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Canadian Jewish Doctors Decry Rise of Antisemitism in Medicine, Consider Leaving Country
People attend Canada’s Rally for the Jewish People at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, in December 2023. Photo: Shawn Goldberg via Reuters Connect
Antisemitism in Canada risks chasing Jewish doctors not only out of their field but also out of the country, according to multiple reports.
“Antisemitism in Canadian health care has intensified dramatically since Oct. 7,” Dr. Ayelet Kuper, chairwoman of the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario (JMAO), said on Wednesday during a press conference held in Toronto to raise awareness of the problem. “This is not an isolated issue — when any group faces discrimination, it impacts the foundation of trust and safety in our health care system.”
Kuper’s comments were based on a survey, commissioned by JMAO, which found that 80 percent of Jewish medical workers who responded to it “have faced antisemitism at work” since Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7 and that 31 percent of Jewish doctors — 98 percent of whom “are worried about the impact of antisemitism on health care” — have weighed emigrating from Canada to another country.
“It’s incredibly concerning to watch antisemitism creep into our medical institutions across the province,” Kuper continued, in remarks reported by the National Post. “Discrimination doesn’t just impact doctors; it undermines the entire health care environment, compromising patient care and eroding workplace integrity. This is a crisis for all people in Ontario, not just Jewish doctors.”
Another medical professional present at the event, Dr. Sam Silver, added, “This is personal for me. I work with health care students and residents who are bright, compassionate, and committed to becoming the future of health care in Canada. Yet they are navigating a hostile environment where their identity as Jews makes them targets of hate and exclusion. This cannot continue.”
JMAO’s survey of Jewish medical professionals across Canada found that while just one percent of Canadian Jewish doctors experienced antisemitism in a community, hospital, or academic setting prior to Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, 29 percent, 39 percent, and 43 percent say they have experienced some antisemitism in each of those settings since then, respectively.
In Ontario specifically, the survey found that antisemitism was widely reported within academic spaces (73 percent) and hospitals (60 percent).
Meanwhile, according to the Toronto Sun, just over 25 percent of Jewish medical students experienced academic antisemitism before October 2023, but that number spiked to 63 percent afterward.
During Wednesday’s press conference, others pointed to the rank and file of labor unions as sources of antisemitism, with occupational therapist Serena Lee-Segal saying, according to the Post, “I have seen firsthand how the union has been visibly targeting Jews with hatred.”
She continued, “Union members have been attending protests that condone terrorism, and I’ve witnessed colleagues showing up to these protests with union flags, chanting dangerous slogans. This environment has made me feel unsafe in my own workplace.”
Antisemitism has infected all levels of Canadian society, as The Algemeiner has previously reported, from the streets to the hallowed halls of government. Last December, the Toronto Police Service issued data showing that Jews have been the victims of 57 percent of all hate crimes in Toronto since Oct. 7, with 56 of the 98 hate crimes that occurred in the city from Oct. 7 to Dec. 17 being documented as antisemitic. Compared to the same period in 2022, the number of hate crimes targeting the Jewish community during that period more than tripled.
During all of 2023, Jews were the victims of 78 percent of religious-based hate crimes in Toronto, according to police-reported data. Overall in Canada, Jewish Canadians were the most frequently targeted group for hate crimes, with a 71 percent increase from the prior year.
The issue has been evident on college campuses across Canada. In September, at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a pro-Hamas group placed a shocking antisemitic display targeting Jews and law enforcement on the gate leading to the private residence of university president Benoit-Antoine Bacon. “Pigs off campus,” said the large banner which People’s University for Gaza at UBC (PUG) tacked to the property. Next to it, the group staked on the finials of the structure the severed head of a pig.
UBC has seen its share of antisemitic incidents before. In 2021, mezuzahs, prayer scrolls hung on the doors of Jewish residences, were twice stolen or vandalized. Earlier this year, pro-Hamas activists waged a campaign to expel Hillel from campus, arguing that doing so would advance the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. Other years saw the posting of neo-Nazi propaganda and swastika graffiti, and according to local media outlets, pro-Hamas students and faculty have perpetrated unrelenting abuse of anyone perceived as being a Jewish supporter of Israel, a problem that the university has been slow to address and which earlier this year led to the resignation of a family medicine professor who taught and conducted research there for three decades.
In March, Jewish students attending Concordia University in Montreal told The Algemeiner that they have been left to fend for themselves when their anti-Zionist classmates resorted to assault and harassment to make their point. No single incident, they said, evinced their alleged abandonment by school officials more than one on March 12 in which Jewish students were trapped in the school’s Hillel office while members of the anti-Zionist club Supporting Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), concealing their faces with keffiyehs and surgical masks, banged on its windows and doors and stomped on the floor of the room above it.
When campus security officers arrived on the scene, they refused to punish the offenders and accused Jewish students of instigating the incident because they had filmed what transpired.
