Canadian Jewish doctors decry rise of antisemitism in medicine, consider leaving country

Before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, only 1% of Canadian Jewish doctors reported experiencing antisemitism in community, hospital, or academic settings, but since then, 29%, 39%, and 43% have reported such incidents in these respective settings.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Antisemitism in Canada risks chasing Jewish doctors not only out of their field but also out of the country, according to multiple reports.

“Antisemitism in Canadian health care has intensified dramatically since Oct. 7,” Dr. Ayelet Kuper, chairwoman of the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO), said on Wednesday during a press conference held in Toronto to raise awareness of the problem.

“This is not an isolated issue — when any group faces discrimination, it impacts the foundation of trust and safety in our health care system.”

Kuper’s comments were based on a survey, commissioned by JMAO, which found that 80 percent of Jewish medical workers who responded to it “have faced antisemitism at work” since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and that 31 percent of Jewish doctors — 98 percent of whom “are worried about the impact of antisemitism on health care” — have weighed emigrating from Canada to another country.

“It’s incredibly concerning to watch antisemitism creep into our medical institutions across the province,” Kuper continued, in remarks reported by the National Post.

“Discrimination doesn’t just impact doctors; it undermines the entire health care environment, compromising patient care and eroding workplace integrity. This is a crisis for all people in Ontario, not just Jewish doctors.”

Another medical professional present at the event, Dr. Sam Silver, added, “This is personal for me. I work with health care students and residents who are bright, compassionate, and committed to becoming the future of health care in Canada. Yet they are navigating a hostile environment where their identity as Jews makes them targets of hate and exclusion. This cannot continue.”

JMAO’s survey of Jewish medical professionals across Canada found that while just one percent of Canadian Jewish doctors experienced antisemitism in a community, hospital, or academic setting prior to Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, 29 percent, 39 percent, and 43 percent say they have experienced some antisemitism in each of those settings since then, respectively.

In Ontario specifically, the survey found that antisemitism was widely reported within academic spaces (73 percent) and hospitals (60 percent).

Meanwhile, according to the Toronto Sun, just over 25 percent of Jewish medical students experienced academic antisemitism before October 2023, but that number spiked to 63 percent afterward.

During Wednesday’s press conference, others pointed to the rank and file of labor unions as sources of antisemitism, with occupational therapist Serena Lee-Segal saying, according to the Post, “I have seen firsthand how the union has been visibly targeting Jews with hatred.”

She continued, “Union members have been attending protests that condone terrorism, and I’ve witnessed colleagues showing up to these protests with union flags, chanting dangerous slogans. This environment has made me feel unsafe in my own workplace.”

Antisemitism has infected all levels of Canadian society, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, from the streets to the hallowed halls of government.

Last December, the Toronto Police Service issued data showing that Jews have been the victims of 57 percent of all hate crimes in Toronto since Oct. 7, with 56 of the 98 hate crimes that occurred in the city from Oct. 7 to Dec. 17 being documented as antisemitic.

Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community during that period more than tripled.

During all of 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto, according to police-reported data. Overall in Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most frequently targeted group for hate crimes, with a 71 percent increase from the prior year.

The issue has been evident on college campuses across Canada.

In September, at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a pro-Hamas group placed a shocking antisemitic display targeting Jews and law enforcement on the gate leading to the private residence of university president Benoit-Antoine Bacon.

“Pigs off campus,” said the large banner which People’s University for Gaza at UBC (PUG) tacked to the property. Next to it, the group staked on the finials of the structure the severed head of a pig.

UBC has seen its share of antisemitic incidents before. In 2021, mezuzahs, prayer scrolls hung on the doors of Jewish residences, were twice stolen or vandalized.

Earlier this year, pro-Hamas activists waged a campaign to expel Hillel from campus, arguing that doing so would advance the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

Other years saw the posting of neo-Nazi propaganda and swastika graffiti, and according to local media outlets, pro-Hamas students and faculty have perpetrated unrelenting abuse of anyone perceived as being a Jewish supporter of Israel, a problem that the university has been slow to address and which earlier this year led to the resignation of a family medicine professor who taught and conducted research there for three decades.

In March, Jewish students attending Concordia University in Montreal told The Algemeiner that they have been left to fend for themselves when their anti-Zionist classmates resorted to assault and harassment to make their point.

No single incident, they said, evinced their alleged abandonment by school officials more than one on March 12 in which Jewish students were trapped in the school’s Hillel office while members of the anti-Zionist club Supporting Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), concealing their faces with keffiyehs and surgical masks, banged on its windows and doors and stomped on the floor of the room above it.

When campus security officers arrived on the scene, they refused to punish the offenders and accused Jewish students of instigating the incident because they had filmed what transpired.

In 2022, a Canadian parliamentarian from Ottawa apologized for blaming Israel for violence in the Middle East and confronting his Jewish neighbors about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following an outcry from Jewish organizations and local political leaders.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) MPP Joel Harden made the comments in 2021 during an interview with Peter Iarson of the Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine. Harden later apologized.

“What is at risk is not merely the well-being of contemporary Canadian Jews, but also the hard-earned legacy of generations of Canadian Jewry, which is in danger of being irreparably tarnished or erased altogether,” Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy of the Jewish civil rights group B’nai Brith Canada, said about the issue in May, upon the group’s issuing a report which showed a 109 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Canada.

“The task of reversing the problematic trend we are experiencing will be immense and will require contributions from stakeholders across the country.”

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