"Social media posts vilifying Israel and espousing Jew hatred were circulated by physicians at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of British Columbia after the October 7 massacre."

"Allegations included Christ-killing, organ trafficking, and other nefarious conspiracies supposedly hatched by Jewish doctors."

"Some asserted that Jewish faculty should not be allowed to adjudicate resident matching because the examining doctors were Jewish and might be racist."

"Sadly, [reported experiences by Jewish physicians] are mostly congruent and illustrate the existence and degree of antisemitism and anti-Zionism expressed toward health-care providers in their respective countries."

Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal research

 

"[While enrolment decline of Jewish students could reflect other factors, the anecdotal evidence is] deeply concerning".

"At the University of Toronto -- the largest medical school in Ontario and located in the city with the largest Jewish population in Canada -- we estimate that only 22 Jewish students are currently completing their first year of medical school out of a class of 291."

"This is approximately half the number of Jewish students in the previous year's class."

Dr. Lisa Salomon, Jewish Medical Association of Ontario

Queen’s University set up a joint committee of Trustees and staff to “consider the problem created by the steady increase of Jewish students.”   Image by Josh Granovsky

 

 

Away back in 1974, for comparison's sake, of a class of 218 first-year medical students, 46 were Jews. The times they are a-changing. University medical schools' faculty and student population have changed in the last several decades, and for Jewish students studying medicine, decidedly not for the better. Back in the 1940s in Toronto and elsewhere in Canada, universities in general and medical faculties in particular set up restraining intake budgets -- quotas aimed at Jewish medical students when limits were placed on the number of Jewish students permitted to enroll. Jewish faculty members of medical schools were hired only on a temporary basis.

 

It seems that proudly multicultural Canada while still celebrating diversity as a cultural Canadian enrichment, has now seen to it that Canada's Jewish population has been set aside as a fringe element to be ignored and deplored. Suddenly the living spectre of antisemitism, so long kept under wraps in the polite society that Canada was, is no longer hidden, but out front and center, with the gradual and then !sudden! 'normalization' of Jew-hate in an immigrant-heavy population that has brought with it ancient antipathies and ethnic/religious hatreds.

 

This is by no remote perception of the imagination to be a glaring problem suddenly surfaced only in Canada, but one that has a universal international flavour, brought courtesy of strides in immigration acceptance, refugee-haven, and migrant-dominating movement of humanity into Europe and North America. Countries where Jew-hate is part of the cultural and historical record have gifted Western democracies with their population offcasts, mired deep in the tribal, sectarian values so long tamped down in the West.

 

Dialogue CPSO

When, in Canada of recent date, hundreds of Jewish students co-signed to a letter of concern related to the tolerance of Jew hatred at the University of British Columbia, "the Dean of the medical faculty refused to recognize antisemitism as a problem at UBC or to meet with [their] representatives". Jews have proven themselves to be naturally adept at the medical profession, and their appearance in that profession has always been disproportionate to their numbers in society. That is slowly, agonizingly undergoing a change with the atmosphere of acceptance closing in and closing down.

 

A 2024 survey conducted by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) discovered that of 944 Jewish physicians and medical students across Canada, two-thirds of respondents were "concerned that antisemitic bias from peers or educators will negatively affect their careers". Organizers within JMAO discovered that 80 percent of respondents -- roughly380 in number -- had experienced antisemitism in the workplace since October7; 39 percent in hospitals; and 43 percent in academic institutions. An impressive percentage are considering relocating out of Canada.

 

Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism (DARA) produced a veritable mountain of evidence that the situation prevailing for Jews at the University of Toronto Temerty Faculty of Medicine is nothing short of dire. For years DARA has produced petitions, open letters to deans and university presidents, engaged in political activism, but no actions in hope of pushing back the growing tide of antisemitism has made a dent in its practise. 

 

Tablet Magazine published an article on May 18, detailing that antisemitism is a problem in American medicine "driven by foreign-trained doctors importing the Jew-hatred of their native countries". The authors of the article representing a Senior Fellow at Do No Harm, and the health-care advocacy's director, conducted research based on data collected by the organization Stop Antisemitism, and their conclusions spoke of a health care crisis in the future. Identifying a "set of over 700 people from all walks of life profiled by Stop Antisemitism for displaying flagrant hostility toward Jews and Israel", that found doctors were "almost 26 times over-represented in the list of antisemites relative to their prevalence in the workforce". Let that sink in.

 

Of the Jew-hating doctors half "received their medical degrees abroad", in the Middle East or Pakistan for many, where extreme antisemitism expressed openly is widely viewed there as "appropriate or even enlightened". When these sentiments are openly displayed in Canada, as matter-of-fact 'realities', there is no lack of home-grown, DEI-infused, Zionism-repulsed hangers-on to follow the leaders with their own brand of antisemitism.

