By day, Dr. Mobeen Rathore is a decorated pediatrician and infectious disease expert in Jacksonville, Fla., where he serves as the founding director of an HIV/AIDS research center at the University of Florida and is also the statewide HIV consultant for the Children’s Medical Services of the Florida Department of Health.

By night (and by weekends), Rathore spends his time scrolling on X, retweeting rabidly anti-Israel accounts. 

“Zionism is the root of all evil.” “We pray for the disappearance of Zionism and Israel.” This is the Holocaust.” “The truth will make you reject Zionism.” “Israel is a child killer regime.” “Do you know how you become ‘Antisemite of the Year’? You build a massive platform, and you have the COURAGE to tell THE TRUTH.” (The last post featured a video of Candace Owens, a conservative pundit who in 2024 lost her job at The Daily Wire after repeatedly making antisemitic statements.)

These were just a handful of the dozens of posts that Rathore has shared on his public account in the year and a half since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks sparked a war in the Middle East. He usually opted to retweet others who shared his deep-seated antagonism toward Israel, rather than drafting his own tweets — except for when, on multiple occasions, he compared the Israelis held hostage by Hamas to Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, many of whom were serving life sentences for murder. 

“These are innocent civilians,” Rathore wrote of the prisoners in August 2024. 

The aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks has not left any institution unscathed. College campuses, workplaces and families have been torn apart by what’s happening in the Middle East. Not even the world of American medicine has been spared. Within distinguished medical bodies, senior physicians and students alike are issuing anti-Israel purity tests, urging organizations ostensibly focused on promoting high-quality medical care to take sides in a divisive war thousands of miles away. 

The problem is particularly acute within the field of pediatric medicine, in which Rathore is a leader. His posts on X may be coming from a personal account, but on his profile, where he lists all of his medical titles, a photo shows him smiling in a lab coat.

“You can’t turn off being a doctor,” said a Jewish medical student in Georgia training to be a pediatrician, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “Things you post publicly you need to expect are going to be picked up by those who you’re caring for. That’s not to say that you can’t have your own opinion and that you can’t speak your truth. But I do think around these very complex issues, it does trickle down to your colleagues, to your trainees, to the students and to your patients, who will make an opinion based on what you share publicly and then decide whether or not they trust you with their care.”

For years, Rathore has been an active leader within the American Academy of Pediatrics, the preeminent membership body for pediatricians, which claims to have more than 67,000 members. He serves as the diversity, equity and inclusion “champion” for the organization’s southeast division, as well as the editor of The Florida Pediatrician, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the AAP’s Florida chapter. In a recent editorial praising the cease-fire deal in Gaza, he expressed hope about “hostages being exchanged” — sparking concerns among some Jewish colleagues who took issue with him referring to Palestinian prisoners as hostages, akin to the Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza, in a serious medical journal. 

Rathore did not respond to a request for comment.

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People go to medical professionals expecting to receive the highest quality of care, no matter who they are, whether Jewish or Muslim, pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian (or both, or neither), Democrat or Republican. Nowhere is that more true than in pediatrics, a field that young doctors enter because they care about keeping the most vulnerable members of society safe. Some Jewish doctors say that core value is now being called into question as they see colleagues decide political activism on a hot-button issue is more important than being a fair-minded doctor.

“You can’t turn off being a doctor,” said a Jewish medical student in Georgia training to be a pediatrician, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “Things you post publicly you need to expect are going to be picked up by those who you’re caring for. That’s not to say that you can’t have your own opinion and that you can’t speak your truth. But I do think around these very complex issues, it does trickle down to your colleagues, to your trainees, to the students and to your patients, who will make an opinion based on what you share publicly and then decide whether or not they trust you with their care.”

The vast majority of American Jews feel a connection to Israel, so Jewish parents may understandably be concerned about their child receiving high-quality care from a pediatrician who called Zionism “the root of all evil”. These concerns could pertain to life-or-death consequences: Two Australian nurses said in a viral video this week that they would kill Israeli patients rather than treat them. (The hospital where they work suspended the nurses and said it has found no evidence of harm to patients.)

“When a doctor in a white coat or a nurse in blue scrubs approaches your hospital bedside — and we will all be in that hospital bed, whether [with] a loved one or in that hospital bed as a vulnerable patient — we need to care not only about their clinical competency and knowledge base, but we also have to be concerned about what kind of moral values are they bringing,” said Hedy Wald, a family medicine professor at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School and an expert on medicine in the Holocaust.

Jewish pediatricians have faced antisemitic abuse in private online forums for AAP members starting soon after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, and they have been alarmed to see colleagues take to those online communities — which are meant to be used for discussion of medical issues — to share sharply anti-Israel messages. More than that, Jewish pediatricians are left wondering why the leaders of the AAP, a beloved organization to many that has been critical for their professional advancement, are at best sluggish and at worst derelict in responding to their growing worries about bias in the medical community.  

“They appear to be taking a different approach to issues that involve Jews and Israel than they do in other areas,” Dr. Daniel Rauch, a pediatrician and professor at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in New Jersey, said of the AAP, an organization with which he has been involved for decades. “To be so blind in this area is frightening and speaks to structural antisemitism.”

