A PIECE OF MY MIND: A probably too long and personal take on modern-day antisemitism in education, academia, science, and medicine
By Norbert Gleicher, MD, Medical Director and Chief Scientist, atThe Center for Human Reproduction in New York City. He can be contacted though The Reproductive Times or directly at either ngleicher@thechr.com or ngleicher@rockefeller.edu. This article was originally written for The CHR VOICE, where it will appear in the January-February 2025 double issue.
As I write this during the few remaining days of a year which has been one of my life’s most challenging, I find myself more introspective than in prior years, when looking forward to the New Year. Most traumatic occurrences are at least to a degree foreseeable and, therefore, at least subconsciously somewhat expected, while others—fortunately rarer—will hit you like a lightning strike, leaving you simply overwhelmed. No worry; I will not bore you with the little stuff. This article is about the lightning strike that affected every fiber in my body and—if you don’t know it yet from the subtitle of this essay—it was the eruption of vile and very open antisemitism all around the globe, including in this country. Though personally basically agnostic for most of my life, antisemitism has, nevertheless, a very special relevance for me, because its extreme, the Holocaust, robbed me of my very large family (my father had 11 older siblings, my mother had only one sister, the only survivor of both sides of the family besides my then -still unmarried parents). I, therefore, never had the opportunity to have grandparents or aunts, uncles or cousins, as all perished in Nazi Germany’s gas chambers. And then, as fate wanted it, I ended up growing up as a young Jew in post-WWII Vienna, Austria, of course, a very central place for the development of European antisemitism and, ultimately German Nazism (more on that below). That this past year’s experiences were explosive is, therefore, an understatement. They changed what I have been reading, what I have been watching nightly into the early morning hours on TV, and, for the first time in my life, they turned me into an Internet junky. Of course, they also affected my political thinking and, probably worst of all, made me fearful of the future—not for myself, but for my children and children’s children. All of this introspection, of course, also engulfed my professional life and ultimately led to this article, which to a degree, therefore, is personal but—because I am a physician-scientist—also extends its tentacles into education, science, academia and, of course, the practice of medicine.
It is just a few days before Christmas and Chanukah, and I am in my office starting a first draft of this article. For so many different reasons, 2024 has been a really unusual year. Even the dates of Christmas and Chanukah this year are unusual. Because of the differences between the Georgian and Jewish calendars, there usually are days, sometimes even weeks, between these two holidays of light; but not so this year since Chanukah begins at sundown on Christmas Day, December 25.
A little bit of history
One in this rare concurrence can see symbolically the obvious interdependence between Christianity and Judaism, considering that—in historical terms—Christianity started as a Jewish sect during the 1st century AD, with its founder and initial followers mostly being Jewish (for more detail, consider the following references: 1,2). Opinions still differ on how long it took for the two religions to separate: Some scholars argue that the process started by the end of the 1st century; others believe that the separation occurred gradually, starting in the middle of the 2nd century; and yet others argue that the separation only occurred in the 4th century, when in the year 380 Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire.
Historically, however, undisputed is that this 4th century was also the beginning of antisemitism, witnessed by the first recorded persecutions of “Jewish Christians” by “Nicene Christians,” with the former having to seek refuge outside of the Roman Empire. Suffice it to say, Christianity and Judaism did not do well together over the following centuries, with Christianity often at the core of not only what nowadays would be called antisemitism, but of forced religious conversions of Jews to Christianity, expulsions of Jews from many countries (during different time periods from Spain, Portugal, and England, etc.), and outright ethnic cleansing (during inquisitions in Spain, Portugal, Mexico, etc.).
And it all, of course, peaked in the 20th century in the Holocaust against Jews, committed by an in principle Christian nation—Germany—with mostly silence from the rest of the Christian world, including the Vatican. German primacy in the Holocaust was historically so overwhelming that it diverted history’s attention away from smaller culprits, such as Austria, Hungary, Ukraine, the Soviet Union under Stalin, as well as other nations which to different degrees collaborated with Nazi Germany and/or pursued their own antisemitic annihilations, like Stalin’s Russia.
