A resident doctor in Vancouver was confronted by a fellow medical student demanding to know why Israel is exchanging three or more Palestinians for each Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip. Is an individual Palestinian life of less value than a Jewish life? the student demanded.<\/p>\n
This is one of many anecdotes making the rounds among Jewish doctors in British Columbia. These experiences, as well as an inflammatory anti-Israel letter signed by a sizeable number of University of British Columbia medical students, caused more than 100 doctors to assemble to discuss the issues Dec. 5.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the university doesn\u2019t take these things seriously, I\u2019m prepared to give up my UBC appointments,\u201d said a Vancouver neurosurgeon who asked that their name not be used because they suspect activists would target them with vexatious complaints to professional governing bodies or harass them online or otherwise. \u201cI don\u2019t need to be associated with a university that does not speak out against antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medical students in the province are trained in Indigenous awareness among other culturally relevant education, said the neurosurgeon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI consider myself to be part of the indigenous people of the land of Israel, and a minority,\u201d the doctor said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been labeled as settler-colonialists by a quarter of the medical students and our history has been completely ignored. I think those people should be forced to have some education about the indigenous people of Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n
The meeting, held at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver, brought together about 50 doctors in person, with another 60 attending virtually. The neurosurgeon left uplifted after hearing from community leaders about strategies and actions being taken.<\/p>\n
Addressing the meeting were Ezra Shanken, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, Nico Slobinsky, Pacific region vice-president for the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and Ohad Gavrieli, assistant executive director of Hillel BC. The event was convened by Larry Barzelai, a recently retired family doctor, and Marla Gordon, a physician working in elder care and medical director for long-term care in Vancouver.<\/p>\n
The gathering was a reunion of sorts, including some doctors who had been part of an informal cadre of Jews in the field who would get together informally a couple of times a year in recent decades. However, the turnout far exceeded expectations.<\/p>\n
Gordon contacted Barzelai, thinking 10 or 20 doctors might want to get together over coffee. As of last week, 240 Jewish doctors, most of them in British Columbia, were part of a WhatsApp group of professionals concerned about antisemitism in their discipline, especially affecting younger doctors. About half attended last week\u2019s event.<\/p>\n
The letter that precipitated much of the meeting\u2019s concern was signed by more than 300 UBC medical students \u2013 an estimated 20 to 25% of the total student body. The letter called on UBC\u2019s new president, Benoit-<\/p>\n
Antoine Bacon, to call for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but also called Israel a \u201csettler state\u201d that is \u201cdispossessing Palestinians of their homes\u201d and stated that Palestinian people \u201chave been continually abused, traumatized, and killed by the settler state of Israel and its Western allies for over 75 years\u201d through \u201ccolonialism and imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gordon said the doctors are asking for the medical school\u2019s diversity, equity and inclusion education modules to address antisemitism.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cJust knowing that we are teaching these students who signed this letter, there is discomfort,\u201d Gordon said. \u201cWe feel that everyone should be safe in their workplace. If you are a patient, you should feel safe getting care. What if one of your care providers had signed that letter and knows you\u2019re Jewish?\u201d<\/p>\n As much as the meeting had an agenda of fighting antisemitism and biased approaches to international affairs in the medical sector, Gordon said, it is also important for people to gather in mutual support when the community is feeling isolated.<\/p>\n Barzelai echoed Gordon, noting that several doctors told him that any future meetings should continue to be in person, or hybrid, rather than exclusively virtual, because the camaraderie was crucial.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are hurt,\u201d said Barzelai. \u201cThey are having all sorts of negative experiences in their workplace, with the faculty, with other professors. They want to do something about it.\u201d<\/p>\n Right now, the letter signed by hundreds of medical students is the foremost concern, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that that many students would sign a letter I think shows the ignorance of the situation, or their lack of knowledge of what\u2019s going on,\u201d he said. \u201cIt just pointed to us that we need to educate these people, that it\u2019s too easy to sign a letter and take sides. But the situation itself is a complex situation. To blithely sign a letter like that is kind of distressing. For us, as doctors, we think that people who get into medical school should have done some critical thinking to get there and would be a bit more nuanced about their opinions about the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n A lawyer at the meeting stressed the importance of documenting each and every incident on campus, in the workplace or elsewhere. Pro bono legal assistance is available for students and an antisemitism hotline is likely to be operational in the new year.<\/p>\n An alternative letter, signed by Jewish and non-Jewish doctors and medical students, may be drafted and presented to university administrators. Successive meetings will determine next steps.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A resident doctor in Vancouver was confronted by a fellow medical student demanding to know why Israel is exchanging three or more Palestinians for each Israeli hostage kidnapped by Hamas and held in the Gaza Strip. Is an individual Palestinian life of less value than a Jewish life? the student demanded. This is one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[801,22837,3543,22838,3556,309],"class_list":["post-43011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local","tag-antisemitism","tag-doctors","tag-larry-barzelai","tag-medical-school","tag-ubc","tag-university-of-british-columbia"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}