Whistleblower doctor breaks silence on anti-Semitic medicos

Weeks after the Hamas massacre, psychiatrist Jackie Rakov sent the government a dossier detailing pro-Hamas sentiment among fellow doctors - and heard nothing back.

Psychiatrist Jacqueline Rakov, left, and doctor Karen Fink in Balaclava, Melbourne. Picture: Liam Mendes

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A doctor who blew the whistle on rising anti-Semitism in Australia’s healthcare sector – and sent a dossier to the Health Minister two years ago to prove it – has broken her silence, slamming the government’s lack of will to combat workplace racism.

In October 2023, just weeks after Hamas’ massacre of Israelis, Melbourne psychiatrist Jacqueline Rakov sent the dossier – compiled by some of the 235 other health professionals who signed an ­attached letter – to Health Minister Mark Butler, detailing pro-Hamas sentiment in social media posts by fellow professionals.

“All we did was appeal to the government to de-escalate the ­racism that we observed, and to depoliticise the healthcare space, and we are unclear why they appeared unmotivated to do that,” Dr Rakov told The Australian. The dossier emerged after footage of Sydney nurses Ahmad ­“Rashad” Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh shocked the nation last week, with the now-suspended pair bragging about “killing Israelis”.

Dr Rakov, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, said the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency agreed to meet with doctors on “a number of occasions” but nothing eventuated.

“It was received as tokenism or placation because the net effect was nothing, the net effect was that dozens of Jewish doctors were ­vexatiously reported,” she said.

“A lot of Jewish doctors have been explained what they should and shouldn’t believe that anti-Semitism is, they’ve been told what the definition of Zionism is, and I don’t think that any other minority would be expected to accept that sort of patronising behaviour.”

A shared post from the Instagram account of Mohamed Ghilan referencing Hamas. Picture: Instagram

Included in the dossier and subsequent reports to the AHPRA was one instance of a doctor working in one of the nation’s most highly populated Jewish areas sharing a photo tagged: “Live like Sinwar or die trying.”

The doctor, Mohamed Ghilan, also published posts on his now-locked Instagram account showing slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar saying: “Humiliation will never be for us” and “I am Hamas, they are Hamas, we are all Hamas.”

Dr Ghilan was still working at Caulfield Hospital in Melbourne until November, before he was suspended and later resigned while an investigation was under way.

Jewish doctor Karen Fink co-founded the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Healthcare last year in response to what she says was the increasing prevalence of anti-Semitism and the growing trend of hospitals becoming platforms for activist movements.

“We were deeply distressed by the lack of sufficient support from senior hospital management for Jewish staff and their failure to ­address concerns regarding the ­escalating anti-Semitism in the workplace,” she said.

Dr Fink said that since the ­October 7 attacks, Jewish healthcare workers have been compelled to conceal their identity, with ­patients also hiding their religion on admission forms “out of fear”.

“We have all been let down by the regulator, which encouraged individuals to report incidents of anti-Semitism only to dismiss all the reports without action,” Dr Fink said.

Included in Dr Rakov’s October 2023 email to Mr Butler was a raft of evidence of anti-Semitism, often in Facebook posts by doctors.

Medical professionals had compared Jews to Nazis, referred to Jewish doctors as “overlords and pro-war players”, alleging they had “embraced victimhood” and had grown up “steeped in Zionist propaganda”. Others denied that Hamas terrorists raped Israelis during on October 7 – something which the United Nations said it had “reasonable grounds” to believe took place – posting that they couldn’t believe the testimonies of “anonymous survivors”.

One doctor called Israel an “apartheid state”; another accused their Jewish colleagues of “spouting biased crap”; and others suggested the October 7 attacks were against “occupiers”.

In later social media posts, medical professionals called Israel “today’s Nazi Germany”, accused Zionists of “subverting” international law, and shared posts calling Jewish people “loathed slime”.

Additional reporting: Hannah Wilcox