And this is the point where this article becomes personal because, as the first child of a young couple of Holocaust survivors in Poland (their miraculous survival during the Holocaust and equally miraculous reunification after the war was subject of a book published in 2018 (3)), I was only one year old when my parents concluded that Jews were not safe under the newly established Communist regime in Poland and decided to emigrate to what was then the brand-new state of Israel in 1949. As will be obvious considering the historical circumstances of the time (Israel, against all odds, had won its first war against all of its neighbors’ combined Arab armies), to make this journey must have been a difficult decision for my parents, considering that in those years Israel basically was mostly only desert and had no infrastructure to speak of. To illustrate why the recently—especially in academia—widely heard argument that anti-Zionism cannot be equated with antisemitism is wrong, I will later return to my parents’ decision “to make Aliah” (the term Jews use emphasize their return to Israel, what is for them the Holy Land).
Growing up in post-WWII Vienna
The track to Israel for Europe’s Holocaust survivors in those days led through certain key cities, from where the Jewish Agency then organized travel to Israel. For our young family of three, it meant that we had to make it to Vienna, Austria, then still (like Germany) occupied by the “four powers” of the post WWII period, the U.S., Russia, the U.K., and France. But as we made it successfully to Vienna, all the planning went to waste because my mother fell seriously ill, preventing the family from continuing the journey to Israel as planned.
Basically penniless, with the only valuable private property being two huge glass containers of “schmaltz,” which my parents for months considered their primary sustenance (I allegedly was more privileged), my father—while my mother was recovering—had to find a way to generate some income. By the time she had fully recovered, he successfully had developed a small import-export business between the four occupied sectors of the city of Vienna (with each of the four powers being responsible for one of the sectors, there were real border checks between them if one wanted to pass from one sector into another). And as a consequence, we never got back on the track “to make Aliah” and, paradoxically, Vienna—the city where Adolf Hitler had spent important formative years of his younger life before moving to Germany—consequently, became the city where I ended up growing up, went to school, and started my medical studies at the city’s once world-renowned and, after Bologna in Italy, second-oldest medical school in the world. Though only 22 years later, I, however, at least symbolically completed my family’s return to Israel when I switched my medical school studies from Vienna to Tel-Aviv University in Israel, where I graduated in 1973.
Being Jewish in Vienna in those post-WWII years was an “interesting” experience: A first reason was, of course, the country’s and especially the city’s past history as the capital of one of the big European empires,- the Austrian Hungarian Habsburg monarchy. And while Vienna in the days up to WWI was one of the world’s principal cultural as well as medical capitals, the monarchy was also, after Napoleon’s emancipation of French Jewry in 1791, the second empire to fully emancipate its Jewry in 1867 under Emperor Franz Joseph I (of Sissi movies’ fame). And even though—and maybe exactly because—Vienna at that time housed a rapidly growing and increasingly prosperous Jewish population (the medical faculty at the university was, for example, to a very significant degree Jewish and Vienna’s cultural and economic life had lots of very prominent Jewish representatives), the city also became the breeding ground for a rabid and very typical form of Viennese antisemitism.
A painting of Franz Josef I, Emperor of Austria
and King of Hungary (1848-1916)
Its likely most prominent practitioner was the city’s Mayor between 1897 and 1910, Karl Lueger, a lawyer-politician who was well known for his rabid antisemitism. The following is a good example from a Lueger speech, given at meeting of the Christian Socialist Workers’ Association held on 20 July 1899 in Vienna:
“Here in our Austrian fatherland the situation is such that the Jews have seized a degree of
influence which exceeds their number and importance. (Interjection: ‘Very true!’) In Vienna the
poor craftsman has to go begging on Saturday afternoon, to turn the labor of his hands to
account, he has to beg at the Jewish furniture dealer’s. (‘Quite right!’) The influence on the
masses, in our country, is in the hands of the Jews, the greater part of the press is in their hands,
by far the largest part of all capital and, in particular, high finance, is in Jewish hands, and in this
respect the Jews operate a terrorism of a kind that could hardly be worse. For us, in Austria, it is
a matter of liberating Christian people from the hegemony of Jewry.”
It also speaks for itself that he is most remembered not for having been the mayor who transformed Vienna into a modern city, but for one sentence he uttered in response to a reporter’s question, how come he had chosen (a very attractive and very wealthy) Jewish woman for the opening dance at one of Vienna’s famous balls. His answer was, “who is a Jew is mine to say!”
