Belgian Doctor Lists ‘Jewish (Israeli)’ as Child’s Medical Problem as Antisemitism Crisis in Health Care Spreads

Algemeiner Staff

Illustrative: Demonstrators hold a giant Palestinian flag and anti-Israel signs during a protest against the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, in central Brussels, July 27, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Francois Lenoir

A Belgian doctor recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report, continuing a troubling wave of antisemitism in health-care spaces leaving Jewish patients feeling concerned in Western countries.

The Israeli publication Israel Hayom initially reported last week that after the young girl came for treatment at a hospital in the town of Knokke in Belgium, a doctor of Middle Eastern origin with Arabic-language content against Israel on his Facebook page wrote “Jewish (Israeli)” in his detailed report under the section where her medical problems were to be listed. The newspaper noted that JID (the Jewish Information and Documentation Center), a Belgian nonprofit that combats antisemitism, investigated the incident and would be filing a formal complaint with law enforcement authorities and the medical establishment in the country.

A censored version of the letter then circulated on social media over the weekend, revealing that a radiologist, Dr. Qasim Arkawazy of AZ Zeno Campus Hospital in Knokke-Heist, filled out the medical report.

In the “Current Problem” section, Arkawazy wrote of the patient: “Pain in the left forearm, fell from the climbing structure to the ground; a man fell on top of her.”

The doctor then noted in the nine-year-old girl’s report that she had no allergies before adding “Jewish (Israeli)” for apparently no medical reason.

X/Twitter user SwordofSaolomon, who conducts open-source research into allegedly antisemitic individuals, found that Arkawazy has shared several antisemitic posts on Facebook. These posts include a cartoon of several babies decapitated by the point of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires about to eat a sleeping baby. The doctor is a native of Baghdad, Iraq and a Shi’ite Muslim, according to multiple reports.

“We are outraged by the report of a Belgian doctor who listed ‘Jewish (Israeli)’ as a medical problem in a child’s emergency file,” the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said in a post on X. “This is blatant antisemitism: dehumanizing, discriminatory, and utterly unacceptable.”

The group, which for decades has functioned as the representative umbrella organization of national Jewish communities in Europe, argued that such actions cause Jewish patients to fear being mistreated, even in medical settings.

“This is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. No parent should fear that their child’s care might be compromised because of their Jewish identity,” the EJC said. “We call on Belgian authorities to take immediate disciplinary action and make clear: antisemitism has no place in healthcare — or anywhere.”

Sam van Rooy, a lawmaker in Belgium’s parliament, expressed similar sentiments in a social media post.

“How can a Jewish person whose medical file is being handled by this doctor now feel at ease?” he wrote on social media.

The incident in Belgium comes amid a surge in medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.

Last month, for example, two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace. A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, posted on social media the video of dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.

Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work last month after praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.

Other troubling incidents have drawn attention in the UK. The University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) recently issued an apology following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.

In a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.

Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.

In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.

Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”

The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.

“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”

Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.

The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.

A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.

This issue has been especially pervasive at institutions of higher education. In May, a separate study by the StandWithUs Data & Analytics Department contained survey data showing that 62.8 percent of Jewish health-care professionals employed by campus-based medical centers reported experiencing antisemitism, a far higher rate than those working in private practice and community hospitals.

Last week, US lawmakers announced an investigation into antisemitic discrimination at three institutions: the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.

Dawid D’Or tuż po oblaniu go czerwoną farbą (fot. FB artysty)

Atak na izraelskiego artystę podczas finału Warszawy Singera

Jakub Chełmiński

Światowej sławy śpiewak David D’Or został oblany czerwoną farbą podczas finałowego koncertu Festiwalu Warszawa Singera z Operze Narodowej. Aktywistki rozłożyły przed publicznością flagę Palestyny.

Do ataku doszło podczas finałowego koncertu Festiwalu Kultury Żydowskiej “Warszawa Singera” w niedzielę wieczorem. David D’Or występował z akompaniamentem Orkiestry Sinfonia Viva. W pewnym momencie do sceny podbiegły dwie młode kobiety. Zaczęły obficie chlapać na artystę czerwoną farbą.

