By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post
Antisemitism in Canada now flourishes even where few would
expect to confront it. Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7,
2023, there has been a resurgence of antisemitism noticeable in the world of
healthcare.
When Israeli Gill Kazevman applied to medical school, and
circulated his CV to physician mentors, their most consistent feedback was, “Do
not mention anything relating to Israel,” he told National Post journalist
Sharon Kirkey in an Aug. 10, 2024, story. As a student at the University of
Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine, “I began to see all kinds of caricatures
against Jews. I saw faculty members, people in power, people that I’m supposed
to rely on, post horrible things against Jews, against Israelis,” he added. The
faculty created a Senior Advisor on Antisemitism, Dr. Ayelet Kuper, who in
a report released in 2022, confirmed widespread anti-Jewish hatred.
The Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO) conducted a
2024 survey of 944 Jewish doctors and medical students from across Canada. Two
thirds of respondents were “concerned that antisemitic bias from peers or
educators will negatively affect their careers.” Dr. Lisa Salomon, JMAO’s
president, reported that at the University of Toronto medical school only 11
Jewish students were completing their first year of medical school out of a
class of 291. The medical school in 1974 saw 46 Jews in a class of 218.
Also in Toronto, Hillel Ontario called on Toronto
Metropolitan University to investigate Dr. Maher El-Masri, who has served as
the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing, because, the group
contended, he has “repeatedly engaged with and spread extreme, antisemitic, and
deeply polarizing content on his social media account.”
The National Post’s Ari Blaff in an article on June 12, 2025
quoted social media posts from an account Hillel claimed belongs to Dr. Maher
El-Masri, who has been the director of the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing.
One message concerned a post about Noa Marciano, an Israeli intelligence
soldier abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, who later died in captivity. “This
is what is so scary about people like her,” the TMU professor wrote. “They look
so normal and innocent, but they hide monstrous killers in their sick,
brainwashed minds.” Israel, he asserted a day after the Hillel notice, “is a
baby killer state. It always has been.”
The Quebec Jewish Physicians Association (AMJQ) is fighting
antisemitism in that province. Montreal cardiologist Dr. Lior Bibas, who
also teaches at Université de Montréal, co-founded the group in the weeks
following the October 7 terrorist attack. They feel young doctors have
been bearing the brunt of anti-Israel sentiment since then. “We heard that
trainees were having a hard time,” he told Joel Ceausu of the Canadian Jewish
News Feb. 3. “We saw a worsening of the situation and were hearing stories of
trainees removed from study groups, others put on the defensive about what’s
happening,” and some saw relationships with residents deteriorating very
quickly.
Dr. Bibas thinks there are similarities with Ontario
counterparts. “Trainees are getting the brunt of all this. Their entire
training ecosystem — relationships with peers and physicians — has changed.”
Whether anti-Zionist remarks, blaming Jews for Israel’s actions, or other
behaviour, it can be debilitating in a grueling academic and career setting.
The fear of retaliation is so strong, that some students were unwilling to
report incidents, even anonymously.
Jewish physicians have now founded a national umbrella
group, the Canadian Federation of Jewish Medical Associations (CFJMA), linking
the provinces, and representing over 2,000 Jewish physicians and medical
learners, advocating for their interests and promoting culturally safe care for
Jewish patients. And “it’s really been nonstop, given that we have a lot of
issues,” Dr. Bibas told me in a conversation June 17. “People have been feeling
that there’s been a weaponization of health care against Israel.”
He stressed that health care should remain politically
neutral – meetings are an inappropriate venue in which to talk about the war in
Gaza, he stated, and “this will just lead to arguments.” Nor should doctors,
nurses and hospital staff wear pins with Palestinian maps or flags. And no
Jewish patient being wheeled into an operating room should see this “symbol of
hate.”
On Jan. 6, a group of Montreal-area medical professionals
walked off the job to protest outside Radio-Canada offices, calling for an arms
embargo, ceasefire and medical boycotts of Israel. Those who could not attend
were encouraged to wear pins and keffiyehs to work. When asked if such a
walkout should be sanctioned, Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé’s office
had no comment. Neither did the Collège des médecins (CDM) that governs
professional responsibilities. The leadership of many institutions have remained
passive.
B’nai Brith Canada recently exposed a group channel, hosted
on the social media platform Discord, in which Quebec students engaged in
antisemitic, racist, misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric. More than 1,400
applicants to Quebec medical schools, as well as currently enrolled medical
school students, were in the group, which was ostensibly set up to support
students preparing for admission to Quebec’s four medical programs. “I saw it,
and it’s vile,” remarked Dr. Bibas, noting how brazenly some of the commentators
expressed themselves, using Islamist rhetoric and Nazi-era imagery, such as
referring to Anne Frank as “the rat in the attic.”
