance and sexual fantasies. During an examination, the judgment said, he told her, “Maybe don’t get dressed, I don’t think there’s any need,” and placed a hand on her knees.
The decision means Rofe remains barred from practicing medicine and cannot present himself to the public as a licensed, practicing physician.
Rofe facing charges of rape, indecent acts
Rofe also faces a separate criminal prosecution on charges of rape by deception and indecent acts by deception against a soldier who came to him for treatment. According to the indictment, he performed sexual acts under the guise of a medical examination. Those charges remain pending; the five-year suspension rests on disciplinary findings concerning different incidents.
The judgment does not specify whether the soldier mentioned in the disciplinary case is the same woman involved in the criminal prosecution.
His license was initially suspended on November 29, 2024, in connection with the criminal proceedings. The disciplinary complaint at the center of the latest ruling was filed on September 4, 2025.
It contained four counts: two concerning his conduct toward the patients, identified as “A” and “D”; one concerning his refusal to provide medical records for five patients; and one concerning his continued online advertising.
Retired judge Amnon Straschnov, acting under authority delegated by the health minister, adopted the disciplinary committee’s findings on all four counts, except the allegation concerning Rofe’s refusal to hand over WhatsApp correspondence.
On April 20, Straschnov ordered the five-year suspension. The committee’s majority had recommended three-and-a-half years, while its minority favored at least ten years or permanent revocation.
Straschnov found the majority’s recommendation insufficient given the harm to public trust, the misleading advertising, and Rofe’s persistent refusal to cooperate with oversight authorities.
Rofe appealed, seeking to have the decision canceled and the case returned to the committee, or the suspension reduced to no more than six months.
He argued that he had been denied a fair opportunity to defend himself because hearings proceeded in his absence, despite his having reported illness and a family event.
The court found, however, that he had missed two hearings and failed to submit a written defense. The committee then gave him further opportunities to respond and offered to arrange another hearing around dates he proposed. He did not provide them.
“A doctor who chooses to turn his back on the disciplinary proceedings and deliberately cause prolonged delays cannot now complain that the proceedings were decided in his absence,” Judge Nimrod Flax wrote in the October 8 judgment.
Rofe also challenged the findings concerning the patients. Regarding patient A, he disputed the existence of a special relationship of trust and dependence, citing her withdrawal of a criminal complaint, the closure of that investigation for lack of guilt and the time elapsed since 2018. That investigation was distinct from the pending criminal prosecution.
Regarding patient D, he argued that she had initiated the sexual conversations, that no physical contact had occurred and that no emotional harm had been proved.
Flax rejected his attempt to compare his conduct with less serious disciplinary cases. The judgment described “a continuing and systematic pattern of conduct” involving violations of professional boundaries, refusal to supply medical records and misleading advertising during suspension.
Accused of withholding medical records
The Health Ministry argued that Rofe’s appeal presented a partial account and concealed his repeated disregard of the committee’s decisions. It said his continued advertising violated both the law and court decisions.
Rofe argued that protection against self-incrimination entitled him to withhold medical records. He also maintained that investigators already possessed most of the information and that his refusal had not harmed their inquiries.
The court rejected that defense. Medical records, it held, are documents doctors must create and preserve by law, rather than personal material protected against self-incrimination in these disciplinary proceedings. Records for three patients had still not been supplied.
His refusal “directly undermines the Health Ministry’s ability to exercise oversight and obstructs the proper examination of complaints by additional patients,” Flax wrote.
The court also rejected Rofe’s argument that he had not actually treated patients while advertising himself as an active physician. The advertising itself misled the public, regardless of whether treatment took place.
His continued conduct despite explicit court decisions, Flax wrote, “casts a heavy shadow over [his] very fitness to work in a professional field governed by ethical rules.”
The Health Ministry described the ruling on medical records and self-incrimination as a first in Israel. It said it would continue monitoring compliance with the suspension and maintained a policy of zero tolerance toward conduct that harms patients or undermines public trust.
The five-year disciplinary suspension remains in place independently of the outcome of the criminal prosecution.