McCarthyism in the name of Zionism?
What does orthopedic medicine have to do with opinion about Israel?
The logical answer is obviously nothing, but Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a 31-year-old Londoner trainee in orthopedic medicine of Palestinian origin, recently learned the hard way that in fact there is a significant connection between the two.
For months, the young doctor has been facing juridical processes aiming to revoke her medical license because of her outspoken criticism of Israel’s activities in the war in Gaza. Complaints have been filed in relation to a post she made last month describing the October 7th events as “the day Israel was ‘humiliated.'” She was also investigated for a speech given at a pro-Palestinian protest in July of this year, wherein she allegedly appeared to call for the eradication of Israel. After the British General Medical Council Tribunal acquitted her because it found no basis to the claim that she poses a “real risk to patients,” a grassroots campaign fueled by Jewish-Zionist organizations led to a second of tribunal hearing (still ongoing) and even brought about police investigation and temporary arrest on the basis of suspicion of stirring up racial hatred and for malicious communications.
Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan is not alone. Dr Ellen Kriesels, a pediatrician from Whittington Hospital in London, was suspended for nine months this week after photographs of her in an anti-Israeli demonstration carrying a placard depicting an Israeli flag surrounded by the words “rape, steal, cry, kill, cheat, lie” surfaced on the internet. She also tweeted that Hamas members are “oppressed resistance fighters, not terrorists”. And there is also Dr. Nahla Al-Sarraj, a psychiatrist from London but this time Ontario Canada, who was fired after posting “Death to Zionism” and “Death to Israel”.
While none of the statements made by the dismissed medics deserve an award for tolerance, the question remains whether anti-Israel or anti-Zionist stance suffices to prohibit a person from working in his profession, when there is no evidence of malpractice. Of course the trend of dismissing anti-Zionists did not start in the UK or Canada but in Israel, where since the beginning of the war state employees such as teachers, medics and academics have been prosecuted after uttering objection to what they consider the mass-killing of Palestinians. Most famous is the case of the criminology professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian from the Hebrew University, who was arrested by the police and de-facto forced take an early retirement after saying in a podcast “Israel is committing genocidal crimes in the Gaza Strip”. From Israel, the witch-hunt moved to the USA, where Trump uses the campaign against anti-Semitism as an excuse to eradicate notable left-wing intellectuals and prominent left-leaning student leaders from the campuses. From North America, the Zionist crusade continued – as we have seen – to Europe. It is unlikely to stop because it is wisely used by right wing politicians as foci of their mission to clean up the streets of Arab immigrants, eliminate subversive WOKE elements, and return to “good old days” – when Europe was only for Europeans.
Whether those golden old days were really good is a matter of taste, but clearly there is an orchestrated campaign here, where Zionism and anti-Semitism are used as empty words and lame excuses to get rid of ideological opposition. At the micro-level, the sad element of the saga is the price paid by people only for expressing opinions which are not music to our ears. At the macro-level, free speech is under threat because of the inevitable silencing effect when people see their friends losing their work only because they dared to speak out. Personally I am not Zionist, but even if I were one – I would not want to be connected with McCarthyism in the name of Zionism.