Doctors Against Racism and Antisemitism (DARA) said in a
statement, “These messages are the direct result of the inaction and prolonged
silence of medical school and university leaders across Canada since October 7,
2023, in the face of the meteoric rise of antisemitism in their institutions.
Silence is no longer an option. Quebec’s medical schools and universities must
act immediately. These candidates must not be admitted to medical school.” DARA
member Dr. Philip Berger stated that “there’s been a free flow, really, an
avalanche of anti-Israel propaganda, relentlessly sliding into Canadian medical
faculties and on university campuses.”
In Winnipeg, a valedictory speech delivered to the 2024
class of medical school students graduating from the Max Rady College of
Medicine at the University of Manitoba on May 16, 2024 set off a storm of
controversy, as reported by Bernie Bellan in this newspaper. It involved a
strongly worded criticism of Israel by Dr. Gem Newman. “I call on my fellow
graduates to oppose injustice -and violence — individual and systemic” in
Palestine, “where Israel’s deliberate targeting of hospitals and other civilian
infrastructure has led to more than 35,000 deaths and widespread famine and
disease.” The newspaper noted that “loud cheers erupted at that point from
among the students.”
The next day, the dean of the college, Dr. Peter
Nickerson, issued a strongly worded criticism of Dr. Newman’s remarks. On
Monday, May 20, Ernest Rady, who made a donation of $30 million to the
University of Manitoba in 2016, and whose father, Max Rady, now has his name on
the school, sent an email in response to Dr. Newman’s remarks.
“I write to you today because I was both hurt and appalled
by the remarks the valedictorian, Gem Newman, gave at last week’s Max Rady
College of Medicine convocation, and I was extremely disappointed in the
University’s inadequate response. Newman’s speech not only dishonored the
memory of my father, but also disrespected and disparaged Jewish people as a
whole, including the Jewish students who were in attendance at that
convocation.”
In subsequent weeks Jewish physicians in Manitoba organized
themselves into a new group, “The Jewish Physicians of Manitoba.” As Dr.
Michael Boroditsky, who was then President of Doctors Manitoba, noted, “Jewish
physicians in cities across Canada and the U.S. have been forming formal
associations in response to heightened antisemitism following the Hamas
massacre of October 7.”
After October 7, Jewish students at the University of
Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine reported exposure to repeated antisemitic
posts by peers on social media, being subject to antisemitic presentations
endorsed by faculty during mandatory classes, social exclusion and hateful
targeting by university-funded student groups, and removal from learning
environments or opportunities subsequent to antisemitic tirades made by faculty
in public spaces.
In addition to online vitriol, medical students have been
subject to antisemitic actions coordinated by university-funded student groups
with physician-faculty support under the guise of advocating against the
actions of the Israeli government. All instances of discrimination, they stated
in a brief, have been witnessed by and/or reported to senior leadership of the
medical school without incurring condemnation of the discrimination.
In Vancouver, social media posts vilifying Israel and
espousing Jew hatred were circulated by physicians at the Faculty of Medicine
of the University of British Columbia, noted an article in the National Post of
May 25, 2025. 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.
In November of 2023, one-third of all UBC medical students
signed a petition endorsing this call. Jewish learners who refused to sign were
harassed by staff and students on social media. When challenged, the Dean of
the medical faculty refused to recognize antisemitism as a problem at UBC or to
meet with the representatives of almost 300 Jewish physicians who had signed a
letter expressing concern about the tolerance of Jew hatred, and the danger of
a toxic hyper-politicized academic environment. This led to the public
resignation of Dr. Ted Rosenberg, a senior Jewish faculty member.
Here in the Maritimes, things seem less dire. I spoke
to Dr. Ian Epstein, a faculty member in the Division of Digestive Care
& Endoscopy at the Dalhousie University Faculty of Medicine. He helps
coordinate a group supporting Jewish and Israeli faculty, residents and
medical students.
“Our group is certainly aware of growing antisemitism. Many
are hiding their Jewish identities. There have been instances resulting in
Jewish and Israeli students being excluded and becoming isolated. It has been
hard to have non-Jewish colleagues understand. That said our group
has come together when needed, and we have not faced some of the same
challenges as larger centres,” Dr. Epstein told me. Dalhousie has also taken a
stand against academic boycotts of Israel, which some view as a form of antisemitism.
The University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown has just opened a new
medical school. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen here.
Lior Bibas in Montreal indicated that his group is worried
“not only as Jewish doctors and professionals, but for Jewish patients who are
more than ever concerned with who they’re meeting.” Can we really conceive
of a future where you’re not sure if “the doctor will hate you now?”