Decolonization – an Unsettling Social Venture

In January 2024, I resigned from the University of British Columbia (UBC) Faculty of Medicine.

In Nov. 2023, one month after the Oct. 7^th Massacre, 40% of the medical school class signed a petition demanding that UBC be on the “right side of history” and condemn the murder of innocent Palestinian women and children that have suffered under 75 years of brutal settler- colonial occupation in Gaza

There was also a flood of inflammatory anti-Zionist and antisemitic social media posts by both professors and students in the Faculty of Medicine protesting Zionist Settler-Colonial genocide against indigenous Palestinians.

I spent the first five years of my career working in remote northern indigenous communities and later trained in public health and epidemiology to learn more about the social determinants of health.

Now my students were falsely accusing me and other Jewish Faculty, of being racists for supporting a “Zionist White European Settler Colonial State”.

UBC, did not agree with our concerns about the problematic nature of the student petition and its risks for Jewish Faculty, students, patients or the danger to collegial collaboration. The administration was satisfied that the petition and inflammatory posts were just free speech and legitimate activism. UBC and the Faculty of Medicine had already committed significant resources to enhance its Diversity Equity and Inclusion(DEI) programs and for “decolonization” of the medical school and curriculum.

Similarly, with their CanMEDS program, regulatory authorities in Canada are proposing to “decolonize” and “de-center” medicine across the country, mandating training in DEI and Settler Colonialism (SC), as well as making social justice activism a core competency necessary to obtain and maintain medical licensure.

What is Settler Colonialism Ideology (SCI)?

Adam Kirsch published an excellent book about SCI, reviewing its history, dissemination around the Western world and its destructive impact. SCI began in academic social sciences and anthropology programs. It posits that White Europeans committed genocide and destroyed indigenous societies through settlement and colonization. No one can argue about the damage to indigenous populations including disenfranchisement, displacement, depopulation through wars and disease and attempts at both physical and cultural genocide, with heavy- handed attempts to assimilate indigenous peoples. The negative effects are felt to this day.

However, SCI believes that SC was not just a historical event but causes persistent structural damage and systemic discrimination in the societies that arose in the USA, Canada and Australia. Israel has been tarred as the modern SC state. Like other neo-Marxist ideologies, such as critical race theory (CRT) and its offshoot DEI programs, it views the world as a battle between evil SC oppressors and righteous oppressed indigenous peoples.

SCI is a totalizing ideology that conflates and attributes all social evils like racism, patriarchy, homophobia, income inequality/capitalism and climate change to the effects of SCI. In this way, “Zionist SC” is responsible for problems in indigenous communities, environmental degradation from pipelines on reserves and police violence.

Despite its provenance in academia, complete with its own journals, SCI eschews the pursuit of new knowledge. Instead, it uses post-modernism to deconstruct truth, morality and facts. History is discarded for “lived experience” and science is regarded as a Western tool for exploitation. Facts are irrelevant, truth is axiomatic and does not require proof, and circular arguments are substituted for reason.

Like religion, it speaks of Original Sin (European settlement/genocide), Dogma (White European patriarchal society is evil), Scriptures ( Orientalism, The Wretched of the Earth), Theologians, Priests and Lay leaders ( politicians, NGOs and the UN), Rituals and Liturgy (e.g. land acknowledgements and settler email signatures) and Religious Courts (human rights tribunals) to counter blasphemy and excommunicate heretics.

What is Decolonization?

Unlike with religion, there is no redemption possible for individual settlers or their SC societies. In contrast to previous “progressive movements”, there is no better future possible through changes to society. Rather than looking forward, the only solution according to SCI, is to dismantle all Western political (liberalism and democracy), economic (capitalism) and cultural institutions and return to idealized indigenous ways of existence that preceded European colonization and subsequent immigration. SCI speaks of shifting power away from the privileged to the oppressed.

It is not clear what decolonization means for non-indigenous populations in SC countries. Returning to the motherland may have been an option in Vietnam, India, Algeria, and Zimbabwe, where Europeans constituted <15% of the population. In contrast, Non-Indigenous Settlers comprise >95% of most Western SC populations. Additionally, most Settlers have no motherland where they can return. Most have lived there for generations- many in the USA came as slaves and others migrated more recently as refugees or for economic reasons.

Israel and Zionism – the international intersectional campaign for de-legitimization and decolonization.

SCI teaches that Zionism is a uniquely evil, modern White European SC movement. Israel is portrayed as an illegitimate state. Like other past SC societies, it is accused of genocide against the indigenous Palestinian population. SCI teaches that it is the moral duty for all people to fight for the decolonization of European Jews from Palestine and to restore an indigenous Arab State. SCI proponents are not interested in reconciliation, peace or even a two-state solution. This is why they shout for dismantling Israel “From the River to the Sea”. This is why they advocate for violent “global intifada. This is why they cheer and celebrate the Hamas atrocities and blood-lust as legitimate Fanonesque resistance.

Unfortunately, true to most radical ideologies, SCI ignores historical, archeological and biological facts about Jews being indigenous in their ancestral homeland of Israel. They ignore the historical reality of Jewish return to Israel not being a European colonial extractive enterprise whose goal is to return wealth to a distant motherland, but rather pursuit of sovereignty and refuge from genocidal persecution in Europe and ethnic cleansing in Arab countries. They ignore that Palestine has not existed from “Time Immemorial”, or that 7^th century Muslim Arabs conquered, ethnically cleansed and attempted to destroy, erase and subjugate non-Islamic indigenous cultures in that same land. Facts are irrelevant when they conflict with ideological narratives.

Conclusions – one year later

The negative impact of SCI and decolonization on Jews in health care is becoming increasingly evident. One year after my resignation, surveys demonstrate that 39% of Jewish physicians and medical students in the US and Canada, experience anti-Zionist antisemitism and 31% are contemplating leaving their countries and institutions. Rates of Jews being accepted to medical faculties have dropped to historical lows, not seen since earlier eras with quota systems.

It was only after a national outcry from physicians that medical regulatory bodies agreed to delay implementation of a new “de-centered and decolonized” Can MEDs system from 2025 until 2027. Similarly, organizations, like Do No Harm, are fighting initiatives to politicize health care in the USA.

After implementing DEI affirmative action quotas, almost 50% of medical graduates failed their final exams at UCLA with a drop in its national ranking. Similarly, during the COVID pandemic, public health officials, in the name of equity, ignored the evidence about risk to “white elderly” people and prioritized distribution of vaccine to young Black males at lower risk for death and hospitalization. Indigenous “ways of knowing”, narrative medicine and traditional healing are replacing Evidence- Based- Care as the scientific standard for medical education and interventions.

Israeli and Zionist Jewish doctors are being boycotted and excluded from international organizations and research groups. We have seen the dangers of politicization of medicine in the past during the Nazi era . Similarly, leaders in South Africa chose ineffective indigenous herbal treatments and refused to authorize anti-retroviral drugs, from Western “racist” drug companies, for HIV, which would have saved countless lives of women and children.

The Jews are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Hiding behind a veneer of social justice, SCI is a deceptive, divisive and destructive radical ideology that poses risks to the well being of all societies.