Historically, antisemitism was endemic in American medicine in the early to mid-20th century, with quotas on Jewish students and residency trainees until the 1960s.
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But in 2023, antisemitic incidents dramatically increased, with a 140% increase from 2022 and the highest since data collection began in 1979.
A short sampling of antisemitic acts include:
- Antisemitic slogans at the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine,
- Antisemitic graffiti at the UCSF Cancer Center,
- Jewish medical students’ exposure to demonization of Israel diatribes and rationalizing terrorism;
- Faculty, including a professor of medicine at UCSF, posting antisemitic tropes and derogatory comments about Jewish health-care professionals.
In Combating the Shocking Rise of Antisemitism in Health Care, the Hadassah organization notes that “[i]nstead of the support they expected from peers, Jewish practitioners in hospitals, clinics and health care facilities have found themselves marginalized for perceived Zionist sympathies, attacked on social media and shunned in professional forums.”
In fact, the AJMA (American Jewish Medical Association) was formed in 2023 to address “…rising incidents of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that impact the workplace and patient care,” i.e., American medical school graduation ceremonies depicting antisemitic themes (keffiyehs, a Palestinian flag, and a blank map of Israel).
At Canary Mission one can peruse the list of medical practitioners who have made antisemitic remarks on social media while they were in pre-med and during medical school. It is truly frightening that they hold the well-being of Jews in their hands, e.g., there are women undergoing fertility treatment who are worried about putting their Jewish names on test tubes lest antisemitic staff interfere.
In 2019, Lara Kollab, a Cleveland Clinic residency doctor, was apparently fired after posting antisemitic remarks on social media. In 2012, Kollab said she would “purposely give the wrong medication to Jewish people.”
Walid Khass is a physician who physically attacked an Israeli and called for the death of Jews and Israelis. He has also shown support for Hamas and is registered with the American Board of Pediatrics.
Lest you think these are aberrations, scroll through page after page of these medical professionals who promote incitement and spread hatred of Israel, glorify terrorists, and call for the death of Jewish people.
In fact, antisemitism is now “ubiquitous in the medical field, “according to the American Jewish cardiologist Dr. Jacob Agronin, who recently testified that his union, the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), publicly supports terror sympathizers and formally endorses the exclusion of Israeli colleagues based on national origin.”
Agronin did not choose this union. It was voted in at his institution in May 2024. Yet, he will soon be compelled by law to fund it.
He explains that when
“a union representing 37,000 physicians openly supports figures associated with Hamas and Hezbollah, formally recommends that hospitals exclude Israeli workers, and uses compelled dues from federally-funded trainees [emphasis mine] to advance that agenda — that is a problem for every American who cares about the integrity of our medical institutions and our national security.
Agronin urged legislative action to protect medical trainees from being compelled to financially support such an organization.
But the explosion of antisemitism is to be expected since the Red/Green alliance has been busy at work for more than a decade pursuing “woke” policies wherein social justice is merely code for social injustice and diversity and inclusion result in bias, racism, and antisemitism. And lying is acceptable, too.
Consequently, the antisemitism continues and is ramped up. Since the October 7, 2023 barbarism foisted on Israel, Jews continue to be marginalized and intimidated in medical institutions. A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Religion and Health found that 75% of Jewish-identifying medical students and professionals reported exposure to antisemitism. That would be about 250,000 Jewish healthcare professionals in the United States.
Moreover, this is not limited to the U.S. In Canada, “antisemitism has been a
“Their experiences of discrimination have largely been ignored by their non-Jewish colleagues and leaders. Moreover, when Jewish medical faculty members and students have attempted to speak out against the discrimination that they have experienced, this has been weaponized against them. Their efforts to call out antisemitism have routinely been dismissed by a number of vocal individuals (physicians and others) using classic gaslighting techniques such as inversion (‘you are racist and are making up antisemitism to cover it up’) and… (‘there is a Jew I know who doesn’t think this is antisemitic so all the rest of you who are offended by this are wrong’).
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“[Jews] have also been harassed and threatened into silence through concerns about a combination of personal safety (up to and including death threats) and professional risk.
As Christine Douglass-Williams points out
“Society looks for ‘Islamophobia’ where it doesn’t even exist.
But vile hatred and threats against Israelis and Jews are patently ignored and even celebrated.
“The ‘ubiquitous’ antisemitism that Dr. Jacob Agronin describes is directly connected to Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, which incorporates sophisticated propaganda against the State of Israel.
“Islamic supremacists and their Sharia agenda have now so infiltrated the West that no one can escape the aggressive Palestinian cause in virtually any setting. It is the central cause of the Muslim ummah, as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has declared.
The December 2024 report from StandWithUs reported direct exposure to antisemitism.
“This study represents the experiences of healthcare professionals from 32 states, offering critical insights into the pervasiveness of antisemitism in our profession,” said Dr. Kelly Michelson.
The report recommends “incorporating education about antisemitism into existing anti-bias training and/or into diversity, equity, and inclusion paradigms… to potentially mitigate existing and emerging discriminatory and hateful conduct.”
While clearly important, it would seem that a much more robust approach is required. Certainly, cutting off funds is one way to impede the hatred, but far too many people are being accepted into medical schools who view the Hippocratic oath with disdain and who harbor deeply antisemitic beliefs.
This short video highlights jihadist thinking. It has no place in our country and certainly not within the field of medicine.
The book titled The Doctors from Hell was published in 2005 and highlighted the monstrous behaviors of Nazi physicians. It should be required reading for all medical, dental, nursing, and public health students and faculty. The author
“Vivien Spitz was a 22-year-old court reporter during the doctors’ trials at Nuremberg following World War II. In Doctors from hell: the horrific account of Nazi experiments on humans, she recounts in vivid, objective detail the horrific human experiments conducted by 20 so-called physicians and medical assistants in Germany under the direction of the Nazis. The human experiments included ‘high-altitude’ experiments in which concentration camp inmates were forced, without oxygen, into high-altitude chambers that duplicated conditions at up to 68,000 feet; removal of sections of bone, muscle, and nerves, including whole legs removed at the hips to transplant to other victims; artificial wounding and exposure to mustard gas; wounding of two limbs and treatment of one but not the other with sulfonamide antibiotics; intramuscular injection with fresh typhus; and collection of skeletons from 112 live Jewish inmates who were killed and defleshed.”
Since the jihadists are the lineal descendants of the Nazis, can we expect compassion and concern from them? How do we ensure that they are prohibited from the medical arena when they hold such odious ideas with intent to inflict harm.
“One of the tenets of Judaism is to bear witness, not to forget, but rather to remember and learn from the past, to never let it happen again.
All decent people must speak out “to ensure that there is no sequel to Doctors from Hell.”
Eileen can be reached at [email protected]
Check out Eileen’s new book titled Won Ton is Not Now Backwards. Available at Amazon, it is a collection of very short stories, and is a book that parents, grandparents, speech therapists and young people will find useful and enjoyable.