Mayor Karl Lueger who presided over the city of Vienna during the city’s fin-de-siècle era of Sigmund Freud, MD, the painters Gustave Klimt and Egon Schiele, the architect Joseph Hoffman, the composer Gustav Maler, and many other cultural authorities (4).
Some historians concluded that Lueger’s antisemitism influenced Adolf Hitler who in 1908 had moved from a small Austrian village called Braunau to Vienna to pursue a career as a painter. He later mentioned in his infamous book manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” how impressed he was by the mayor’s charisma and popular appeal. On another occasion, he described him as “the greatest German city mayor ever” (Hitler, of course, considered his home country, Austria, to be an integral part of the German Reich). Some historians believe that Hitler attributed much of Lueger’s popularity to his antisemitism and from this concluded that one could build a political career on antisemitism.
It, therefore, probably does not surprise that a monument to Karl Lueger on the Dr. Karl Lueger Platz in the center of the city of Vienna (its 1st district) has remained controversial. After exploring varying options, the city decided—as CNN recently reported—to keep the bronze statue of the mayor in its prominent place, though with a rather small but symbolic change: Proposed by the Viennese contemporary artist Klemens Wihlidal, the statute would be mildly tilted by 3.5 degrees to the right, as he did not wish to change the monument, but “the view and perspective of it” (5).
The proposed modified statue of Karl Lueger at a tilt ….
According to the artist, it was meant to cause “an irritation, or even more, a moment of insecurity, which only become perceptible upon a second look, reminiscent of a sinking ship and evoking the feeling of transience and impermanence, as if one had to watch the monument about to topple over or at least expect that it won’t stand for much longer.”
I am retelling the story of the statue because it is symbolic of the Viennese antisemitism I grew up with in my younger years. You always felt that it was there; but it only rarely reached the surface. In my own experience, when it lifted its ugly head, it usually happened in the school system. I recall discussing the subject repeatedly with my (Catholic) girlfriend who—unsurprisingly—never was cognizant of its presence and, therefore, was convinced I was over-sensitive in my perceptions. That is, until one of our closest friends confined to her “that he really never understood how she could date a Jewish boy like me for so long.”
What has happened to this statute is so symbolic for the Viennese Zeitgeist because the city’s intent to reflect its “unhappiness” about Lueger’s antisemitism was met by Wihlidal’s proposal, though without necessarily offending those who opposed more stringent rejections, like moving the statue to a less prominent location or placing it into a museum. In that sense this Viennese debate was not different from what we have been experiencing in the U.S. in recent years regarding statues of prominent Americans accused of having been slave owners. Seeing such statutes more as historical artifacts and art pieces rather than personal expressions of admiration, I in general oppose their removal (unless, of course, they become target for symbolic pilgrimages); but this is not where the story ends.
It ends by offering a perfect example of what all over the world is called the Viennese “Lebsenskunst” (translated as “art-of-living”), which now for many consecutive years has made Vienna, based on surveys, the most “livable” city in Europe. As Britannica noted (6):
Viennese “Lebenskunst” survived over history, allowing for life in Vienna at almost the same
pace and style as a century ago. The same concerts are given in the same rebuilt concert halls,
and a theatrical or operatic success still stimulates lively conversation. One can drink the same
sourish local wines in the taverns on the outskirts of town called Heurige, consume the same
mountains of whipped cream at Sacher’s and Demel’s, and sample the same varieties of coffe
drinks in countless cafés. And it is exactly this “Lebenskunst” which, still, has Lueger’s statute
staying fully upright in its original location, with—according to CNN—nobody at the city being
able to say when the tilt may be installed (see below).5
…. and in current reality
Coming to America
The same sense of subterranean antisemitism I had experienced growing up in Vienna did not seem to exist in the U.S.. There, of course, were intermittently antisemitic incidences reported in the media, but the perpetrators were usually very obvious cuckoo—in need of psychiatric treatments or—at times—selected members of the Black Muslim community. But my subconscious antisemitism sensors reactivated when, upon our return to NYC from Chicago, my younger daughter was accepted to one of New York’s most privileged (and expensive) private high schools.