Sam D’Or opisał to w mediach społecznościowych w ten sposób: “W przedstawieniu w Operze w Warszawie, w trakcie modlitwy naszego ojca naszego króla, kiedy modlę się o dobry rok i o pokój na świecie, zamknąłem oczy, gdy nagle poczułem zimny plusk na twarzy, otworzyłem oczy, aby zobaczyć mocny czerwony kolor, podobny do krwi. Na ubraniu na twarzy i na scenie i na muzykach. Lista odtwarzania była jak poplamiona krwią.”

Aktywistki zostały szybko obezwładnione przez ochronę. Jedna z kobiet zdążyła jeszcze na chwilę rozwinąć sporą flagę Palestyny. 

Publiczność wsparła izraelskiego artystę

Policjanci przejęli aktywistki od ochroniarzy już przed Teatrem Wielki. Jak powiedział asp Jakub Pacyniak w rozmowie z TVN Warszawa, to 22-latka i 28-latka z Warszawy, legalnie weszły na koncert, miały bilety. Zgłoszenie wpłynęło od organizatora festiwalu, sprawę będzie prowadzić prokuratura.

Jak wynika z relacji słuchaczy koncertu, publiczność okazała artystom duże wsparcie. Po chwili koncert był kontynuowany. Z nagrań z finałowego wręczenia kwiatów widać, że artysta cały czas miał czerwone dłonie. 

– Artysta zachował zimną krew i musiał uspokajać wzburzoną widownię. Szczęśliwie nikt nie poniósł uszczerbku na zdrowiu. Nawet najlepsze środki zaradcze ze strony policji nie mogą wyeliminować tego typu incydentów – napisał w serwisie społecznościowym Przemysław Wiśniewski ze Stowarzyszenia Otwarta Rzeczpospolita, który był słuchaczem koncertu. 

Do sytuacji odnieśli się też w poniedziałek po południu organizatorzy festiwalu: “Atak, na Dawida D’Ora do którego doszło, podczas koncertu finałowego Festiwalu Kultury Żydowskiej Warszawa Singera był dla nas wszystkich trudnym i bolesnym momentem. Tym bardziej, że doszło do niego, gdy artysta wykonywał poruszającą modlitwę Avinu Malkeinu w intencji pokoju na świecie. Sztuka i muzyka powinny łączyć ludzi, dawać przestrzeń do emocji i spotkania – a nie stawać się areną agresji. Forma, jaką wybrały te osoby, była krzywdząca – zarówno dla artysty, jak i dla publiczności.”

Kiedy muzułmanie zabijają muzułmanów, oburzenie jest opcjonalne; kiedy robią to inni — staje się operą.

Ciche ludobójstwa

Paul Finlayson

Spójrzmy bez mrugnięcia okiem w dwie równoczesne otchłanie, które świat woli ignorować: Jemen i Sudan. To nie są drobne zapalne punkty w zapomnianych krainach, lecz rozległe rzeźnie, w których muzułmańskie frakcje mordują innych muzułmanów z zapałem, który zawstydziłby samego Czyngis-chana.

Teologia przywoływana jest na każdym punkcie kontrolnym, przy każdym nalocie, przy każdej masowej mogile; każda ze stron stylizuje się na prawowitego sługę Boga. A jednak, mimo całej tej sakralnej retoryki, te wojny są napędzane plemiennymi waśniami, ekonomiczną chciwością i machinacjami państw trzecich, a pobożność służy jedynie jako listek figowy dla rzezi.

The Madonna of Gaza

Melanie Phillips

“Madonna and Child,” oil painting by Giovanni Bellini, between 1485 and 1490. Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art via Wikimedia Commons.

The superstar Madonna has urged Pope Leo XIV to visit the Gaza Strip and “bring his light” to the children there “before it is too late.”

The singer pleaded on Instagram: “We need the humanitarian gates to be fully opened to save these innocent children. As a mother, I cannot bear to watch their suffering.”

Relations between Catholics and Jews are always fragile and often fraught.

After the history of the church’s murderous persecution of Jews in medieval Europe and the refusal by Pope Pius XII to denounce the Nazis, the church tried to repair relations through its penitential Nostra Aetate declaration in 1965.

Things went backward under Pope Francis, who died in April and was profoundly hostile to Israel. Although it was hoped that his successor, Leo XIV, would be an improvement, he has sadly adopted the Western narrative of Israel demonization.

Pope Leo has condemned the “ongoing military attacks against the civilian population and places of worship in Gaza”; expressed concern about “the many dying of hunger”; and urged the world to stop Israel’s “collective punishment, the indiscriminate use of force and the forced displacement of populations.”

