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The following analysis was authored by Tablet Magazine columnist and CAM editorial advisor Lee Smith:
New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital was founded in 1852 with a mission to provide free medical care for the city’s growing Jewish population. More than a century and a half later, a Mount Sinai doctor’s social media posts sent shockwaves through that same Jewish community by praising Hamas and Hezbollah as “noble resistance and freedom fighters,” accusing Israel of “slaughtering babies,” and denying the well-documented cases of rape during the savage October 7th massacre.
Dr. Lila Abassi was fired for her incendiary Facebook activity, but her affinity for U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups whose core aim is to murder Jews is far from unique among the millions of Muslim migrants who’ve made a home in the West. While many native-born Westerners have resigned themselves to this reality, it’s harder to accept the notion that medical professionals, whose care we must depend on when we’re at our most vulnerable, could harbor similar sentiments.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Islamist terrorism has long been a grim fact of daily life, both in the United States and globally. Many Jewish institutions, including synagogues and schools, maintain robust security, but less obvious targets are harder to defend.
It’s easy to recognize an ISIS flag and explicit threats of Islamist violence. But what can be done when the danger comes from people who don’t have long white beards or wear head coverings but rant against the Jews on social media? The people who code normal and have reached the top of the world’s most esteemed profession, healing other human beings Who expects a terrorist attack on an elderly Jewish man anesthetized on an operating room table? Who anticipated they’ll be targeted in a Hamas-inspired plot using prescription drugs as a weapon?
“I’ll purposely give all the yahood the wrong meds,” Palestinian American medical resident Lara Kollab posted on Twitter in 2012. Israel supportrs, tweeted the Cleveland Clinic employee, should have their “immune cells killed.”
Of course, not all the psychopaths with stethoscopes are of Middle Eastern origin. Camesha Hart, a registered nurse in Portland, Oregon, told pro-Israel Instagram users last year, “I would refuse to treat you. I don’t take care of animals. Dogs. Rats. Vermin of any kind.”
According to Hart, Israeli mother Shiri Bibas, murdered along with her two young sons Ariel and Kfir after they were kidnapped to Gaza on October 7th, was a legitimate target due to her past service in the IDF. The Bibas family, she added, should be grateful Hamas did not return their bodies in “blue zip-up body bags.”
The cancer is metastasizing worldwide. In Australia, two nurses at a Sydney hospital, Sarah Abu Lebdeh and Ahmad Rashad Nadir, were recorded declaring they would refuse to treat Israeli patients. “I’ll kill them,” said one. The other claimed to have already sent Israelis to “Jahannam,” Arabic for “hell.”
In the UK, British-Palestinian doctor Rahmeh Aladwan posted, “I don’t condemn Hamas. I don’t condemn October 7,” and “I condemn the existence of Israel.”
Aladwan’s issue, of course, isn’t just with Israel but with her Jewish neighbors, too. After the deadly ramming and stabbing attack at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur last October, Aladwan complained that local medical providers had temporarily restricted emergency access to prioritze the victims. “Exceptionalism for Jews,” she wrote. And the media reporting on the attack was evidence of “Jewish supremacism.”
Aladwan was given a 15-month suspension in November 2025, was criminally charged in March and next year will face a trial for her posts. Hart was fired, so was Kollab, whose medical training certificate was permanently revoked by Ohio regulators. There was no evidence that either of the two Australian nurses had really harmed patients as they claimed, but they were let go by the hospital, suspended from practice, and face criminal prosecution.
In the wake of the UK and Australia cases, medical authorities in those countries have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism to evaluate complaints against healthcare professionals. U.S. medical institutions should follow suit. Incorporating the IHRA definition would help state medical boards, schools, and professional associations recognize contemporary manifestations of antisemitism. For instance, a medical professional posting on social media that they’d refused to treat Jews or would poison Jewish patients under their care is antisemitism.
A big question is how many medical professionals share the opinions publicly expressed by Abassi and the others? After all, they drew attention to themselves by posting their antisemitic diatribes for everyone to see. Is their lack of discretion evidence that their fanatical Jew hate represents an infinitesimally small segment of the industry? Or is there a much larger number of pro-terror supporters in the profession that is simply more circumspect?
In any event, the damage has been done. Many Jews — and also non-Jews whose support for Israel may be as public as the anti-Israel threats published by antisemitic healthcare professionals — are wondering whether they’re taking chances with their lives when they seek medical care.
Even if pro-terror medical professionals don’t take their social media rhetoric to the next level by harming Jews they are treating the public articulation of their political fantasies still constitutes a real threat. The point of terrorism, after all, is to employ violence and threats of violence to shape perceptions and shift reality. Scaring people away from getting medical attention when their health, and perhaps their life, depends on it has the same potentially deadly consequences as a classic terrorist attack carried out with a bomb, gun, or knife.
Read more:
UK Doctor Barred From Practice After Posting Antisemitic Conspiracies and Support for Terrorists
Belgian Doctor Lists ‘Jewish’ as Medical Problem for Nine-Year-Old Patient
Dutch Nurse Investigated for Online Threats to Kill ‘Zionist’ Patients