In 2022, a Canadian parliamentarian from Ottawa apologized for blaming Israel for violence in the Middle East and confronting his Jewish neighbors about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following an outcry from Jewish organizations and local political leaders. The New Democratic Party (NDP) MPP Joel Harden made the comments in 2021 during an interview with Peter Iarson of the Ottawa Forum on Israel Palestine. Harden later apologized.
“What is at risk is not merely the well-being of contemporary Canadian Jews, but also the hard-earned legacy of generations of Canadian Jewry, which is in danger of being irreparably tarnished or erased altogether,” Richard Robertson, director of research and advocacy of the Jewish civil rights group B’nai Brith Canada, said about the issue in May, upon the group’s issuing a report which showed a 109 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Canada. “The task of reversing the problematic trend we are experiencing will be immense and will require contributions from stakeholders across the country.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Canadian Jewish Doctors Decry Rise of Antisemitism in Medicine, Consider Leaving Country first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Syria’s Sharaa Says Talks With Israel Could Yield Results ‘In Coming Days’
Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa speaks at the opening ceremony of the 62nd Damascus International Fair, the first edition held since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, in Damascus, Syria, Aug. 27, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa said on Wednesday that ongoing negotiations with Israel to reach a security pact could lead to results “in the coming days.”
He told reporters in Damascus the security pact was a “necessity” and that it would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity and be monitored by the United Nations.
Syria and Israel are in talks to reach an agreement that Damascus hopes will secure a halt to Israeli airstrikes and the withdrawal of Israeli troops who have pushed into southern Syria.
Reuters reported this week that Washington was pressuring Syria to reach a deal before world leaders gather next week for the UN General Assembly in New York.
But Sharaa, in a briefing with journalists including Reuters ahead of his expected trip to New York to attend the meeting, denied the US was putting any pressure on Syria and said instead that it was playing a mediating role.
He said Israel had carried out more than 1,000 strikes on Syria and conducted more than 400 ground incursions since Dec. 8, when the rebel offensive he led toppled former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
Sharaa said Israel’s actions were contradicting the stated American policy of a stable and unified Syria, which he said was “very dangerous.”
He said Damascus was seeking a deal similar to a 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria that created a demilitarized zone between the two countries.
He said Syria sought the withdrawal of Israeli troops but that Israel wanted to remain at strategic locations it seized after Dec. 8, including Mount Hermon. Israeli ministers have publicly said Israel intends to keep control of the sites.
He said if the security pact succeeds, other agreements could be reached. He did not provide details, but said a peace agreement or normalization deal like the US-mediated Abraham Accords, under which several Muslim-majority countries agreed to normalize diplomatic ties with Israel, was not currently on the table.
He also said it was too early to discuss the fate of the Golan Heights because it was “a big deal.”
Reuters reported this week that Israel had ruled out handing back the zone, which Donald Trump unilaterally recognized as Israeli during his first term as US president.
“It’s a difficult case – you have negotiations between a Damascene and a Jew,” Sharaa told reporters, smiling.
SECURITY PACT DERAILED IN JULY
Sharaa also said Syria and Israel had been just “four to five days” away from reaching the basis of a security pact in July, but that developments in the southern province of Sweida had derailed those discussions.
Syrian troops were deployed to Sweida in July to quell fighting between Druze armed factions and Bedouin fighters. But the violence worsened, with Syrian forces accused of execution-style killings and Israel striking southern Syria, the defense ministry in Damascus and near the presidential palace.
Sharaa on Wednesday described the strikes near the presidential palace as “not a message, but a declaration of war,” and said Syria had still refrained from responding militarily to preserve the negotiations.
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Anti-Israel Activists Gear Up to ‘Flood’ UN General Assembly
US Capitol Police and NYPD officers clash with anti-Israel demonstrators, on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses a joint meeting of Congress, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, DC, July 24, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Anti-Israel groups are planning a wave of raucous protests in New York City during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) over the next several days, prompting concerns that the demonstrations could descend into antisemitic rhetoric and intimidation.
A coalition of anti-Israel activists is organizing the protests in and around UN headquarters to coincide with speeches from Middle Eastern leaders and appearances by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The demonstrations are expected to draw large crowds and feature prominent pro-Palestinian voices, some of whom have been criticized for trafficking in antisemitic tropes, in addition to calling for the destruction of Israe.
Organizers of the demonstrations have promoted the coordinated events on social media as an opportunity to pressure world leaders to hold Israel accountable for its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, with some messaging framed in sharply hostile terms.
On Sunday, for example, activists shouted at Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon.
“Zionism is terrorism. All you guys are terrorists committing ethnic cleansing and genocide in Gaza and Palestine. Shame on you, Zionist animals,” they shouted.
BREAKING: PRO-PALESTINE PROTESTORS CONFRONT “ISRAELI” AMBASSADOR DANNY DANON AT THE UNITED NATIONS
1/5 pic.twitter.com/4G1VYEMGzV
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) September 14, 2025
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM), warned on its website that the scale and tone of the planned demonstrations risk crossing the line from political protest into hate speech, arguing that anti-Israel activists are attempting to hijack the UN gathering to spread antisemitism and delegitimize the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Outside the UN last week, masked protesters belonging to the activist group INDECLINE kicked a realistic replica of Netanyahu’s decapitated head as though it were a soccer ball.