I initially could not point out where my internal disquiet was coming from, but I quickly recognized that my own experience with the Viennese school system was the obvious trigger, as I increasingly perceived a change in how my daughter was educated, best described as a rapidly increasing switch from education to what seemed to me more like indoctrination. In retrospect, I should have noted these changes in the country’s education system already earlier when my two daughters – several years apart – attended a highly regarded private Jewish day and middle school in Chicago. Though political indoctrination was not as apparent there as later in above-noted NYC high school, what was already very much apparent was a clearly ideologic rather than scientific commitment of the school to medically intervene in the well-being of my children, even if I disagreed.
It happened when my older daughter allegedly tested positive for a minor learning disability on a mandated school test, administered without parental preapproval. The recommended response to the result by the school was to start my daughter on medical treatment (yes, with prescription drugs!).
When I refused to sign the relevant consent forms, arguing that my daughter was too young for these medications and that I did not want to sentence her for life to dependency on these drugs, the stigma of a learning disability, and the possible consequence of lifelong “victimhood,” I became an “enemy” for the school administration. Rumor had it that administrators were even discussing whether to report me to the authorities for child abuse.
Luckily, mostly because I was a physician, I was able to withstand this (let’s assume well-meaning) encroachment on parental authority. One, however, can imagine how much more difficult it must have been for other parents. As I later learned, at one point almost two-thirds of my daughter’s classmates had been classified as learning-disabled and a majority among those had been placed on psychotropic medications. My daughter, fortunately, was given the opportunity to learn to overcome her alleged shortcomings and successfully completed graduate school.
As my daughter’s class experience so well demonstrated, diagnostic tests have the function of identifying outliers from the norm; but as often applied, these tests are frequently used to identify extremes on normal distribution spectrums. Biology has taught us the evolutionary wisdom and absolute necessity of such spectrums which, often, are the basis for normal physiological functions through redundancies, even if abnormalities exist. In other words, we exist because our existence is not based on perfection, but on our bodies’ ability to overcome imperfection through redundancies. And – as in my daughter’s case – by putting our children on too many medications, we practically prevent them from learning how to circumvent their imperfections. As a consequence, the U.S. has become the most overmedicated nation in the world.
Unfortunately, the medical field does not seem to have sufficiently acknowledged this fact yet, but – interestingly after the COVID-19 experience – the political process has started to pay attention. However, it would be rather unbecoming for medicine as well as society as a whole if, because medicine cannot sufficiently self-regulate, medical practice became dictated by politics. And the overmedication of society is not the only warning sign. Another subject where the medical field has failed to self-regulate, resulting already in highly targeted government interventions in almost all European countries (and probably soon under the incoming Trump administration also in the U.S.) has recently been gender-affirming care in children and young adults, which has been subject of discussion repeatedly in these pages. And, as also repeatedly discussed in these pages before, the infertility field, of course, also does not lack practice patterns where medical self-regulation has failed and government interventions will become unavoidable if medicine does not learn to do better.
In short, a compromised education system is always a forerunner of societal crises – and, if the last year has demonstrated one thing beyond any reasonable doubt, the U.S. education system from kindergarten to colleges and universities is in the midst of an educational crisis, in its intensity not matched by anything seen since the end of WWII. And since our medical schools and law schools are in crisis, unsurprisingly medicine and the practice of law are in crisis. In short, the country is in crisis, and the expression of antisemitism in society is by historians widely appreciated as a canary in the coalmine.
Columbia University at the core of the evolving academic antisemitism
You at this point likely understand what the educational experiences of my two daughters may have to do with antisemitism which, of course, since October 7, 2023, has seemingly exploded in the U.S., in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe. To summarize in a very Jewish way, they have everything and nothing to do with the recent surfacing of worldwide antisemitism, depending on where you look.
As already noted, one very obvious link is the seemingly completely out of control educational system that at times appears closer to how Hamas and Hezbollah indoctrinate their children than how liberal democracies are supposed to educate children. And the worst indoctrination, of course, occurs in our colleges, with our most famous colleges and universities consciously actually having been driving this outrage.
