UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting called it “chilling” that some members of the Jewish community fear discrimination within the country’s National Health Service (NHS), as reports of antisemitism in Britain’s health-care system continue to rise.

In an interview with the local LBC radio show on Friday, Streeting was asked about the recent case of Dr. Martin Whyte, a pediatrician and former executive member of the British Medical Association (BMA), who received only a formal warning but was allowed to continue working despite several of his antisemitic posts going viral.

“My immediate gut reaction was unrepeatable on the radio at this time of the morning,” the British official said. 

“This has been such a big story because we’ve seen undeniable, outrageous examples of vile antisemitism by people who clearly identify as NHS doctors,” Streeting continued. 

“Those people have forgotten not only basic humanity, but also their professional responsibility to patients. No one entering the NHS should feel afraid or question whether they will be treated fairly because of their race or religion,” he said during the radio show. 

On Monday, the UK’s top medical regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC), cleared Whyte to continue working as a pediatrician despite spreading hateful and antisemitic messages online, including references to “Jew banker goblins” and “gas the Jews.”

In the course of its investigation, the medical regulator concluded that Whyte did not hold bigoted beliefs and that his actions “fall just short of that which would be considered serious enough to pose a risk to public protection.”

This latest incident has sparked outrage among the local Jewish community and public officials, fueling broader concerns across the UK as rising antisemitism in health-care settings in recent months has left Jewish communities feeling unsafe and marginalized.

During the interview, Streeting recognized that many Jewish people hold a negative perception of the NHS.

“In my own constituency, which is very diverse and includes a significant Jewish community, people are afraid,” he said. 

“People in the Jewish community fear they’re going to be treated unfairly or discriminated against because they are Jewish in our National Health Service. I think that’s chilling,” Streeting continued. 

Amid a rising climate of hostility, Jewish expectant mothers are hiring doulas — a non-medical professional who supports women during childbirth — to shield themselves and their babies from bias, antisemitic attitudes, and the looming threat of inadequate medical care.

In an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, London-based doula Shoshana Maurer said that nearly every pregnant Jewish woman who has hired her since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel feared encountering antisemitism from medical staff.

“There is no question that nearly every Jewish client I’ve had since Oct. 7 has had the same anxiety about antisemitism in hospitals: are they going to be treated the same way as everyone else, will they be treated badly?” Maurer said, referring to the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

According to media reports, many South African Jewish emigrants in the UK have also encountered — or fear encountering — antisemitism within the NHS.

In one instance, a South African-born radiographer working in a diagnostic breast-cancer unit outside London told the South African Jewish Report that the period after Oct. 7 left her “scared and unsafe” at work, ultimately prompting her to resign after management failed to take steps to make her feel protected.

Last month, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled a new plan to address what he described as “just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively” in the NHS.

One notable case drawing attention involved Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, who local police arrested on Oct. 21, charging her with four offenses related to malicious communications and inciting racial hatred.

Aladwan was arrested after the GMC allowed her to continue treating patients, despite several of her antisemitic social media posts going viral, including claims that the Royal Free Hospital in London is “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”

In a separate incident two months ago, a North London hospital suspended a physician who was under investigation for publicly claiming that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.

At Northwestern University, a class about what is — and isn’t — antisemitism doesn’t shy away from taboo questions.

“Is it antisemitic to call a Jewish person a pig?” the course description asks. “To advocate for boycotts against Israel? To work to criminalize infant circumcision, or kosher slaughter?”

The class does not promise answers, but rather historical and scholarly frameworks to wrestle with the subject. That’s the premise of “What is Antisemitism?” — a history class taught by professor David Shyovitz amid national debate over that very question.

Shyovitz, who once considered becoming a rabbi and now researches Jewish-Christian relations in the Middle Ages, developed the class in fall 2020, well before pro-Palestinian encampments on college campuses across the country made national news. But at Northwestern, a fierce debate about antisemitism was already taking place.

In October 2020, student protesters marched to then University President Morton Schapiro’s house demanding that he abolish campus police. “Piggy Morty,” the protesters chanted.

Schapiro responded in an email to students and staff, saying the “piggy” chant came “dangerously close to a longstanding trope against observant Jews like myself,” alluding to a medieval antisemitic trope associating Jews with pigs. Protesters, however, said they were merely using “piggy” as slang for police. (Full disclosure: I attended Northwestern when this was taking place and graduated in 2023.)

“I thought, this is not really being discussed in a very academic or historically literate way,” Shyovitz said. “We should be having better conversations about this, based on some actual knowledge and scholarship and expertise.”

Shyovitz, director of Northwestern’s Crown Family Center for Jewish and Israel Studies, saw a classroom as the ideal forum for those discussions. He taught the first iteration of “What is Antisemitism?” in winter 2024 — just a few months after the attacks of Oct. 7, at a moment when debates over antisemitism were intensifying.

Those discussions often devolved into debating definitions. The widely used — but controversial — International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic. Alternative frameworks, like the Jerusalem Declaration and Nexus Document, define antisemitism more narrowly and allow for a broader swath of Israel criticism.

