Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer reacts as he meets with Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey (unseen) and Member of the House of Lords George Robertson (unseen) at 10 Downing Street, in London, on July 16, 2024. Photo: Benjamin Cremel/Pool via REUTERS

Following a series of episodes involving allegations of antisemitism in the United Kingdom’s National Health Service (NHS), Prime Minister Keir Starmer revealed a new plan on Thursday to counter hate targeting Jews seeking medical care.

“There are just too many examples, clear examples, of antisemitism that have not been dealt with adequately or effectively,” Starmer said in a statement. “We’ve already put in place management training in relation to the NHS, but I think we need a wider review, because in some cases, clear cases are simply not being dealt with, and so we need to get to the root of that.”

Starmer noted that John Mann, who serves in the House of Lords and as the government’s independent adviser on antisemitism, would lead the review into the NHS’s handling of these cases.

“The NHS and the health sector pride themselves on being welcoming, inclusive, and professional in dealings with every one of us, as we are all patients at different times and in different ways throughout our entire life. Everyone in the country should be confident in these underlying principles at all times,” Mann said. “This review will look at the issues that can undermine the confidence of individuals when seeking or receiving health care.”

Mann stated that “ensuring that the systems and culture of regulation across the health service match, at all times, the universal principles and ethics that underpin our NHS will be the sole focus of this work.”

Wes Streeting, who serves as health and social care secretary, described his shock at the severity of the problem.

“The NHS should be there for all of us when we need it – regardless of income, race, or religion. Discrimination undermines everything our health service stands for, and undermines its ability to provide quality care,” Streeting said. “I have been appalled by recent incidents of antisemitism by NHS doctors, and I will not tolerate it. There can be no place in our NHS for doctors or staff continuing to practice after even persistently using antisemitic or hateful language.”

Streeting added that “patients put their lives in the hands of health-care professionals. They treat us at our most vulnerable. They therefore have a special responsibility to provide total comfort and confidence. I am grateful to Lord Mann for taking on this work. I expect his recommendations, and the action we are taking today, to help us enforce a zero-tolerance policy to racism in health care.”

One recent example of antisemitic sentiment in the United Kingdom’s medical sector manifested in the investigation into Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, under government review after making such statements as claiming the Royal Free Hospital in London was “a Jewish supremacy cesspit” and that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal.”

On Wednesday, The Daily Mail published a 30-second video clip of Aladwan saying that “the Palestinian people who are fighting for liberation – including armed struggle as per international law, right – are heroes, every single one of them. We are proud of our armed resistance and in Islam we call that ‘Jihad.’ That’s an honor. That’s how you defend your people.”

Another recent incident involved Dr. Ellen Kriesels, who works as a consultant pediatrician at Whittington Health NHS Trust and serves as clinical lead for community pediatrics. She has been suspended pending a formal inquiry, after the family of a disabled Jewish boy uncovered her long trail of antisemitic social media writings and expressed concern about her views influencing her treatment of patients.

The UK has seen similar controversies around antisemitism in health-care settings.

At University College London Hospitals (UCLH), posters appeared on walls with the claim that “Zionism is poison” and the accusation that the Jewish state had been “slaughtering children in Gaza.” The hospital apologized and promised it would crack down on enforcing policies intended to prevent the promotion of political ideologies to patients.

Another high-profile case involved midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital after UK Lawyers for Israel exposed a series of anti-Israel posts — including an Oct. 8, 2023, message celebrating “Palestinians’ right to resist” the day after the most lethal day for the Jewish people since the end of the Holocaust. Mohamied has since filed a lawsuit claiming her supervisors illegally suppressed her pro-advocacy.

According to the UK’s Department of Health and Social Care, Mann will review how the NHS responds to antisemitism at all stages from hiring through professional oversight. He will also examine regulatory processors, transparency in investigations, the mechanisms used for reporting, and how to implement zero-tolerance policies properly.

Jewish organizations praised the move.

The Jewish Medical Association (JMA) said in a statement that it “has become increasingly concerned about blatant expressions of antisemitism — simply anti-Jewish racism — that have become widely tolerated across health care. British Jewish health-care students, professionals, and patients find this profoundly distressing and intimidating. The JMA welcomes Lord Mann’s review of the role of regulators in eliminating this toxic culture for Jews.”

Jewish Care CEO Daniel Carmel-Brown said his organization “welcomes the government’s commitment to tackling antisemitism and racism across the NHS and wider society. These measures send a powerful message that hatred and discrimination have no place in health care or anywhere else.”

Professor Habib Naqvi, chief executive of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, also endorsed the action.