A second and not less paradoxical link is the increasing presence of radical Muslim populations in the Western world (including the U.S. and Canada) who left their countries of origin for a better life in the West and – once here – refuse to integrate into Western society. Instead, they are attempting to turn Western society into the same kind of destructive environment they or their parents fled in the first place. Though these groups have existed in Western societies for decades, they in more recent years greatly increased in numbers, whether through legal or illegal immigration. They consequently have also become more visible, more outspoken, and more demanding. Since October 7, 2023, they, moreover, have also led the massive pro-Palestinian demonstrations all over the world, including in the U.S., which, of course, frequently have vile antisemitic overtones – even if they claim to be only anti-Zionists and not antisemites.
How ridiculous a statement that is, can be well demonstrated by my family’s history: After my parents’ decision to flee Communist Poland when I was one year old, our Jewish ancestral home in Israel, despite its chaotic conditions at the time, was really their only option (I noted before that I would return to this subject). The connection to our ancestral Jewish home that almost every practicing Jew for all her/his life constantly feels is best demonstrated by one sentence every Jewish community in the world – from Europe, the Americas, Australia, Asia, and even Africa– daily expresses in prayer and in common language. This sentence is - and has been for thousands of years – ask any Jew in the world – “next year in Jerusalem!” and has been at the core of the Jewish people’s survival over thousands of years of diaspora, even though most of the people lived as tiny and persecuted minorities all over the world.
Though the term colonialism in conjunction with Israel’s founding even circulated among early Zionists prior to the creation of the state of Israel, if one person can be tagged as the original academic source in more contemporary times for mislabeling Israel as a colonial project, it was Prof. Edward Wadie Said (1935-2003), described by Wikipedia as a Palestinian American academic at (where else?) Columbia University in NYC. He can be viewed, since the founding of Fatah as a political movement in 1959 and as a political fraction in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, as the principal theoretician and ideologue of Yasir Arafat’s (1929, Cairo – 2004, Paris, France) PLO. A professor of literature, Said is also widely considered a founder of the fields of so-called postcolonial and Middle Eastern studies.
Though Said has been widely described as of Palestinian American background, one at this point also must note that a Palestinian state – or for that matter any other societal structure described as “Palestinian” never before in history had existed in the Middle East. Yasir Arafat one day in 1964, allegedly enticed by the Soviet Union, just made it up, claiming to represent this newly presented people/nation through the PLO.
In establishing the PLO, he presented himself as the son of a never existent state of Palestine based on a false claim to have been born in Palestine (he was really born in Egypt to Egyptian-Arab parents). The PLO and Arafat, moreover, from the beginning claimed that their alleged Palestinian state reached “from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean),” thereby – from 1964 on – disputing the right of Israel to exist.
Arabs living in this area until then never identified as Palestinian but simply described themselves as Arabs. As we all have witnessed since October 7 of last year, the slogan “from the river to the sea” now has become the anthem of pro-Palestinian supporters, even though it has no historical backing, contradicts original U.N. resolutions that led to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and denies the Jewish people their right to their ancestral homeland. How else can one describe such a denial after thousands of years of exile and discrimination but as institutional antisemitism.
And it is, therefore, also no coincidence that the uproar on college and university campuses after the October 7, 2023, atrocities committed by Hamas in Israel, started at Columbia University in NYC. This university has singlehandedly over decades promoted the Palestinian statehood myth by training faculties all around the country (and the world), like several other leading universities (Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, etc.) to a significant degree financed by Muslim countries, like Qatar.
While the uninterrupted Jewish presence and history in these lands– as noted above – is well documented for thousands of years, Said and a small initial group of other academics of often Middle Eastern and Arab background succeeded in planting the seeds for a never before existing historical Palestinian people with a right to their own ancestral home of Palestine (he, therefore, described himself as Palestinian) and led the academics efforts in defining Jews returning to their ancestral homeland as colonizers.
