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There’s work to do, and we need to do it together with our brethren in the Diaspora. Hadassah, AJMA, and other organizations are protesting Israel’s exclusion.
By BARBARA SOFER FEBRUARY 7, 2025 23:36
Doctor with a stethoscope in the hands and hospital background (illustrative)
(photo credit: INGIMAGE)
At a recent midwinter conference of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America in West Palm Beach, Florida, I had an opportunity to update American audiences on current events in Israel. I also was able to hear firsthand what was happening among fellow Zionists in America.
Despite jet lag, I could sleep through the night in the US without keeping one ear open for a siren. In South Florida, I didn’t experience any negative reactions to wearing my Israel dog tag. I ate at a variety of new kosher restaurants, including one owned by a famed Israeli chef for which a friend and I needed protekzia to get a reservation. I don’t know if the young men who came to open the doors of the Uber upon our arrival at the restaurant were greeters or security.
From afar, I’ve been devotedly following the troubles in the American Jewish community: the continuing protests on high school and university campuses; the movements to divest from Israel like the bizarre divestment decision of the Society of American Archivists; and the unfunny comedians making sick antisemitic jokes. Nonetheless, I was surprised by the report of anti-Jewish actions in medicine, a topic organically on the agenda of a Hadassah conference. A panel on this subject was led by attorney Elizabeth A. Cullen, Hadassah’s director of government relations education and advocacy in Washington.
Panel member Michelle Stravitz is the inaugural CEO of a new organization called the American Jewish Medical Association. AJMA grew out of a WhatsApp group of Jewish physicians, fellows, residents, medical students, and public health and healthcare professionals to “address contemporary issues affecting our members and society, including recently rising incidents of antisemitism and anti-Zionism that impact the workplace and patient care.” Medical personnel experiencing antisemitism are encouraged to report their cases to the organization.
AJMA was formed soon after Oct. 7. Until then, there was no such organization, despite a plethora of ethnic medical organizations, such as the Sacramento Latino Medical Association (SALMA); the San Diego Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (SAPI); the Sudanese American Medical Association (SAMA); and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). And yes, there is a Palestinian American Medical Association. There are existing organizations for religious Jewish doctors. Hadassah has councils for physicians, nurses, and other professionals.
An estimated 14% of the million physicians in the United States are Jewish, with numbers higher in the big cities.
Medicine is supposed to be above conflicts, right?
As early as November 2023, the online publication Tablet reported that although almost three-quarters of medical associations felt the need to speak out on the war in Ukraine, almost three-quarters have nothing to say about the war in Israel. Likewise, “of the 152 medical schools we examined, 69 (45%) have a statement or article with editorial content regarding the conflict in Ukraine on their website. Only four (3%) of those medical schools have posted something with respect to the conflict in Israel.”
In a survey conducted by the Data and Analytics department of StandWithUs and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in December, 39.2% of self-identifying Jewish medical respondents said they had experienced incidents of antisemitism. Twenty-six percent reported feeling unsafe at work. In a study published in the Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal, the situations in Canada, Australia, and England are worse.
The same journal in January published findings of a study by Steven Roth, M.D., and Hedy S. Wald, Ph.D., about graduation ceremonies at America’s top medical schools. Symbols representing antisemitic themes were present at half of the medical schools. A common accoutrement was a three-part stole: a keffiyeh, a Palestinian flag, and a blank map of Israel, a wishful world without Israel.
According to this report, you could see future medical leaders wearing these stoles or keffiyehs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Baylor, and even – though fewer in number – at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Not to mention the ubiquity of protests at the public medical schools of the US state with the motto “Eureka”: California.
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No one stopped them.
AMJA’s own unpublished survey of Jewish physicians and trainees showed an increase of 40% to 88% for those who experienced antisemitism from before to after Oct. 7.
Most medical schools and hospital staffs undergo Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness (DEI) programs, aimed at creating sensitivity to minority groups and encouraging diversity in the campus body. Says Stravitz, “Despite being a small minority in the US and facing discrimination in various forms, Jews are not covered in most DEI training or programs.”
To address this gap, the AJMA has developed training materials on Jewish identity and antisemitism to be used in medical schools, nursing schools, and other healthcare-related graduate schools.
A New York Times (!) headline on January 22 read, “Does DEI Help or Hurt Jewish Students?”
The greatest threat, according to Stravitz, is “the normalization of the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish rhetoric and behavior.”
Beyond the statistics are the personal stories. Panel emcee Cullen told me about women who were worried about putting their Jewish names on test tubes while undergoing fertility treatment, lest antisemitic staff interfere. Jewish doctors reported patients quitting because of their perceived Zionism. In the field pioneered by Freud, Adler, and Maslow, the American Psychological Association in 2023 issued a “blacklist” of Chicago Jewish mental health practitioners.
Other mental health professionals refuse to accept “Zionist” patients. Others list Zionism as a mental illness. Hospitalized patients are disturbed by shouts of “Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea.” A physician and professor of medicine at the tax-supported University of California San Francisco posted that “the presence of Zionism in US medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to health equity.”
Living in Israel, we have witnessed the medical establishment’s resilience and adherence to values of equality even as medical staff treat wounded soldiers and civilians, serve in the military for months at a time, and continue their research. Jews and Arabs have continued to work side by side, treating a mix of patients from every background. It’s another one of our victories, in addition to defending ourselves on seven fronts and not falling prey to the Tokyo Rose-style propaganda of our enemies.
Ironically, the 74-year-old International Federation of Medical Student Associations (IFMSA) recently suspended the Federation of Israeli Medical Students from its organization in an arbitrary process. The IFMSA has national member organizations in 137 countries. They include Iran, Syria, and Yemen, the last being a country that ranks high on the international charts for female illiteracy, maternal death, and female genital mutilation.
There’s work to do, and we need to do it together with our brethren in the Diaspora. Hadassah, AJMA, and other organizations are protesting Israel’s exclusion.
They’re also fighting the call by the UN’s special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories Francesca P. Albanese’s call for “medical professionals worldwide to pursue the severance of all ties with Israel.”
Both in Israel and the Diaspora, we have to put wishful thinking behind us.
We’re not asleep anymore. Nor are we helpless. We have to fight back.
The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.
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