‘Tsunami of hate’ against Jews in medicine and hospitals, researchers say

The report states that there was a need for medical schools to teach about antisemitism, which few currently do.

By Jonathan D. Salant, JNS

At the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine, Jews were labeled as oppressors.

Patients were afraid to be identified as Jews at the University of California, San Francisco, and protesters targeted medical schools in New York City and demanded the destruction of the State of Israel.

These are some of the antisemitic incidents that erupted in hospitals, dental schools, psychology conferences and elsewhere since Oct. 7, according to a new study published in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal.

“After Oct. 7, the landscape shifted in a seismic way, not that antisemitism was brand new, because we do have a history of quotas to limit Jewish enrollment in medicine and other examples of discrimination against Jewish doctors,” Hedy Wald, clinical professor of family medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School and a co-author of the study, told JNS.

“But you had medical students and health professionals posting horrific things on social media, very antisemitic, very anti-Israel biased, and starting to see this appear in medical journals,” said Wald, who holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from Yeshiva University.

She told JNS that she and her co-author, Dr. Steven Roth, Michael Reese endowed professor at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and associate head for research, for faculty development, and for faculty affairs in the anesthesiology department, found examples of Jew-hatred in medicine that amounted to a “tsunami of hate.”

That came “in the sacred space that we inhabit—providing healthcare to people when they’re most vulnerable and actually watching this right before our eyes,” she said.

The 22-page review chronicles antisemitic incidents across the medical profession.

It found medical school faculty and health practitioners posting antisemitic tropes and dentists in Miami and Boston losing their jobs after tearing posters of the hostages taken from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7.

The valedictorian at the University of Manitoba Max Rady College of Medicine, in Winnipeg, received a standing ovation after using the address to demonize Israel, and anti-Israel bias has seeped into medical and scientific journals, the researchers found.

“We must take firm action to counter all of this more broadly as a ‘malignant normality,’ which manifested in the ethical perversion and complicity of physicians in Nazism and the Holocaust,” the article states.

“Today, antisemitic prejudice and associated forms of anti-Israel bias and anti-Zionism must be countered,” the authors add. “It is our duty and moral responsibility within clinical care, research, teaching, systems policy and administrative leadership in the health professions.”

‘Advocacy against hate’

The report states that there was a need for medical schools to teach about antisemitism, which few currently do.

Wald said that teaching on Jew-hatred should include lessons on Jewish identity, the nature and prevalence of antisemitism, including in anti-Israel forms, and medicine’s complicity in Nazism and the Holocaust.

“Advocacy against hate is a core component of medical professionalism,” the article states.

“The health professions have challenged past and ongoing injustices. Antisemitism is no exception and deserves attention. There is work to be done in countering all forms of discrimination. This includes antisemitism in the health professions.”

The Association of American Medical Colleges acknowledged the rising number of antisemitic incidents and the group’s role to play in addressing them.

“A safe, respectful and welcoming learning environment is fundamental to academic excellence, professional development and well-being,” Malika Fair, the association’s chief community, opportunity and engagement officer, told JNS.

A 150-year-old nonprofit, the AAMC accredits U.S. medical schools.

“As antisemitic incidents rise across the United States, including on college and university campuses, medical schools have a responsibility to ensure that learners, leaders, faculty and staff, including those who identify as Jewish, can learn, teach and work in environments free from discrimination, prejudice and harassment,” Fair told JNS.

Wald said that she and Roth saw the need to chronicle the rise of Jew-hatred in health professions, compiling a list of incidents from news stories, peer-reviewed publications, government documents and other sources.

She said that they wanted to see how widespread this phenomenon was after Oct. 7, and the only way to do it was to follow the time-honored medical tradition of studying the facts and seeing where they led.

“We had a lot of questions, and we said the way we address questions in our world is we do research,” Wald told JNS.

“We decided that it was time for a rigorous narrative review of what we called anatomy of antisemitism in the health professions, not just medicine but across-the-board,” she said. “We had heard from our colleagues in the mental health field, such as psychology and social work, that they were suffering.”

“When you start talking about things like ‘decolonizing therapy’ and see blatant antisemitic hate out there, you’ve got a big problem,” she said.

The list went on and on, according to the report. Medical students used social media to spread the classic antisemitic trope of the all-powerful Jew, while protesters stood outside hospitals and called for the destruction of Israel.

Wald admitted being stunned at the antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric among members of the medical profession, none of which she said had any basis in fact.

“To see the wrath and the tsunami of hate that was coming out from people that are supposed to be caring and empathic, people that are supposed to be evidence-based, you have a responsibility, a particular responsibility as a health professional, to fight antisemitism, hate and discrimination of all kinds,” she said.

“That’s your oath. You can’t violate your oath,” she told JNS. “To see that happening, that’s when I would say I was stunned.”

The daughter of a Holocaust survivor, whose entire family was murdered in the Holocaust, Wald said the post-Oct. 7 antisemitism in the medical profession was too pronounced to ignore, and she had the ability to call attention to it.

“Sometimes you’re given opportunities, and you need to take those opportunities when you see injustice in the world,” she told JNS. “Elie Wiesel talked a lot about silence being complicity, and he inspired me so much. His son inspires me too.”

“When I see things that are a moral outrage, I cannot stand by,” she said.