Initially not more than an underground academic fringe movement, the concept caught on in academia in a coalition with the political left (Arafat is by many historians considered to have started his career as a paid agent of the Soviet Union), and has grown dramatically over the decades, as Israel progressively became a highly successful country. While in 1963, at the beginning of the Six Day War, still seen as the weaker party (an impression that quickly started to fade after the decisive Israeli victory), Israel -with increasing economic success – became the suppressor of Palestinians, ignoring the fact that the Palestinian leadership repeatedly rejected offered peace deals proposed by U.S. presidents Carter, Clinton, and Trump. An alliance with the left, therefore, was for Palestinian supporters a logical evolution, even though Israel until 1963 was still widely considered a socialist state.
But that has since dramatically changed, as mainstream academia now presents an until recently never existing alleged Palestinian people as the victim of an increasingly dominant colonial Israel. And here is another interesting analogy: Like the surprising sympathy expressed in certain mostly leftist circles toward the recent coldblooded murderer of the CEO of United Healthcare on the streets of NYC by often highly educated students and some of their professors, more or less the same circles of actors also expressed sympathy and often outright support for the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7, 2023. Both of these upside-down value judgments demonstrates how badly our Western education system has been performing over several decades. Only relatively few years ago, one could have assumed that most of our smarter students would conclude that planned political assassinations of CEOs and the sadistic rape, murder, and live-burning of women, men, babies, and children are despicable and inexcusable acts against humanity. Nowadays they are often, however, applauded at our college and university campuses by students as well as faculty (see YouTube link below).
Dogmas, however, work only in ideologies and religions (and even there not very convincingly). They certainly don’t work in politics and state craft, and they most certainly have no place at any level in education, from kindergarten to graduate degrees.
What we have witnessed in the streets of the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and all over Europe may have been financed by Qatar and similar sources but it was bred over decades in our colleges and universities. The initial purpose may not have been to generate antisemitism, but original purposes in revolutions almost typically are quickly replaced, as revolutions tend to “eat their children” (Jacques Mallet du Pan, 1749-1800). The antisemitism we have witnessed over the last year on innumerable prominent campuses like Columbia, Harvard, UCLA in the U.S. and, of course elsewhere as well, like at Oxford University in the UK), would have been unthinkable only 10 years ago. It must become unthinkable again!
And how the world – including the U.S. – reacted
The shock of October 7, 2023, affected me in several waves, from the unimaginable inhumanity of Hamas murderers who not only slaughtered innocent babies, children, women, and men in Israel’s southern communities but often, first, sexually abused them, tortured them, and then burned them alive, to the failure of Israel’s security systems to warn the nation ahead of the Hamas attack, and finally, to the unimaginable failure of the Israeli army, which since has performed miraculously well, to respond for hours and hours to the Hamas attack. All three of these shocks, however, were even exceeded by how the world reacted to the events of October 7, 2023. Space here does not allow for a detailed review but there is room for a few key points:
(i) In the U.S., Barack and Michelle Obama remained mum. Contrast this, for example, to Michelle’s campaign for the abducted Nigerian school girls several years earlier.
(ii) And so did practically all major international women’s organizations. Contrast this with how outspoke they usually are when women get raped and/or killed, as long as it does not involve Jewish victims, of course.
(iii) The International Red Cross did not even make attempts at visiting the Israeli hostages held in Gaza and/or express concern about their general or medical well-being. Contrast that to the constant comments by the Red Cross about alleged atrocities of the Israeli military forces in Gaza and of the Israeli prison system, to both of which the Red Cross has full access.
(iv) The International Criminal Court in the Hague issued arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister and Secretary of Defense alleging war crimes. Contrast this to the lack of any action against too many countries producing routinely atrocities which are, moreover, run by lists of murderous dictators too long to cite here (one mass grave just discovered in ex-President Asad’s Syria alone contained over 100,000 bodies).
(v) And then there is, of course, the United Nations (UN), and what can one say about an organization originally created to maintain peace in the world, which now – and not for the first time – has a blatantly antisemitic Secretary General in António Guterres, the ninth person in this position. Of course, there were other antisemites before him in this position, among those Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld , the UN’s 2nd General Secretary, and , of course, Austrias’ Kurt Waldheim, a former SS-officer in The Third Reich, and later President of Austria who – in full disclosure – awarded me the country’s Highest Honor in Arts and Science. The UN in its history issued more than twice as many condemnations of Israel’s conduct than of the conduct of all other member states combined, has an agency called UNWRA which not only indoctrinates Palestinian children in its school system in Hamas doctrines but whose employees openly participated in the atrocities of October 7, 2023. And now the U.N., as the employer of these murderous sadists argues in U.S. court that – as employees of the UN– they enjoy diplomatic immunity from prosecution for the crimes they committed on October 7, 2023. Can you believe that?