But the pope is repeating lies. No one in Gaza is dying of starvation; the Israel Defense Forces go to greater lengths to protect civilians on the battlefield than any other military force in the world; and there are no deliberate attacks on places of worship.

The tragic killing in July of three people at Gaza’s only Catholic church occurred after it was accidentally hit by an errant Israeli tank shell in an attack on a neighboring terrorist target.

In the same month, church leaders claimed that “settlers” had committed an arson attack against an ancient church in the Christian village of Taybeh in Judea and Samaria, the disputed “West Bank.” Vatican News claimed that “the fire nearly completely destroyed one of Palestine’s oldest religious buildings, the ruins of the fifth-century Byzantine church of St. George al-Khader.”

A subsequent investigation, however, found that this was totally false. There had been a blaze on nearby land that hadn’t even touched the church.

The current onslaught of lies about Israel demands moral clarity in response. By repeating these blood libels against Israel, the Catholic Church has instead joined those who have torn up truth, conscience and moral decency.

The theological overtones in the Church’s position, reflecting its profound and unceasing difficulty with accepting the continuing existence of the Jewish people and their redemption in the State of Israel, are unmistakable.

In Britain, Cardinal Vincent Nichols, archbishop of Westminster and president of the Bishops’ Conference, has condemned Israel’s plan to take control of Gaza City. “Already too much innocent blood has been shed; too many lives destroyed; too much hunger and starvation,” he said. “This war must be ended not increased.”

Worse was the context in which his remarks were framed. He made them celebrate the feast day of someone he referred to as “Our Lady of Gaza, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.”

In fact, the original name of this Catholic nun was Edith Stein. Born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Germany in 1891, she became a Catholic 30 years later and was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942.

In 1933, identifying herself as both “a child of the Jewish people” and also “ a child of the Catholic Church,” she implored Pope Pius XI to intervene with Hitler on behalf of the Jews. In 1998, Pope John Paul II named her a patron saint of Europe.

Stein’s canonization was deeply troubling. When he beatified her in 1987, John Paul said the church was honoring “a daughter of Israel who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people in loving faithfulness.”

The fact that Stein remained attached to her Jewish roots was irrelevant. She was murdered because she was a Jew. By beatifying her, the Vatican turned her into a Christian martyr.

According to Philip Cunningham, director of the Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations, Stein’s canonization reflected John Paul’s sincere belief that Jews killed by the Nazis should be honored and revered in the Catholic Church.

“The highest recognition the Catholic Church can give someone with heroic virtues is to canonize them, declare them to be with God, to be saints,” Cunningham said. Finding a candidate for sainthood who was “Jewish, or was of Jewish ethnicity, built a connection to all the victims of the Nazis,” he said.

That sounds pretty, but it doesn’t work at all. Beatifying a woman who was murdered because she was a Jew is an attempt to Christianize the Shoah. It’s a grotesque affront to the Jewish victims of the Shoah and the Jewish people in general. It’s an attempt to erase the Jewish element in Jewish suffering.

And that chimes with a key reason for the West’s obscene turn against the Jewish victims of today’s attempted genocide by the forces of Islam.

This is why the West also can’t tolerate the idea of Jewish suffering. It’s determined to erase all acknowledgement of that suffering, because if it turns the Jews from victims into Nazis, it can finally slough off the collective cultural guilt it feels for the Holocaust.

What church leaders are saying about Gaza has enormous influence, even in post-religious circles. Their message that Israel is a cruel force oppressing the wretched of the earth plays directly into the West’s Christian conscience, even among people who are not believers.

This is wrapped up further with the church’s ineradicable ambivalence toward Jews, which reflects Western society’s own deep-seated antisemitism.

The Islamists, who understand the West better than it understands itself, have grasped the centrality of Christianity to the West, as well as its profound Jew-hatred, and realize that they can manipulate this to their advantage.

That’s why the now-notorious picture of the skeletal Gazan child, prominently displayed in The New York Times and countless other media outlets around the world as allegedly dying of starvation, packed the punch it did. It wasn’t merely that it was a dreadfully distressing picture of a dying child. It was that it was posed to call irresistibly to mind the original Madonna, the mother of Jesus, cradling him in her arms.

This image has been repeated countless times in paintings and sculptures. It is burned into the Western consciousness not only as an iconic image of Christianity but one that identifies that faith with love and compassion for the vulnerable and innocent, represented by the baby in his veiled mother’s arms.