But relying on gut instinct alone to determine what is and isn’t antisemitic is equally unsatisfying, Shyovitz said, likening it to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous line about pornography: “I know it when I see it.”

Shyovitz largely circumvents those definitional debates in the first half of the class by examining antisemitism through a historical lens, while the latter half focuses on contemporary antisemitism.

“What we try to do is say, ‘Where did this term come from?’” Shyovitz said. “How has it been used by historical actors, but also by scholars to try to make sense of phenomena in the past? And then, when is it helpful? When isn’t it helpful?”

For example, Shyovitz teaches, the word “antisemitism” was coined in 1879 by German journalist Wilhelm Marr, who sought to classify Jews as an inferior “semitic” race. So when discussing “antisemitism” in the Middle Ages, it’s notable that the term was not how anyone in that time period would have referred to the phenomenon.

Labelling pre-modern Jew hatred as antisemitism can import the modern associations that that word has accrued today, Shyovitz said.

“There has never been a kind of a unanimous sense that this is a term that means a single thing and can be easily grasped,” Shyovitz said, “It’s kind of been a contentious topic from the get go.”

Contentious, too, on Northwestern’s campus. Last spring, then-university president Michael Schill faced intense scrutiny over his decision in 2024 to negotiate with pro-Palestinian protesters in an encampment. The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Brandeis Center called for Schill’s resignation, writing that Schill, who is Jewish, had “capitulated to hatred and bigotry.”

Schill resigned in September, citing “painful challenges” that Northwestern had faced during his tenure.

Later that month, hundreds of Northwestern students were barred from registering for classes after refusing to watch an antisemitism training video. Protesters said the video, which stated that most forms of anti-Zionism are antisemitic, ostracized anti-Zionist Jews.

Those controversies occurred after Shyovitz first taught the course, so he’s curious how class discussions will unfold when he teaches it for the second time this fall. The course culminates in a debate where students are randomly assigned to defend either the Jerusalem Declaration or the IHRA definition, the latter of which was formally adopted by Northwestern as part of its code of conduct in February.

Still, campus politics are not the course’s primary focus.

“The history that they’re studying actually has very clear stakes for present day policy questions,” Shyovitz said. “But if all we did was debate Northwestern politics in class, I think that would be a real wasted opportunity.”

For Northwestern senior Maria Chebli, who grew up in Beirut, taking the class last year helped her gain a more nuanced perspective on discourse surrounding antisemitism. Though she often disagreed with her classmates, she also formed friendships with them — a dynamic she credited to Shyovitz, who she said fostered an environment where students felt free to respectfully challenge one another.

“The class was quite refreshing, because everyone was very open to discussion,” Chebli said. “I don’t know if I would have had these conversations with the same people outside the classroom, and if I had, whether they would have been that fruitful.”

Shyovitz said the class has been one of the most fulfilling of his teaching career. At a time when discussions about antisemitism are often ill-informed, he said, “these students really were able to get to the crux of some of these issues in a much more productive way.”

The post ‘What is antisemitism?’ At Northwestern, a class on the subject resists simple answers appeared first on The Forward.

An online fundraiser for a former Mississippi State University student, who was arrested and charged after allegedly shouting an antisemitic remark at Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy, has garnered over $38,000 and includes antisemitic undertones in its defense of the ex-college student.

Patrick McClintock, 20, was charged on Monday with a misdemeanor of disturbing the peace after being accused of yelling “F— the Jews, f–k you Dave” at Portnoy and throwing coins at him on Nov. 7 outside a pizza restaurant in Starkville, Mississippi. McClintock also allegedly told Portnoy, who is Jewish, “Get the f–k out of Starkville,” as seen in videos from the scene that have circulated on social media.

Portnoy was doing one of his popular “One Bite” pizza reviews at the time of the incident. The Starkville Police Department reportedly processed and released McClintock on Monday on a $2,500 bond. McClintock voluntarily withdrew from MSU that same day, the school confirmed to Fox News.

A fundraising campaign on the website GiveSendGo titled “DEFEND PATRICK MCCLINTOCK” has raised $38, 031 for the 20-year-old as of Friday morning. A description of the fundraiser states that McClintock is an “American patriot, [who] got cuffed and jailed in Mississippi on November 10, 2025, for the ‘crime’ of mean words.”

“This is peak smallhat fragility—turn any insult into ‘hate speech,’ cry victim, and watch the goyim get locked up. THE DOUBLE-STANDARD IS BLATANT,” the fundraiser claimed, referencing the Yiddish word for non-Jews. It also accused Portnoy of “tribal privilege” and “weaponizing the law,” and claimed that McClintock’s ‘F–k the Jews” remark constitutes “protected speech.”

“This is ZOG in action—and Patrick is the scapegoat,” the fundraiser further claimed. ZOG stands for “Zionist Occupied Government,” which is an antisemitic white supremacist conspiracy theory promoting the false narrative that the US government is controlled by Zionists, according to the American Jewish Committee.

Portnoy told “CBS Mornings” he declined to press charges against McClintock because “his face being attached to this for the rest of his life should be punishment enough.”

“I do not think freedom of speech covers throwing s–t at someone you hate and creating a potentially volatile situation,” Portnoy added.