Israel-Palestine debates at the University of California, San Francisco medical school and hospital involve a moral misread from the far Left that harms both Jewish patients and doctors.
One of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, UCSF has somehow managed to anger both Jewish and pro-Palestinian doctors over its application of its “do no harm” policy. The former group interprets the protocol as a plea for doctors to leave their political opinions at the door, while the latter believes it has a moral obligation to express its anger at civilian deaths in Gaza.
The New York Times reports that hundreds of complaints have been filed to the administration by doctors and patients alike. Some have alleged antisemitism on campus, while others have claimed they were silenced when trying to promote pro-Palestinian perspectives.
This simultaneous outrage represents a dichotomy also found within President Joe Biden’s handling of the situation. As he infamously did for years as a senator, Biden has played it down the middle since Hamas’s terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7 in an attempt to appease both the Jewish and pro-Palestinian communities. This weak indecisiveness ironically has alienated both sides, leaving neither content with his decision-making process.
Paying the price for his ineffective leadership and that of UCSF are the patients at the university hospital subjected to chants of “intifada” while lying in their hospital beds. The Jewish doctors at the clinic are hurting as well. Many have reported rushing into side rooms to avoid walking past antisemitic coworkers in the hallway, while others have been forced to hide their Jewish identity.
Despite the hospital’s long-held reputation of prioritizing “diversity and inclusion,” that principle seems not to apply to the Jewish community present within the administration and faculty.
Dr. Avromi Kanal, a hospitalist and assistant professor of medicine, found himself at the center of the conflict when he received emails from an “antiracist” task force calling for a ceasefire. He opined that while “horrified by every innocent death,” a ceasefire might embolden Hamas and encourage it to commit further acts of violence against Israel. Kanal has relatives who escaped from Hamas while at the music festival on Oct. 7, and his grandfather survived the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Despite his deep personal ties to Israel and the broader Jewish community, Kanal was chastised by a fellow faculty member who had seen the email. Dr. Rupa Marya wrote in a Substack post that his email was “an expression of anti-Arab hate.”
This wasn’t the first time that she had made such remarks. She wrote on X in January that “the presence of Zionism in U.S. medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to healthy equity.” She also circulated someone else’s post that discussed being “terrified” for “Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian, and Black patients” who were being treated by Jewish doctors.
In an embarrassing attempt to denounce bigotry, Marya ironically proved just how bigoted she truly is.
And though being inclusive is a theoretical tenant of modern-day “liberalism,” the far Left chooses to apply that principle only to situations that conform to their very specific version of ethics. Marya takes the moral high ground here and looks down at the rest of us if we’re so morally ignorant that we, too, can’t make a decision in the name of doing what’s right.
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Shamefully, the time that Marya spent writing offensive comments on X is time that she could have spent doing her job.
Our versions of morality may look a little different, but mine doesn’t include chanting “intifada” while Jewish patients are dying in a hospital bed.