The carefully staged photograph of the veiled Gaza mother holding the skeletal child was thus a diabolical masterpiece of manipulation and deceit.

Not only was the child emaciated, but suffering from cerebral palsy, not from starvation. By inciting horror and revulsion at the Israelis for apparently provoking the suffering of a Gazan Madonna and child, the picture also replaced Jews with Muslim Arabs in the iconography of Christianity.

It thus manipulated some of the deepest feelings in the emotional range of the Western world to embrace an evil lie.

The propaganda war is all about playing on emotion. That’s why these mendacious claims are impervious to facts and evidence.

Christians are among the staunchest supporters of Israel, particularly in America. But many, especially in the progressive Protestant churches, are its enemy.

Even the support of American Christians is eroding, particularly among the young, under an onslaught of secularization and the unprecedented global propaganda war that’s manipulating the Western public into believing that evil is good and goodness is evil.

Their minds have been twisted into believing the big lie that the Israelis, who are defending themselves against an Islamic holy war of extermination, are themselves guilty of the very things of which they are, in fact, the victims.

It is a godless lie. And the Vatican’s support for it is a moral stain spreading backwards into its terrible history with the Jews.

Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for The Times of London, her new book, The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West and Why Only They Can Save It, is published by Wicked Son and can be purchased on Amazon. To access her work, go to: melaniephillips.substack.com.

US Bars Palestinian Leader Abbas from UN as Allies Back Statehood

Reuters and Algemeiner Staff

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas looks on as he visits the Istishari Cancer Center in Ramallah, in the West Bank, May 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohammed Torokman

The United States said on Friday it would not allow Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to travel to New York next month for a United Nations gathering of world leaders, where several US allies are set to recognize Palestine as a state.

A State Department official said Abbas and about 80 other Palestinians would be affected by the decision to deny and revoke visas from members of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.

Abbas had planned to attend the annual high-level U.N. General Assembly in Manhattan. He was also set to attend a summit there, where Britain, France, Australia and Canada have pledged to formally recognize a Palestinian state.

Abbas’ office said it was astonished by the visa decision and said it violated the U.N. “headquarters agreement.”

Under a 1947 U.N. “headquarters agreement”, the US is generally required to allow access for foreign diplomats to the U.N. in New York. However, Washington has said it can deny visas for security, extremism and foreign policy reasons.

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesperson for Abbas, called on Saturday for Washington to reconsider its decision.

“We call on the US administration to reverse this decision, which contradicts international law, specifically the Headquarters Agreement between the United Nations and the United States, which prohibits preventing any delegation from access,” he told Reuters.

Several European foreign ministers arriving at a European Union meeting in Copenhagen on Saturday criticized the US decision.

A UN General Assembly “cannot be subject to any restrictions on access,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told reporters. Irish Foreign Minister Simon Harris said the EU should protest the decision “in the strongest possible terms.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a statement on Saturday that he had spoken with Abbas to express Madrid’s support and he called the visa decision “unjust.”

“Palestine has the right to make its voice heard at the United Nations and in all international forums,” he said on X.

The State Department justified its decision by reiterating longstanding US and Israeli allegations that the PA and PLO had failed to repudiate extremism while pushing for “unilateral recognition” of a Palestinian state.

Palestinian officials reject such allegations and say decades of US-mediated talks have failed to end Israeli occupation and secure an independent state of Palestine.

“(It) is in our national security interests to hold the PLO and PA accountable for not complying with their commitments, and for undermining the prospects for peace,” the department said.

The State Department said the Palestinian Authority’s mission to the U.N., comprising officials who are permanently based there, would not be included in the restrictions.

RECOGNITION

U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said the U.N. would discuss the visa issue with the State Department.

In 1988, the US refused to issue a visa to PLO leader Yasser Arafat. The U.N. General Assembly held a meeting that year in Geneva instead of New York so he could address it.

The State Department said it demands that the PA and PLO “consistently repudiate terrorism,” including the deadly October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.

In June, Abbas wrote a letter to France’s president in which he condemned the Hamas attack and called on hostages taken by the militant group to be released.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar welcomed the State Department’s decision.

Israel and the US are upset with several Western allies who have pledged to recognize a Palestinian state at the U.N. next month.

At least 147 of the 193 U.N. member states already recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinians have observer status at the U.N., the same as the Holy See (Vatican).