Rupa Marya, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, argued in a recent social-media post that the presence of “Zionists” in U.S. health care may be harming patients and should therefore be investigated.
Marya’s comments came in response to a post from “anti-racist” activist and former Democratic congressional candidate Saira Rao.
“Realizing how many American doctors and nurses are Zionists and genuinely terrified for Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and Black patients — even more than usual. And usually it’s bad,” Rao wrote in a New Year’s Day post on X.
The comments were widely condemned as antisemitic, even by vocal advocates of the Palestinian people.
“It is a lie. Stop that nonsense against [the] health system. its [sic] racist,” Ahmed Tibi, an Arab-Israeli Knesset member, responded on X.
Mehdi Hasan, an MSNBC contributor and frequent critic of Israeli policies, denounced the anti-racist organizer for flirting with the boundary of antisemitism. “I’ve long argued that antizionism shouldn’t be equated with antisemitism but, sorry, these kind of ‘antizionists’ takes are nothing but antisemitic,” Hasan wrote on X in early January. “You can’t just make sweeping bigoted remarks about millions of Jewish doctors & nurses and hide behind ‘Zionists.’ It’s just wrong.”
However, Marya rushed to Rao’s defense, arguing that her concern about the malign influence of Zionist doctors was in fact legitimate.
“The presence of Zionism in US medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to health equity,” Marya wrote on X. “Zionism is a supremacist; racist ideology and we see Zionist doctors justifying the genocide of Palestinians. How does their outlook/position impact priorities in US medicine?”
Marya expanded her thoughts on Instagram: “There are so many Jewish doctors who don’t espouse an ideology of supremacism and justification of land theft, apartheid and genocide. They are not the issue here.”
“The issue is Zionist doctors who will sit in an ‘Antiracism Task Force’ meeting and try to stop brown doctors who want to issue a Ceasefire statement by saying that a ceasefire would be a bad thing (read: let’s keep killing brown people in Gaza),” the self-described “physician, activist, artist, and writer” whose personal website boasts a testimonial from Noami Klein, continued. “Zionism in US medicine — coupled with the Israeli government’s operations to discredit & destroy the careers of any critics, funded by the large donors who support US academic medicine — is why US medical institutions have said nothing while Gaza’s hospitals are bombed.”
Marya closed her argument by appearing to suggest that lingering racial health disparities in America were the result of such Zionist medical practitioners. “People who hold any supremacist position are not going to be doctors who advance health equity. They are part of and support structures that obstruct it. This may be an important reason why, in spite of 20 years of investment into health equity, we’ve closed no gaps in health disparities.”
National Review has reached out to Marya and the University of California San Francisco for comment.
Brian Dane, whose X profile notes he is a Bay Area union representative, supported Marya against accusations of antisemitism, calling her “a voice for justice.” “She’s not anti-Jewish, she’s anti-Zionism & is fighting for the rights of the oppressed. As a patient of UCSF I support her wholeheartedly. I have disagreements with other doctors & their posts all the time; I don’t try and get them fired.”