A House Education & Workforce subcommittee is set to hear testimony on Wednesday on the rising problem of antisemitism in the healthcare space, with a particular focus on the role of healthcare workers’ unions in fueling animus in the field.

Deena Margolies, an attorney at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, who is set to testify before the subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions, said that Brandeis has seen a significant increase in complaints of antisemitism in healthcare spaces from doctors, medical students, residents, interns, nurses and other staff, as well as in medical school classrooms and psychology and social work spaces.

“When patients are at their most vulnerable, when they’re in an exam room or a hospital bed or an operating room, they need to trust that every member of their team is focused on their well-being,” Margolies said. “If there is shunning or marginalization or harassment towards Jewish or Israeli doctors, it’s going to impact the healthcare and the well-being of the patient, right? It’s going to affect coordination and trust and patient care and safety.”

Other witnesses scheduled to testify include Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at Temple University Hospital; Eveline Shekman, the CEO of the American Jewish Medical Association; and Jamie Beran, the CEO of the progressive Jewish group Bend the Arc.

Margolies said that she has been representing Jewish and Israeli healthcare professionals and employees facing antisemitic discrimination, as well as some non-Jewish individuals who have experienced similar discrimination because they’re perceived as Jewish or are friendly with Jews.

Noting the hearing’s focus on unions, Margolies said she does not intend to question whether healthcare workers are allowed to hold or express political views.

“It’s when the healthcare unions use their authority and resources to promote antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaigns that are outside their mission,” she said. “It’s when they are demonizing or promoting antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaigns that marginalize and ostracize and alienate and discriminate against Jewish and Israeli healthcare workers.”

She said she’s spoken to numerous members of two major healthcare unions who have felt that they have had to hide their Jewish or Israeli identity to avoid hostility from fellow union members. 

The job of unions is to collectively bargain for and represent healthcare workers, not to “help create the hostility that [these employees] are now enduring at work,” she continued. “There should be no place in such unions for [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions] measures and demonization of Jewish and Israeli colleagues.”

Margolies said that Congress should conduct oversight of healthcare labor unions advancing antisemitic and anti-Zionist campaigns unrelated to their core purposes, and to probe whether unions engaged in such activity can properly represent Jewish and Israeli members.

She said that lawmakers should also press federal agencies to clarify that antisemitic harassment in healthcare workplaces is illegal, regardless of its source.

At previous hearings covering unions’ roles in pushing antisemitic and anti-Israel campaigns, some Democrats have accused Republicans of attempting to use the issue to undermine union organizing and collective bargaining rights generally.

“That couldn’t be further from the truth. The issue for me is not whether healthcare workers can hold political views, and I’m not looking for the union not to be able to collectively bargain,” Margolies said. “The problem really is when they use their authority and resources to promote antisemitic, anti-Zionist, anti-Israel campaigns that are outside their labor mission. … This is not an anti-labor union thing at all.”