With anti-Israel sentiment rising in virtually every American institution — from academia to Congress to … Sesame Street — must Jewish Americans soon start worrying about the medical treatment they’ll receive at doctor’s offices and hospitals across the country? A Jewish doctor in recent testimony to Congress and in an interview with the Jerusalem Post is warning that such a moment may already have arrived.
Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, says that antisemitism is pervasive in U.S. healthcare and medical unions. Agronin is one of the 37,000 resident and fellow physicians represented by the Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR), which is as obsessed with Israel as any teachers union in America. Consider the CIR’s “Housestaff Against Apartheid” resolution, passed in May 2024, which declares that Israel is committing genocide and maintains “an apartheid occupation against the Palestinian people.”
That’s just one of many CIR resolutions condemning Israel, according to Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.), who is chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, in front of which Agronin testified this month. Jewish Insider reported on Agronin’s testimony, in which he said that the union was so opposed to Israel that it “has formally recommended that hospitals exclude my Israeli colleagues from employment, and then compels dues from those same colleagues to fund that position.”
It’s not a big step from not hiring an Israeli you believe is supporting genocide to not treating a Jewish patient. We saw this in a shocking video from Australia in 2025 when two nurses at a Sydney hospital admitted their homicidal tendencies on the job. A female nurse said she would kill, not treat, Jewish patients, while a male nurse took pride in the fact that he had already sent many Israeli patients to “Jahannam,” which is hell in Arabic.
One might assume such vile Jew-hatred could never take root in American hospitals. Agronin, however, told the Jerusalem Post that it already has:
Some doctors go beyond the simple sharing of Hamas propaganda. Some doctors will just really go into unhinged, full Jew-hatred, which raises extreme concern for their ability to care for Jewish patients, [and] Israeli patients.
As I mentioned in my hearing, should patients and families have to be worried about speaking Hebrew in the hospital? One of my colleagues is Israeli, and she has to worry that she’ll get different treatment from her peers.
Research appears to support the Jewish American doctor’s claim. In 2024, Jewish News Syndicate reported on findings showing that antisemitism sharply increased in the medical field following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Citing a study published in the Journal of Religion and Health by researchers from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida, New York, Rhode Island, and Illinois, the article highlighted alarming statistics: “More than 75% of medical professionals and students who identify as Jewish report experiencing antisemitism, and since Oct. 7, 2023, medical publications and social media posts discussing anti-Jewish hatred have risen fivefold, while posts by medical professionals promoting antisemitism have increased fourfold.”
In a discussion with former Australian Prime Minister John Anderson about the two Muslim Sydney nurses, British author Melanie Phillips says that ultimately the best explanation for the rise in antisemitism among intellectuals — particularly its poisoning of the medical field — is that there is no explanation. Her conclusion: “Ultimately it’s a mystery. It’s the longest hatred. It began ever since the Jewish people began to be a Jewish people.”
If antisemitism is almost a supernatural phenomenon, what, if anything, can be done to reduce the likelihood that Jewish patients will face risks to their lives in the very places they go seeking life-preserving treatment? I think the “broken windows theory” is perhaps instructive here.
According to Psychology Today, the theory “states that visible signs of disorder and misbehavior in an environment encourage further disorder and misbehavior, leading to serious crimes.” Rudy Giuliani famously made it official police policy when he was mayor of New York City, ordering police to prosecute minor crimes such as graffiti and turnstile jumping. Murder rates plunged as a result.
As it pertains to antisemitism in the U.S., withholding medical treatment from a Jewish patient would be the serious crime in “broken windows” terminology, while, say, harassing Jewish hotel guests would be the visible sign of disorder. Indeed, that’s what happened recently when an Israeli couple tried checking into a California hotel. The hotel employee at the front desk couldn’t resist the opportunity to say “Free Palestine” and ask them if they had served in the IDF and were baby killers.
The Jerusalem Post reported that the female hotel guest said, “I won’t stay here. Certainly, he’ll break into our room and do something.” That fear doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you learn that the hotel employee later urged his Instagram followers to “give them hell” if they saw the couple in California. While the man did lose his job as a result, the fact that — as of Sunday morning — he had earned $11,773 in donations in response to his story is not exactly an example of discouraging this type of behavior. Such blatant discrimination would be more widely condemned in a healthy society where Jews can feel safe.
As for the “baby killer” libel, it should be noted that while Hamas builds tunnels beneath children’s bedrooms and stores weapons in schools, Israeli hospitals have treated the very terrorists intent on destroying the Jewish state.
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