“Tackling antisemitism, Islamophobia, and racism involves clear communication of a zero-tolerance stance, implementing systemic changes, and creating a supportive environment for all employees,” Naqvi said. “That’s why we fully support roll out of the comprehensive measures announced today by the government. Our diverse workforce is the backbone of the NHS. It must be cared for, celebrated and respected for the outstanding care that it provides.”

Naqvi added that “at the same time, our patients, colleagues, and communities need to be treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. No one should be subjected to discrimination or abuse of any kind, within or outside of the workplace.”

Cornell University, May 25, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

A Cornell University professor who according to the school violated federal anti-discrimination law when he expelled an Israeli student from class has reached an agreement with the administration which would allow him to retire and avoid serving a two-semester suspension he received as punishment for the incident.

During the spring semester earlier this year, Professor Eric Cheyfitz, an English literature and American Studies instructor, allegedly determined that the contributions of an Israeli student, Oren Renard, to a course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict titled “Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance” were “disruptive” and asked him to leave his class. Following the incident, Renard reported Cheyfitz for discrimination, triggering disciplinary charges and a dispute which drew in the faculty, national media, and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).

Cornell had already canceled Cheyfitz’s courses in September in response to the matter and pressed the case for further disciplining him even after his colleagues in the faculty senate, an overwhelmingly left-wing and anti-Zionist body, voted to acquit him of the charge. However, Cheyfitz, who participated in anti-Israel encampments the previous year and has been criticized for propagating content which is “radical, factually inaccurate, and biased,” has refused to be corrected, citing academic freedom as justification for his actions.

Having reached an impasse, the two parties chose to part ways, ending Cheyfitz’s two-decade tenure.

“The Cornell Office of Civil Rights issued a finding of discrimination committed by Professor Cheyfitz,” the university told The Algemeiner in a statement shared on Thursday. “Professor Cheyfitz has chosen to retire and leave university employment, thus ending Cornell’s disciplinary process. The finding that Professor Cheyfitz violated Cornell policy and federal law remains in place.”

Anti-Zionists at Cornell University have attracted negative headlines and attention to the school before, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.

In October 2023, days after Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists abducted, raped, and murdered Israelis during a massacre which claimed 1,200 lives, history instructor Russell Rickford hailed the atrocities as “exhilarating” and “energizing” during a rally held on campus. Rickford later apologized for the comments while arguing that he “intended to stress grassroots African American, Jewish, and Palestinian traditions of resistance to oppression.” He addressed the expression of regret to “my family, my students, my colleagues, and many others,” but not to the Jewish community or Israelis — the chief targets of Hamas’s terror onslaught.

Not a month later, now-former student Patrick Dai threatened to perpetrate heinous crimes against members of the school’s Jewish community, including mass murder and rape, in a series of social media posts. In addition to threatening to harm individuals, Dai threatened to attack a kosher dining hall on campus — 104West, which is affiliated with the Steven K. And Winifred A. Grinspoon Hillel Center.

“Gonna shoot up 104 west… Allahu akbar! from the river to the sea, palestine will be free! glory to hamas! liberation by any means necessary!” one of his posts said. Another read, “If I see a pig male jew i will stab you and slit your throat. if i see another pig female jew i will drag you away and rape you and throw you off a cliff. if i see another pig baby jew i will behead you in front of your parents [sic].”

Dai has since been sentenced to 21 months in federal prison.

US college campuses saw an alarming spike in antisemitic incidents — including demonstrations calling for Israel’s destruction and the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students — after the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. In a two-month span following the atrocities, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recorded 470 antisemitic incidents on college campuses alone. During that same period, antisemitic incidents across the US skyrocketed by 323 percent compared to the prior year.

To this day, Jewish students report feeling unsafe on the campus. According to a new survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS), the vast majority of Jewish students around the world resort to hiding their Jewishness and support for Israel on university campuses to avoid becoming victims of antisemitism.

A striking 78 percent of Jewish students have opted to “conceal” their religious affiliation “at least once” over the past year, the study found, with Jewish women being more likely than men to do so. Meanwhile, 81 percent of those surveyed hid their support for Zionism, a movement which promotes Jewish self-determination and the existence of the State of Israel, at least once over the past year.

Among all students, Orthodox Jews reported the highest rates of “different treatment,” with 41 percent saying that their peers employ alternative social norms in dealing with them.

“This survey exposes a devastating reality: Jewish students across the globe are being forced to hide fundamental aspects of their identity just to feel safe on campus,” ADL senior vice president of international affairs Marina Rosenberg said in a statement. “When over three-quarters of Jewish students feel they must conceal their religious and Zionist identity for their own safety, the situation is nothing short of dire. As the academic year begins, the data provides essential insights to guide university leadership in addressing this campus crisis head on.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

For 737 days, the people of Israel — and Jews around the world — hoped and prayed for the moments of bliss we witnessed on Monday, as the last living hostages returned from Gaza and reunited with their families and their nation.