Considering that all of this represents only a miniscule example of how obviously biased much of the world reacted to the events of October 7, 2023, one is only left with a single very obvious and very regrettable conclusion: The world has not changed; a highly significant degree of hatred against the Jewish people has been maintained even after the Holocaust. The events of October just brought this hatred to the surface.
But there is also good news: At least in most Western countries, anti-Semites are only a relatively small minority and populations in most Western countries (if one excludes the Muslim populations in those countries) and in a majority support Israel against Hamas and Hezbollah, in the U.S., for example, based on several polls, always almost 80%. But there are exceptions in traditionally antisemitic Ireland and Slovakia (you may want to read up on these countries’ respective histories during WWII).
But the picture is, of course, very different at college and university campuses, and not only among students but also among faculty. The columnist and lawyer Nils A Haug from the Gatestone Institute, recently noted in an article with the provocative title, “Rebottled Jew-hate: The boycott of Jewish genius,” that “there is a systemic and widespread global agenda to erase Jewish influence in academia, science, technology, and culture” (7). As the article suggested, after October 7, 2023, a sort of quiet boycott of Israeli researchers has begun as never before has been seen. It is reflected in cancellations of invitations to medical conferences, rejections of articles by medical journals, and refusal to grant Israeli projects.
If true – and not difficult to believe considering the various formal boycott proposals made by students and faculty at various colleges and universities against Israel – this would, of course, be not only antisemitic but pure racist. The author furthermore noted that these attempts of boycotting Israel are systemic and indicative of a global agenda to erase Jewish influence in academia, science, technology, and culture, for me reminiscent of what happened in the city of my childhood, Vienna, as antisemitism steadily increased with increasing Jewish influence in the last stages of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire and – in a much shrunk country – between the two world wars, leading to the acceptance of Nazism after the Anschluss to the German Reich (see also below).
Haug made similar associations by suggesting that these activities reflect deep-seated Jew-hatred (he interestingly does not use the word antisemitism) within various Western societies, for the longest time “concealed within a façade of tolerance and social niceties,” while then quoting Steven Spielberg as saying that “antisemitism is no longer lurking, but standing proud,” – as it did during the 1930s in Austria and Germany. He also quoted in the article well-known investigative journalist and columnist, Daniel Greenfield, as saying, it’s not about Israel but has everything to do with the Jews (i.e., cultural and academic ostracization is simply rebottled Jew Hate).
At my alma mater, the medical school in Vienna, dismissal from their positions of the heavily Jewish faculty after the Anschluss (incorporation of Austria into Hitler’s German Reich) in March of 1938 resulted in the end of the university’s scientific and medical prominence in the world. Those countries and institutions currently driving away their Jewish faculties will come to regret it, like the city of Vienna came to regret the loss of its Jewish physicians, lawyers, artists, scientists, writers, composers, architects, etc. Almost 100 years later, the city still has not recovered from the losses of the 1930s.
In the U.S., Congress appears to have not only recognized the problem but successfully traced it to the education system, especially, however, colleges and universities, As Dion J. Pierre in a recent article in The Allgemeiner noted, a recent U.S. House report on the subject condemned universities for their insufficient response to rising antisemitism.8 Unfortunately, it appears that mostly only the Republican side of the House considers these issues in academia as really problematic. Especially the left wing of the Democrat party appears increasingly contaminated by developments like the UK’s Labor Party experienced already several years ago, when – especially the party’s left wing including the party’s then leader himself – demonstrated blatant and basically irrefutable antisemitism (a term I still prefer over Jew-hate).