 

Then there is the acute dilemma of Jews who seek medical help, or who frequent pharmacies only to discover that among the medical profession and the pharmacies a gradual and large influx of devout Muslim-Canadians appear in the majority of the latter profession, and pop up regularly through referrals in the former. Some of those physicians emote discernible contempt for Jewish patients, while others are thoroughly professional, yet neither fully satisfy the essential need for patient confidence in the profession which proudly upholds its 'do no harm' pledge.

 

Pro-Palestinian encampment in an area that was fenced off at the University of Toronto campus in downtown Toronto, Thursday May 2, 2024. Photo by Ernest Doroszuk /Toronto Sun

The more the antisemitism and anti-Israeli hate in medical school grew, the more Gill Kazevman censored his true self. “I was no longer Gill, the Israeli, Hebrew-speaking medical student,” Kazevman writes in a personal essay in the Canadian Medical Education Journal. “I was now Gill, who had completed his undergraduate degree in New Brunswick, and whose accent sounded somewhat French. I stopped wearing identifiable Jewish accessories in academic settings. I stopped speaking Hebrew in public,” he wrote. “I went into hiding.” Now a full-fledged family doctor and hospitalist, Kazevman immigrated, alone, to Canada from Israel in 2012 at age 22, “full of hope” of finding a welcoming, inclusive and supportive environment. But when he applied to medical school in 2017, and circulated his CV to physician mentors, “their most consistent feedback was, ‘Do not mention anything relating to Israel.’” Scrubbed from his CV was any mention of his volunteer work with an Israel ambulance service. Gone was the name of his high school “to minimize the chance of identifying the country in which I went to school.” With every erased line, “I felt as if I was tearing off a small piece of myself.” Now 34, Kazevman became a Canadian citizen in 2022.  

Sharon Kirkey, National Post

Seriously? Dunderheads!

"This bonspiel is an annual event that usually attracts fifty to sixty physicians from Western Canada."

"I believe I contracted the COVID-19 virus at this bonspiel."

"[My practice is rescheduling appointments, and the office is] communicating with patients I was in contact with."

"As I write this, I am reminded that physicians are not invincible. The risks of this pandemic are far too real."

"I have been self-isolating since Tuesday morning when I first noticed symptoms."

"I hope my personal situation serves as a signal for all healthcare workers, and others, to be vigilant about their health."

Dr.Allan Woo, president, Saskatchewan Medical Association

The Granite Curling Club is seen in Edmonton . Ian Kucerak / Postmedia

So, interesting news. While the medical community is busy explaining to Canadians at large how critical it is that everyone take COVID-19 transmission seriously and self-isolate to protect themselves and others from being infected, doctors, who most certainly should know better, have been themselves casual about exposing themselves to infection. To read that a province's top medical practitioner has been diagnosed with the novel coronavirus is to logically imagine that he contracted the disease through exposure to the many patients he sees. Wrong.

Not only is the logical supposition wrong, but that doctors organized a sport event in the practise of good fellowship at a time of high alert within the country when their medical skills are most needed, is beyond belief. But, on the other hand, as Dr.Woo admits in his defence as a mere human being, we are only human, and we all make mistakes. Even unbelievable whoppers like this one, on the part of organizers within the medical community, those who chose to attend within the medical community and those who now feel rather foolish within the medical community.

And how ironic it is that on the very day that the World Health Organization finally decided to declare the novel coronavirus a global pandemic, the gathering of doctors from across Western Canada took place in Edmonton. A curling tournament. All in good fun; solidarity among colleagues. Which has led Alberta's chief medical officer, Dr.Deena Hinshaw, to call a press conference where she revealed that 72 people had played in the bonspiel and some 45 had attended a following banquet.

The expectation is, not unreasonably, that additional physicians across Western Canada may now be at risk for contracting COVID-19; among those who attended the bonspiel, and among those with whom the attendees later professionally mingled. "I absolutely say that anyone who attended that is needing to isolate for 14 days", stated Dr.Hinshaw. Mind-boggling that at the very time the bonspiel took place, the Alberta government advised against gatherings of 50 or more people for essential staff. Who could be more 'essential' in the present situation than medical professionals?

It was, furthrmore, Dr.Hinshaw's opinion that depending on the number of people in any enclosed space at the same time, such a gathering would not be specifically prohibited (!). As for who the vector was, the belief is it was in all likelihood one among them in the gathering who had recently returned from a trip to Los Vegas. And then, of course, Dr.Woo himself interacted with patients he was treating, exposing all of them to the virus before he became symptomatic...

Dr. Allan Woo (Facebook: Saskatchewan Medical Association)

"This investigation involves two provinces at least. All of the information is being collected and communicated to all the provinces from where people may have come to that event."

"Details are sought about where each of the participants were, did certain people sit together as a group and mix more than others, and based on that, a determination will be made shortly — in a day or two — does this involve all people who attended?"

"Beyond that, I would not like to discuss any particular details of any case in terms of exposures. Having said that, if we know that there is more than one case related to an event, we will be disclosing that."  
Dr. Saqib Shahab, Saskatchewan chief medical officer of health