For just over two years, many of us found that the joys of life could not feel whole. On holidays, at weddings and on vacations, there was an aching sense that until the hostages returned, it would be impossible to experience pure, unfiltered happiness.

Yet now that this long-awaited moment is here, our joy is tinged with sadness.

We feel that sadness because we know that it will take years for the hostages to recover from the unfathomable cruelty they endured in Gaza, and because perhaps they could have come home sooner. We feel it because 42 of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, were killed in captivity. Hamas has so far failed to return the remains of many of those hostages, robbing their families of the closure they so desperately need.

Our joy is mixed with profound sadness because we lost two years to a war that should never have started — a war that was launched in the name of resistance and liberation, yet has ended with the total destruction of Gaza. That was precisely what Hamas wanted: to commit such a horrific massacre that Israel would react with unprecedented force, resulting in global condemnation and Israel’s isolation.

Our joy this week is also tainted by anger, because Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught was entirely preventable, as many Israeli investigations have made painfully clear. We feel that anger because Hamas is still in control of Gaza. We know that true peace is nowhere near.

There is also an overwhelming sense that all this devastation could have been avoided, had Israel heeded ample warnings of plans for an invasion by terrorists from Gaza — who had made clear for years their desire to annihilate Israel — and made serious military plans to combat it.

These joyous days are mixed with sorrow for these reasons, and so many more. We are still grieving the nearly 1,200 lives that were so violently extinguished by Hamas’s massacre. And we grieve, also, for the countless others whose lives were forever changed by the horrors of that day — those who were wounded, lost their lives during the war in Gaza, and lost loved ones and beloved communities.

We are still mourning an Israel that will never again be the Israel it was: a place where Jewish families did not fear being hunted down and slaughtered in their homes. And we are mourning a world that is not what we thought it was.

For many in the diaspora who feel close to Israel, everything changed after Oct. 7. We lost friendships, and sometimes entire communities. We felt betrayed by professions that once gave us a sense of belonging.

We will not forget the protests against Israel that erupted on city streets and college campuses on Oct. 8, 2023, when dead bodies still littered the streets of southern Israel. Nor will we forget the many people who praised Hamas’s massacre as noble resistance.

We will always carry with us the memory of posters bearing hostages’ faces being torn down in American and European cities by people who described them as “Zionist propaganda” or worse. We will never forget the images of the atrocities those activists denied or justified.

As an independent journalist who reported from Israel for dozens of American newspapers and magazines for more than a decade, I have felt betrayed by the profession I belonged to until 2023.

This week I have watched — no longer in shock, but in despair — as many news organizations drew a false equivalence between Hamas’s release of 20 hostages and Israel’s release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners, including 250 who were serving life sentences. The BBC, for example, ran an emotional segment featuring the sister of a released Palestinian prisoner, weeping because he will be deported rather than return home; the segment fails to mention that her brother was convicted in connection to a suicide bombing that killed four people. Then there are the Al Jazeera English stories describing Palestinian prisoners as “captives.”

And it’s not just the hostage release. CNN’s Christiane Amanpour was made to apologize after saying on-air that the Israeli hostages in Gaza were “probably being treated better than the average Gazan” during the war.

Even as this war comes to an end, we are seeing the same distortions of truth that have characterized public conversations about this war from the very beginning. Their persistence suggests the relief we hoped to feel at this point remains far off.

Too many institutions I once held in esteem have fallen prey to those distortions. There’s the literary world, which has broadly censored Jewish authors and boycotted Israeli cultural institutions; women’s rights organizations, such as U.N. Women, which took months to condemn Hamas’s use of sexual violence on Oct. 7, or the others that never did; the medical field, which has seen an alarming rise in antisemitism; and universities, where the surge in antisemitism has been fueled by some professors who seem to have deliberately indoctrinated students into believing that Israel’s very existence is a crime.

Yet one of the most vital lessons from this chapter in our people’s history is that we cannot allow the hatred of our enemies to define us, or to shake our conviction in what we know to be true.

As the awe-inspiring Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of the murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, so aptly explained at a rally in Jerusalem two nights before the living hostages returned: “There is a time to sob, and there is a time to dance, and we have to do both right now.”

Sob and dance we will. Perhaps for years to come.

The post A time to sob, and to dance: Why does the joy of the hostage release feel so painful? appeared first on The Forward.