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March 2024

Leading California Hospitals Are Becoming a ‘Battlefield’ as Jewish Patients, Doctors Face Surging Antisemitism ‘The halls of medicine should be to treat humanity,’ one doctor tells the Sun, not fodder for political protest. M.J.Koch

https://www.nysun.com/article/leading-california-hospitals-are-becoming-a-battlefield-as-jewish-patients-doctors-face-surging-antisemitism

Brazen acts of antisemitism are tearing apart one of the top hospitals in the nation at the University of California San Francisco, with Jewish doctors being bullied, cancer patients encountering antisemitic graffiti, and one pregnant Israeli woman reportedly being refused care. 

The university has seen a surge in antisemitism at its sprawling network of seven Bay Area hospitals and on the social media posts of its most prominent doctors since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Jewish doctors tell the Sun that they are “paranoid” about speaking out on the issue despite a growing number of complaints from patients regarding their providers’ views on the Israel-Hamas war.

Most recently, graffiti invoking the language of the Holocaust was found on two signs near UCSF’s cancer center at its Mission Bay campus. The chancellor of UCSF, Sam Hawgood, condemned the incident in a statement on Monday and said that the local police are investigating it.

In another striking instance, a whiteboard was wheeled out and positioned at the entrance to a UCSF cancer building. It bore the words “Free Palestine from Nazi Zionist Schwein,” invoking the German word meaning “pig.”

In a physician lounge was a sign that said “stop bombing hospitals,” one UCSF doctor, who asked for anonymity given the sensitive nature of the situation, tells the Sun. He also noticed that a UCSF resident had a phone case with a Palestinian flag on it and the words, “warning, you are on Palestinian land.”