It isn’t so easy for Jewish pediatricians concerned about antisemitism within the AAP to simply leave the Academy. While being a fellow of the Academy, or FAAP — a distinction that many pediatricians list in their official titles, alongside the vaunted MD — is not a requirement to be board-certified in pediatrics, active membership in the AAP is sometimes required by employers, and it’s an important professional development tool for pediatricians who want to advance in academic hospitals. The AAP also publishes must-read medical best practices that guide the care children receive in the United States and around the world.

“Anyone speaking up for Israel was shot down. I posted, ‘I’m Jewish and I have trauma,’ and we’re supposed to be trauma-informed. And they responded with, ‘Nobody cares. Your trauma is irrelevant,’” Dr. Michelle Elisburg, a pediatrician in Kentucky and a member of Hadassah’s physicians council, told JI. “You would never tell your patient their trauma is irrelevant. They’ve completely lost their medical ethics of how to treat each other, in a way that you would never do to your patient, and it was tolerated. No moderator stopped it.”

“In the health care world, professional associations can have a lot of power and authority over people’s lives,” said David Goldfarb, who works on health policy at the Jewish Federations of North America, which has worked to garner congressional attention for the issue of antisemitism in medicine. “The American Academy of Pediatrics makes recommendations for children’s behavior. So these are important institutions in themselves.” 

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Dr. Michelle Elisburg, a pediatrician in Kentucky and a member of Hadassah’s physicians council, has relied on AAP listservs as a lifeline for building community and connecting with like-minded colleagues about caring for immigrants and refugees, two populations that she serves. She has watched as two active email forums, one for discussion of immigrant children and family health issues and another for conversation about global health, have been co-opted by anti-Israel physicians seeking to pressure the AAP to condemn Israel. 

“Anyone speaking up for Israel was shot down. I posted, ‘I’m Jewish and I have trauma,’ and we’re supposed to be trauma-informed. And they responded with, ‘Nobody cares. Your trauma is irrelevant,’” Elisburg told Jewish Insider. “You would never tell your patient their trauma is irrelevant. They’ve completely lost their medical ethics of how to treat each other, in a way that you would never do to your patient, and it was tolerated. No moderator stopped it.”

For months, when discussions about Gaza would dominate those discussion boards, Elisburg fought a largely one-woman battle to push back on what she described as “misinformation” about Israel’s war effort and to raise awareness of the Israeli hostages, including children, who remained in Gaza. Other Jewish doctors would write to her privately, thanking her, but they did not join in for fear of how they would be treated for expressing support for Israel. 

“The American Academy of Pediatrics condemns antisemitism and its impacts on children’s health and safety,” AAP’s president, Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, wrote in a statement released on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. “No child should feel unsafe going to school, no family should feel unsafe in their community and no pediatrician should feel unsafe at work because of their Jewish identity.” 

She faced direct personal attacks in response to some of her messages. When she would raise the issue to moderators affiliated with the AAP, they told her they would look into the issue — and nothing would come of it. That’s in contrast to some other forums, such as one for pediatricians who work in hospital settings, where moderators said soon after Oct. 7 that discussions about the Middle East would not be tolerated. 

“If you’re in a profession where you need to do advocacy, you need these kinds of organizations to help bring a voice,” said Elisburg, who considered leaving the AAP but decided not to, yet. “What are our safe sleep guidelines? What is our lead guideline? This is the place you go to, to get that information, and they’re failing in this one area. Do you condemn the whole thing? There’s no alternative. So I think that’s why I am staying, for right now.”

In October 2024, on the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks, the Academy’s president released a statement condemning antisemitism. The statement, which the AAP said was released “in the midst of the Jewish High Holidays and on the one-year anniversary of the terrorist attack in Israel,” came after months of behind-the-scenes advocacy by Jewish pediatricians and a campaign by the American Jewish Medical Association. Jewish doctors were relieved that some of their concerns were finally being heard. 

“The American Academy of Pediatrics condemns antisemitism and its impacts on children’s health and safety,” AAP’s president, Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, wrote. “No child should feel unsafe going to school, no family should feel unsafe in their community and no pediatrician should feel unsafe at work because of their Jewish identity.” 

But what Jewish pediatricians saw as progress sparked an uproar among some anti-Israel members of the AAP. 

One physician sent a message to the immigrant health listserv, saying she was “shocked and disturbed that on 10/7/24, the AAP put out a blatantly one-sided statement with inflammatory language that erased the yearlong genocide disproportionately and primarily affecting the Palestinian children in Gaza.” She called on members to resign from the Academy unless the organization committed to lobbying against “the active killing of children in Gaza and now beyond in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.” 

In the global health email list, Dr. Nusheen Ameenuddin, a pediatrician at the Mayo Clinic, called the AAP “irredeemable” after it issued the antisemitism statement. She previously served as chair of the AAP’s national council on communications and media, and she sat on the board of the Academy’s Minnesota chapter. Ameenuddin, who did not respond to a request for comment, is the chair of the Mayo Clinic’s diversity and inclusion council. 

