The cost of anti-Zionism in Australian medicine
But alongside grief, we must also ask hard questions about the decisions that preceded this moment, including decisions within our professional institutions that were shaped by pressure and ideological appeasement.
In July/August 2025, a coordinated campaign by medical activists, driven by anti-Zionist ideology, successfully pressured the organizers of the THOR THUNDER conference in Perth to ask Professor Elon Glassberg, former Surgeon General of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), to withdraw from the program. Professor Glassberg is internationally recognized for his expertise in mass-casualty medicine, including blood-product management in high-volume emergency settings.
This is precisely the kind of expertise healthcare systems hope they will never need, but must be prepared to deploy. Professor Glassberg’s requested withdrawal was not based on professional merit, but on anti-Zionist objection to his Israeli identity and service.
The organizers initially stood firm. However, as activists escalated pressure on sponsors, speakers, and government stakeholders, the final sponsor withdrew, and Professor Glassberg stepped aside. This outcome, widely understood as his effective removal, was openly celebrated online in Australia. Shortly afterwards, the remaining international speakers withdrew in solidarity with Professor Glassberg, and the THOR THUNDER conference scheduled for Perth in November collapsed entirely under the weight of sustained anti-Zionist pressure.
The cost of that collapse was not political. THOR THUNDER represented an opportunity for Australian healthcare personnel to learn from world-leading clinicians with experience in large-scale emergency response. It was a chance to strengthen preparedness, refine protocols, and improve coordination in complex, high-pressure scenarios, including the rapid mobilisation and distribution of blood products. That opportunity was lost because Jew hatred was allowed to override medical expertise, replacing evidence-based decision-making with ideological exclusion.
In response to Professor Glassberg being asked to withdraw, a group of Australian Jewish doctors, myself included, organized an alternative specialist meeting in Melbourne to preserve the educational opportunity. Within 48 hours, a venue was secured, sponsorship obtained, and international experts confirmed. Despite this rapid progress, the alternative meeting ultimately became untenable.
Israelis and Jewish professionals are increasingly being cancelled or excluded from public and professional spaces, and this pattern of anti-Zionist hostility does not stop with those directly targeted. When Jew hatred excludes expertise from professional forums, the consequences are borne by the broader Australian public. Hospitals under strain. Emergency systems stretched. Blood products being transported from Melbourne to Sydney to meet urgent demand. Australian clinicians were denied access to critical expertise in managing the kind of scenarios that would have been presented at THOR THUNDER and were present in Sydney Hospitals post Bondi.
No one is suggesting that a single cancelled conference caused this tragedy. But it is both legitimate and necessary to ask whether allowing anti-Zionism to override professional judgement carries consequences and whether those consequences are now being felt. So the question must be asked: how do the anti-Zionist activists who were instrumental in pressuring organizers to request the withdrawal of an Israeli Defence Force medical expert from a scientific conference now reflect on that outcome, as Australian hospitals confront the realities of mass-casualty care? Was the symbolic victory of anti-Zionist exclusion worth the professional loss?
Medicine is not a political theater. It is a discipline grounded in evidence, expertise, and the obligation to save lives. When Jew hatred is permitted to impose ideological exclusion on medical and scientific spaces, it is not institutions or activists who ultimately pay the price – it is patients, and it is the Australian community as a whole.
