Antisemitism in Medicine

The Crisis Runs Deep

A new study by Israel advocacy organization StandWithUs surveyed 645 Jewish healthcare professionals, 74 percent who were physicians and 52 percent who were in academia. The organization found that close to 40 percent of the respondents had been directly exposed to antisemitism within their professional or academic environment.

Among those, 30 percent cited their medical colleagues as the source, while 14 percent cited their patients. The study also found that of the Jewish healthcare professionals surveyed who had taken anti-bias training, only 1.9 percent reported that the training covered anti-Jewish bias.

Conduct deemed to be antisemitic included:

• Healthcare professionals saying “Zionists” should be denied medical care while discussing a Jewish patient
• “Hateful speakers” present at professional conferences
• Being placed on a “do not call or hire” list based on Jewish identity or connection to Israel
• Comments from coworkers “justifying the October 7 massacre”
• Unequal acknowledgment by medical institutions about Israeli and “Palestinian trauma.” (The rape, slaughtering, and kidnapping of Israelis were ignored in favor of the plight of Palestinians in Gaza following the attack.)

Jewish healthcare professionals also reported that medical schools and hospitals ignored their complaints about antisemitism and advised Jewish employees to refrain from speaking publicly about it.

Jewish students who reported to their superiors that they felt unsafe were told that they needed to be “more comfortable being uncomfortable.” In addition, the students said that department chairs at medical schools dismissed their reports of antisemitism.

Dr. Miriam Knoll, CEO of the Jewish Orthodox Women's Medical Association

"We have been seeing growing and alarming rates of antisemitism in medicine for the past five years, and this has certainly got worse since October 7.”

"We have been seeing growing and alarming rates of antisemitism in medicine for the past five years, and this has certainly got worse since October 7,” says Dr. Miriam Knoll, CEO of the Jewish Orthodox Women's Medical Association. “This problem manifests in many ways, including discrimination getting into medical school, residency and jobs.”

Michelle Stravitz, CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, concurs. “Anecdotally, and based on informal data, we are already seeing dwindling numbers of Jewish students in medical schools,” she says.

“Antisemitism is becoming systemic within the health care system,” Stravitz continued. “Younger generations of healthcare professionals and trainees have normalized antisemitic rhetoric, anti-Zionist attacks and language, and anti-Israel hate based on unfounded and false narratives.”

Dr. Steven Roth, a Chicago anesthesiology professor who was one of the authors of the study of medical school commencement ceremonies, says the rise of antisemitism in medicine is due to a growing emphasis on social justice activism in medical schools.

This, he says, is magnified by political ignorance and peer pressure. “You’ve got the inability of most people to understand a geopolitical conflict that’s 8,000 miles away, the bias in the media toward Israel and toward Jewish people, and you have a very volatile mix.”

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