Speaking at a House Education & Workforce subcommittee hearing on Wednesday, a doctor accused his union of engaging in systemic discrimination against Jewish and Israeli health providers, supporting terrorist sympathizers and making \u201cits obsession with a single geopolitical conflict a defining future of its identity\u201d \u2014 all while he\u2019ll be forced by federal law to fund it.<\/p>\n
Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at a major medical institution in Philadelphia, testified alongside several other experts on antisemitism at a hearing focused on anti-Jewish hate in the medical field \u2014 which both Jewish medical providers and patients report as a growing problem since Hamas\u2019 Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel.<\/p>\n
The hearing focused in particular on the role of healthcare worker unions, such as the Committee of Interns and Residents, of which Agronin is set to be a member, in spreading antisemitism and their failures to stand up for Jewish union members.<\/p>\n
CIR has adopted a series of resolutions condemning Israel for genocide and calling for divestment from Israel, including \u201chuman capital.\u201d The organization has also offered its institutional support for a physician who expressed support for Hezbollah and for anti-Israel Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil.<\/p>\n
\u201cCIR has formally recommended that hospitals exclude my Israeli colleagues from employment, and then compels dues from those same colleagues to fund that position,\u201d Agronin said. \u201cIf any employer in this country adopted that policy, we would call it what it is: discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that members of the union feel afraid to speak out. Agronin also emphasized that his salary, which will help fund the union, comes in part from Medicare graduate medical education funding.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Eveline Shekhman, the CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association, said that her organization is encountering a new era in which \u201cJew hatred hides behind the guise of anti-Zionism.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are seeing calls to fire Jewish doctors, the praising of terrorist groups in and outside of clinical settings, the refusal to treat patients because of their faith, national origin or Zionist identity, and the demand that Jewish colleagues renounce Israel as a condition of workplace acceptance,\u201d Shekhman said. \u201cThis is antisemitism, this is discrimination, and it is a distraction. It has no place in medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any disruption to the clinical environment can impact patient care, she said.<\/p>\n
She added that employees should be able to rely on their unions to support them when their employers fail to do so in such an environment, but that many unions themselves \u201chave created an environment where Jewish professionals no longer feel welcome\u201d and where they are forced to fund such activities with which they disagree.<\/p>\n
In addition to CIR, Shekhman said the National Nurses Union has also been advancing anti-Israel activity, including providing a guide for members to bring anti-Zionism into the clinical setting, where Shekhman argued such activity is irrelevant and has no place.<\/p>\n