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Punishing Jews Who Report Discrimination
At George Washington Univ., two Jewish students in a doctoral psychology program complained about an allegedly antisemitic classroom session in 2022 – more than a year before Oct. 7. The univ. placed them on remediation plans for complaining. A federal civil rights settlement later forced the school to clear their disciplinary records.
At Boston Medical Center, an Israeli mental health intern faced discriminatory retaliation after she reported anti-Israel and antisemitic displays that violated hospital policies in a shared clinical space. The intern was ostracized by colleagues, denied mentorship and professional development opportunities and penalized with a negative final evaluation.
Punishing the people who report antisemitism, denying or delaying care, or otherwise discriminating against Jewish or Israeli patients and providers is a federal civil rights violation. The U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services recently issued guidance on combatting antisemitic discrimination to every hospital and medical school that receives federal funding. It listed “adverse evaluations” and “removal from rotations or clinical teams” as examples of unlawful retaliation. The letter emphasized that Jewish and Israeli patients, students and clinicians are entitled to equal access, dignity and individualized treatment.
This guidance is the first of its kind to explicitly incorporate the Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism, signaling HHS’ commitment to using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism.
Turning Zionism into a Diagnosis
The American Psychological Association has promoted a treatment model that classifies a patient’s Jewish identity as the illness. In “decolonial therapy,” Zionism is identified as a mental illness and Jewish patients are encouraged to reject it. HHS opened a federal civil rights investigation of the APA following a complaint filed by the Brandeis Center alleging pervasive anti-Semitic discrimination and a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli members. A U.S. Dept. of Education federal advisory panel recently recommended stripping federal recognition of the APA’s accrediting arm for a year.
A bipartisan group of 16 U.S. House members previously warned appropriators that the decolonizing therapy movement “distorts Jewish identity and fuels hostility toward Jewish clinicians and patients.” They concluded that “antisemitic hate and bigotry undermine the ethical foundations of medicine.”
Israeli Healthcare Disproves the ‘Apartheid’ Lie
The increasingly pervasive bias against Jews and Israelis in healthcare settings around the world operates in stark contrast to the practice of coexistence in the Israeli medical system.
The emergency room at Hadassah’s Mount Scopus campus in Jerusalem has been run since 2019 by Dr. Shaden Salameh – the first Arab woman to lead an Israeli hospital ER. This year she co-authored a study in the Journal of Emergency Medicine on how Israeli emergency departments handled the mass casualties of Oct. 7.
About a quarter of Israel’s doctors, nurses and dentists – and nearly 50% of its pharmacists – are Arab, in a country where Arabs represent roughly 20% of the population. An apartheid state does not staff its hospitals this way. Neither would it assist Palestinians. Former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and his brothers recently donated $550,000 to train 47 Palestinian pediatricians and nurses at a Tel Aviv medical center to support a planned children’s hospital in the Palestinian Authority.
For Dr. Salameh, the principle of medicine is simple: “It’s an oath between me and God, that I’m going to help anyone, with no bias, not race, gender or religion, just as a human.”
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