A hearing on Capitol Hill sponsored by Jewish Federations of North America, Hadassah, the American Jewish Medical Association, and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law shed light on the growing problem of discrimination and bias against Jews in the health care sector, including medical schools and major hospital centers. 

 

"This isn't the first time in the history of our country that the Jewish community has experienced discrimination in medical care," said Jewish Federations of North America President and CEO Eric D. Fingerhut.

 

"Many of us know that the whole advent of Jewish hospitals across the country came into being because Jewish physicians couldn't practice in the mainstream of medical care and because Jewish patients weren't being treated equally and fairly in their times of need. We are not willing to go back there," he added, calling on Congress to investigate the phenomenon.

 

According to one study, nearly 40% of Jewish medical professionals reported direct exposure to antisemitism, while only 1.9% of participants in healthcare anti-bias training reported that they covered anti-Jewish bias. 

 

The panel featured a physician, medical student, and psychiatrist who gave first-hand accounts of their experiences, as well as experts. In their stories they recounted numerous examples including:

 

• Efforts to create a blacklists of "Zionist" psychiatric providers, including those who said they would accept Zionists as patients
• Denying Jewish employees at medical establishments the chance to form Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) 
• Denial of Jewish student clubs applications at medical schools, while similar requests from other minority groups were approved
• Jewish patients feeling they had to hide their identities when medical practitioners (who were not Palestinian or of Middle East descent) refused requests not to wear political pro-Palestinian pins and accessories, despite the fact that they went against existing dress code rules  
• Medical students being taught, incorrectly, that all Jews are "white, privileged oppressors," and forced to view overtly antisemitic depictions of Jews in slides 
• Existing Jewish medical student groups being ostracized and excluded from events having nothing to do with the Israel or its war with Hamas
• A medical school refusing to reschedule an event on cultural sensitivity planned on Yom Kippur despite requests by Jewish Medical students to participate
• Efforts to promote approaches to "decolonize" mental health patients, in which Zionism is characterized as a mental disorder that must be "cured"

 

"The notion that Zionism, which is to say a core component of Jewish identity, is a mental illness that has to be treated and cured, is actually something that we are now seeing in the mental health space that should not be funded even a penny of federal money or state money, and to the extent that Congress is appropriating any money that is going to this treatment, that has to stop," said Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.

 

Michelle Stravitz, CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, added: "In the past year, we have seen an alarming rise in antisemitism, and more concerning the normalization, the acceptance and the systemic nature of it.  Antisemitism is the latest disease in America, and the cure is in our hands."

 

Hadassah Government Relations Director Elizabeth Cullen noted that unlike the current atmosphere in US medical establishments, Israeli hospitals were often a beacon of coexistence and cooperation.

 

"At Hadassah hospitals, Arab and Jewish Israelis work side by side to treat all patients," she said. "Our emergency room is led by the first Arab female physician to lead a hospital emergency room in all of Israel, before and during the war. Israeli Hadassah professionals and Palestinian mental health professionals have collaborated in partnership to develop and share best practices for addressing trauma and mental health needs in both Israeli and Palestinian children and teens in Jerusalem. In the middle of a war we are leading by example."

 

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), the newly elected co-chair of the bipartisan task force to combat antisemitism, said that when this kind of antisemitism goes unchecked, it has implications for all of society.

 

"The idea that somehow your religious background or your identity would inform or impact the type of care that you get is not only antisemitic. It's not only anti-American. It is anti-democratic."

 

Rep. Buddy Carter (R-GA), himself a pharmacist, expressed disgust at the testimony, and vowed action.

 

"I don't know that you could get anything worse than that," he said, adding, "I serve on the Energy and Commerce Committee and on the Health Subcommittee, and it's something that we certainly want to be aware of, and certainly something that we want to combat and make sure that we can stamp out."

 

Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) expressed alarm at some the incidents that were reported. 

 

"I'm utterly shocked and astonished at the things you're telling me, that this is taking place in medical schools and doctors practices and among medical students. I mean, it's just a profoundly troubling, disturbing thing," he said. “Antisemitism is the pathway to the destruction of liberal democracy, and so it’s not just of concern to the Jewish community. It’s a concern of everybody.”

 

Jewish Federations will continue leading efforts to combat antisemitism in healthcare, as well as college campuses, K-12 schools, unions, trade associations, business groups, and city councils.