Fury at racism activist’s ‘Zionist’ doctors’ slur

AN ANTI-RACISM campaigner in the United States has triggered outrage after she claimed “Zionist” doctors were giving worse care to black and Muslim patients.

Saira Rao, a former Democrat congressional candidate, said she was “genuinely terrified for Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, South Asian and black patients” because of the number of “Zionists” among US doctors and nurses.

Ms Rao, 49, refused to back down as she was widely accused of anti-semitism. Daniel Sugarman, director of public affairs for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: “Just say ‘Jewish’, Saira, this is taking forever.”

Posting on Twitter, he continued: “There are lots of Jewish people in medicine. We’re very well aware of what this sort of comment means.”

Ms Rao founded Race2dinner, a group that aims to “help white women confront their own racism”, and co-authored, with Regina Jackson, a New York Times best-selling book.

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore said that claims “Zionist” doctors harming patients was a tenet of anti-semitism. “A call to purge dangerous ‘Zionist doctors’ and ‘decolonise’ medicine,” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Out of the slime of racist history crawls the blood libel and Stalin’s anti-jewish doctors’ plot. Even for our times this is gross.”

Katherine Brodsky, a US author, asked: “How come it’s so common for those who claim to be actively ‘anti-racist’ to turn out to be some of the most racist people out there?”

However, Ms Rao was supported by Rupa Marya, professor of hospital medicine at the University of California San Francisco. “The presence of Zionism in US medicine should be examined as a structural impediment to health equity,” she said.

“Zionism is a supremacist, racist ideology and we see Zionist doctors justifying the genocide of Palestinians. How does their outlook/position impact priorities in US medicine?”

She continued: “Zionism in US medicine is why US medical institutions have said nothing while Gaza’s hospitals are bombed.”

As the Gaza conflict unfolded in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on Israel, Ms Rao was an outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause. It led to Ms Rao and Ms Jackson, who were working on a play based on Race2dinner, being dropped by the Creative Artists Agency, which represented them.

“Our theatre agent at CAA has dropped me and Regina Jackson because she is offended by our words in support of Palestinian life,” she wrote on X. “Our words denouncing genocide. This is Mccarthyism on steroids and ethnic cleansing. We are disgusted, but not shocked.”

Ms Rao’s post was condemned by Dr Simcha Weller, a Boston neurosurgeon and co-founder of the Jewish Health Organization. “The Jewish dictum ‘to save one life is to save the world entire’ encapsulates the ethos of the Jewish healthcare provider,” he told The Daily Telegraph.

“I am deeply offended and disgusted by the insinuation that Jewish Zionist physicians and nurses discriminate in any way.”

‹ Claudine Gay, president of Harvard University, has resigned after coming under attack over her response to anti-semitism on campus. Dr Gay, 53, provoked a backlash when she failed to condemn calls for genocide against Jews when she appeared before the US House Education Committee.