US activist group plays soccer with Bibi’s mock decapitated HEAD right outside NYC UN HQ
Peep shot at 00:40
Footage posted by INDECLINE collective just as UN General Assembly about to kick off
‘Following the game, ball was donated to Palestinian Genocide Museum’ pic.twitter.com/TQ84sgZhKr
— RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2025
Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a radical anti-Israel activist group, has vowed to “flood” the UNGA on behalf of the pro-Palestine movement.
WOL, one of the most prolific anti-Israel activist groups, came under immense fire after it organized a protest against an exhibition to honor the victims of the Oct. 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel. During the event, the group chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied!” and “Israel, go to hell!”
“We will be there to confront them with the truth: Their silence and inaction enable genocide. The world cannot continue as if Gaza does not exist,” WOL said of its planned demonstrations in New York. “This is the time to make our voices impossible to ignore. Come to New York by any means necessary, to stand, to march, to demand the UN act and end the siege.”
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), two other anti-Israel organizations that have helped organize widespread demonstrations against the Jewish state during the war in Gaza, also announced they are planning a march from Times Square to the UN headquarters on Friday.
“The time is now for each and every UN member state to uphold their duty under international law: sanction Israel and end the genocide,” the groups said in a statement.
JVP, an organization that purports to fight for “Palestinian liberation,” has positioned itself as a staunch adversary of the Jewish state. The group argued in a 2021 booklet that Jews should not write Hebrew liturgy because hearing the language would be “deeply traumatizing” to Palestinians. JVP has repeatedly defended the Oct. 7 massacre of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel by Hamas as a justified “resistance.” Chapters of the organization have urged other self-described “progressives” to throw their support behind Hamas and other terrorist groups against Israel
Similarly, PYM, another radical anti-Israel group, has repeatedly defended terrorism and violence against the Jewish state. PYM has organized many anti-Israel protests in the two years following the Oct. 7 attacks in the Jewish state. Recently, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) called for a federal investigation into the organization after Aisha Nizar, one of the group’s leaders, urged supporters to sabotage the US supply chain for the F-35 fighter jet, one of the most advanced US military assets and a critical component of Israel’s defense.
The UN General Assembly has historically been a flashpoint for heated debate over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Previous gatherings have seen dueling demonstrations outside the Manhattan venue, with pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups both seeking to influence the international spotlight.
While warning about the demonstrations, CAM noted it recently launched a new mobile app, Report It, that allows users worldwide to quickly and securely report antisemitic incidents in real time.
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Nina Davidson Presses Universities to Back Words With Action as Jewish Students Return to Campus Amid Antisemitism Crisis
Nina Davidson on The Algemeiner’s ‘J100’ podcast. Photo: Screenshot
Philanthropist Nina Davidson, who served on the board of Barnard College, has called on universities to pair tough rhetoric on combatting antisemitism with enforcement as Jewish students returned to campuses for the new academic year.
“Years ago, The Algemeiner had published a list ranking the most antisemitic colleges in the country. And number one was Columbia,” Davidson recalled on a recent episode of The Algemeiner‘s “J100” podcast. “As a board member and as someone who was representing the institution, it really upset me … At the board meeting, I brought it up and I said, ‘What are we going to do about this?’”
Host David Cohen, chief executive officer of The Algemeiner, explained he had revisited Davidson’s remarks while she was being honored for her work at The Algemeiner‘s 8th annual J100 gala, held in October 2021, noting their continued relevance.
“It could have been the same speech in 2025,” he said, underscoring how longstanding concerns about campus antisemitism, while having intensified in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, are not new.
Davidson argued that universities already possess the tools to protect students – codes of conduct, time-place-manner rules, and consequences for threats or targeted harassment – but too often fail to apply them evenly. “Statements are not enough,” she said, arguing that institutions need to enforce their rules and set a precedent that there will be consequences for individuals who refuse to follow them.
She also said that stakeholders – alumni, parents, and donors – are reassessing their relationships with schools that, in their view, have not safeguarded Jewish students. While supportive of open debate, Davidson distinguished between protest and intimidation, calling for leadership that protects expression while ensuring campus safety.
The episode surveyed specific pressure points that administrators will face this fall: repeat anti-Israel encampments, disruptions of Jewish programming, and the challenge of distinguishing political speech from conduct that violates university rules. “Unless schools draw those lines now,” Davidson warned, “they’ll be scrambling once the next crisis hits.”
Cohen closed by framing the discussion as a test of institutional credibility, asking whether universities will “turn policy into protection” in real time. Davidson agreed, pointing to students who “need to know the rules aren’t just on paper.”
The full conversation is available on The Algemeiner’s “J100” podcast.