What, as The New York Sun recently pointed out, is, however, especially painful regarding the Democrats’ left wing’s antisemitism, is that Chuck Schumer, the Jewish leader of the currently still Democratic majority in the Senate, has been singlehandedly responsible for preventing even consideration in the Senate of the Antisemitism Awareness Act, a piece of legislation that had passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support already months ago (9). The reason was telling: the Democrats’ left wing opposed the definition of antisemitism used in this law which equated anti- Zionism with antisemitism, and Schumer, who in his decade-long political career always presented himself - in a wordplay to his name - as the “Shomer” (defendant) of Jews (he represents Brooklyn in the Senate) shamefully caved.
Antisemitism in U.S. healthcare
With antisemitic incidents spiking by hundreds of percent following October 23, 2024, it practically appears obvious that there also must have been an impact on the health care system. A recent paper by a group of academic Jewish physicians from several leading medical institutions in the U.S., then, indeed, confirmed this hypothesis in a paper published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (10).
Surveying 645 self-identified Jewish healthcare professionals (30.2 % response rate), 253 (39.2%) reported exposure to antisemitism within their professional and/or academic environment, and 170 (26.4%) described themselves as feeling somewhat or to a great degree threatened or at least unsafe. On an interesting side note, while 474 (73.5%) responded that their institutions required anti-bias training, only 12 (1.9%) noted that this training also addressed antisemitism. To a degree, this latter point appears even more telling in demonstrating the obvious participation of medical institutions in the current wave of academic antisemitism that so very obviously has been engulfing even some of the most prominent academic institutions.
Jewish healthcare professionals also reported on cases of almost unbelievable systematic discrimination, including refusal of medical treatments for “Zionists.” In the Canadian health system, the discrimination appears to be even more profound: According to a study of the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO), 80% of Jewish medical workers experienced antisemitism in their workplaces since October 7, 2023 (11). This stands in contrast to before October 7, 2023, when only 1% of Jewish Canadian physicians reported antisemitism in their work environment. Now those numbers are 29% in community practices, 39% in hospitals, and – interestingly but not surprisingly – 43% in academic environments.
Medical antisemitism appears in Canada especially pronounced in the province of Ontario, where Jewish medical professionals reported antisemitism in 60% of hospitals and in 73% of academic institutions. For Jewish medical students the picture was even worse: the percentage more than doubled from 25% before October 7, 2023, to 63% after that date.
That the province of Ontario is especially affected is no coincidence, considering that over half of all Canadian Jews are living in the province, of course the highest prevalence in any Canadian province.
Conclusions
So where does this leave us? Very obviously with a heavy heart and much work to do. With antisemitism a scourge of the world since at least the fourth century, it would be naïve to even consider the possibility that it could – somehow – suddenly disappear.
What, however, is especially troublesome, is the recent success radical Islam has been able to muster following October 7, 2023, in establishing a very aggressive coalition with the political left, which now manifests itself in almost daily, often extremely well-attended street demonstrations all over the world. Under the main slogan “From the river to the sea,” these demonstrations have become increasingly assertive and at times, indeed, violently antisemitic.
It appears likely that under the second Trump administration things will change. Colleges and universities will risk loss of significant financial support from the federal government, unless they more aggressively attack their in-house expression of antisemitism, whether by students or faculty. And similarly, the media landscape appears to be shifting in parallel. But the ultimate conclusion from the last year remains that the scourge of antisemitism is still deeply imbedded is societies in many – if not most – countries in the world. The best we can do is just to suppress it to the best of our abilities, knowing very well that – when given the opportunity – it will always immediately raise its ugly head. But we will NEVER AGAIN be helplessly led to the gas chambers!
References
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4. Traynor I. The Guardian April 27, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/27/vienna-row-legacy-antisemitic-karl-lueger
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9. Zhukovsky N. The New York Sun. December 24, 2024. https://www.nysun.com/article/congress-poised-to-close-without-passing-any-major-legislation-on-antisemitism-is-chuck-schumer-to-blame?lctg=1654546113&recognized_email=ngleicher%40thechr.com&utm_source=MG&utm_medium=email-newsletter&utm_campaign=Morning%20Sun%20%202024-12-24
10. Michelson et al., J Gen Intern Med DOI: 10.1007/s11606-024-09159-x. Ahead of print.
11. Jewish Breaking News. December 18, 2024. https://worldisraelnews.com/disturbing-study-finds-jewish-healthcare-workers-face-rampant-antisemitism-in-america/