“They will not offer more than milquetoast bromides about caring for all kids but will freely use the word ‘terrorist’ in a press release to further dehumanize Palestinians,” Ameenuddin wrote. Days earlier, she announced to the group that she was resigning from the AAP. The only use of the word “terrorist” in the antisemitism statement was in reference to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel. A spokesperson for the Academy declined to comment for this article. 

Like Rathore, the pediatrician in Florida, Ameenuddin is an active social media user. Visitors to her public profile on Threads can see her commentary from the early days of the war, when she said Jews who were not calling for an end to the war just weeks after Oct. 7 “were probably never [her] friends to begin with.” After news outlets erroneously reported in October 2023 that Israel had killed hundreds of people in an attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza — and after updated reports indicated the death toll was much lower, and was a result of a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket — Ameenuddin still defended the falsehood because of “the times they [Israel] have lied about everything.” 

Off and on, throughout the war, these email listservs devolved into heated arguments about the war in Gaza. Some people referred to it as a “genocide.” Others, including Ameenuddin, shared the false claim that more than 186,000 people had been killed in Gaza, or issued calls to boycott Israel. Petitions calling on the AAP to do more for children in Gaza were shared frequently, even after the AAP’s leadership wrote to former USAID Administrator Samantha Power last March to raise concerns about Palestinian children. Moderators realized last summer that the situation had gotten out of hand; a senior AAP employee instituted a five-day pause on discussion of Gaza in the global health forum in June. It didn’t have a long-term impact. 

“Given the challenges that the Trump administration is presenting in terms of following science for the care of children and young adults, the need for the AAP to be a trusted advocate is vital. Weighing in on an issue that creates the appearance of antisemitism undermines the AAP’s credibility with this administration,” said Dr. Daniel Rauch, a pediatrician and professor at Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine in New Jersey. “That’s bad news for all children: Jewish, Christian, Muslim or anything else.”

Last month, the pediatricians advocating for a stronger stance from Academy leadership in support of Palestinians got what they wanted. The AAP’s new president, Dr. Sue Kressly, sent a public letter to then-Secretary of State Tony Blinken, imploring him to look into the whereabouts of a Palestinian doctor reportedly taken prisoner by Israeli forces in Gaza. Their letter failed to mention that the doctor is a member of Hamas, which several Jewish organizations including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Medical Association pointed out in a response several weeks later. (Kressly did not write back to them.)

Rauch, the pediatrician in New Jersey, called the timing of the letter to Blinken, which was sent just days before President Donald Trump took office, “curious.”

“Given the challenges that the Trump administration is presenting in terms of following science for the care of children and young adults, the need for the AAP to be a trusted advocate is vital. Weighing in on an issue that creates the appearance of antisemitism undermines the AAP’s credibility with this administration,” Rauch said. “That’s bad news for all children: Jewish, Christian, Muslim or anything else.”

A Jewish pediatrician at a major hospital in the South noted that the letter to Blinken also stood in stark contrast to issues on which the Academy has not weighed in, particularly the recent hostage releases, the lack of Red Cross involvement with the health of Israeli hostages or the fate of the Bibas children, who remain in Gaza. 

“That all is beyond disappointing,” said the doctor, an AAP member who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “It feels like Jews and Israel are being slowly written out of the narrative.” 

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There is no story of American medicine that does not include antisemitism. But until recently, most Jewish doctors talked about it in the past tense. 

“For decades and decades and decades, it hasn’t been that way. Now this is coming, and it’s very new and disturbing,” said Elizabeth Cullen, director of government relations at Hadassah, the women’s Zionist organization that also operates hospitals in Israel. 

For a good part of the 20th century, American medical schools used quotas to limit the number of Jewish students they admitted. In response, Jewish physicians set up their own hospitals to train the next generation of Jewish medical professionals. Eventually quotas were abandoned; Jewish physicians rose to the pinnacle of the field and took on leadership roles throughout the medical establishment. 

Some Jewish physicians are again hiding their Jewish identity, only now it’s in response to the new wave of anti-Israel sentiment that is increasingly in vogue among young doctors and students. Pediatrics residents at the University of California, San Francisco, one of the world’s top teaching hospitals, signed onto a statement last year endorsing a boycott of Israeli institutions. A city councilmember in Chicago posted on Facebook last year that she was looking for an “anti-Zionist pediatrician” for her child. 

The Jewish medical student in Georgia who plans to go into pediatrics told JI he is so worried about bias among the resident physicians who supervise him in his clinical rotations that he has chosen not to wear a kippah or a Magen David necklace, or to even bring up his Judaism. “I am worried about implicit bias, and I am worried about people writing things in my evaluations,” said the student, who also chooses not to speak publicly about time he has spent in Israel. Recently, his supervisor learned he was Jewish.

“Even though I’ve worked with him for two weeks and he’s seen me perform, he now knows that I’m Jewish. I don’t want him to write something because of that,” said the student. “I want him to write something because I have good suturing ability and I can do surgery on someone. That’s been really challenging, and really complicated.”