Commentary
White Coats for Black Lives breaks their silence to demand apologies for terrorist sympathizers
Share:

On October 7th, Hamas butchered more than 1,200 men, women, and children in southern Israel. Within days, the medical student association “White Coats for Black Lives” (WC4BL) accused Israel of committing “genocide.” The Minnesota chapter clarified that Palestinians should “free themselves from their oppressors by any means necessary.”
Neither the national organization nor Minnesota chapter faced any professional sanction. Ostensibly emboldened by the lack of consequences for espousing blood libel and calls to genocide, the national organization released a new statement on November 8th complaining that some medical professionals who voiced similarly despicable ideas did in fact suffer consequences.
An increasing number of American medical institutions have moved beyond their complicity with the U.S.-funded genocide of Palestinians, either through their silence or Zionist statements, to personally target Palestinian and Palestinian-American healthcare providers advocating for the freedom of their own people, and their allies. This is a violation of the human right to resist the mass murder and dispossession of one’s own people, and allies’ rights to stand in solidarity. In addition, medical institutions’ participation in Zionist doxing further fuels Islamophobia and endorses anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab discrimination. For the reasons described above, we demand:
- All American medical institutions immediately reinstate all healthcare providers who have been fired or placed on leave for demanding a ceasefire, the end of the siege on occupied Gaza, and the end of Israeli occupation, or have affirmed Palestinians’ right to resist in the face of 75 years of relentless oppression.
- Involved institutions issue public apologies to impacted healthcare providers.
- All disciplinary actions are removed from the records of impacted providers.
- Offending institutions offer any needed letters explaining disruptions in training or work which explicitly state that the disruption was the result of the inappropriate actions of the institution.
- Institutions retract all statements denouncing healthcare providers in solidarity with Palestine and any associated punishments.
- Institutions immediately end efforts to intimidate pro-Palestine medical workers into silence (e.g. through disciplinary or professionalism meetings, threatening emails, encouraging a culture of reporting those in solidarity with Palestine, etc.).
The letter goes on to name four individuals that WC4BL believes worthy of reinstatement and deserving of public apology from their employers. Just who are these martyrs?
Tania Singh claims to have been fired from a nursing job for—as she frames it in a gofundme page—taking a stance “that’s way too unacceptable for a settler colonial nation.” She offers more detail in an interview with The Masses, the self-described “official press organ of the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition.”
Singh: I wrote something like “it will be a cold day in hell when the colonizers get to lecture the colonized on how to resist”…I was terminated on the following Friday for antisemitism, support of terrorism, and harassment.
Interviewer: It’s telling that as soon as support for Hamas comes up that’s a red line.
Singh: Exactly! And if it wasn’t Hamas it would be someone else.
Singh was given a platform to share her story and used the opportunity to lean into the microphone and repeat her support for terrorism. WC4BL apparently nonetheless believes that Singh is owed an apology and not owing of one.
Dana Diab was an emergency room physician at Lenox Hill Hospital who shared a video of the massacre that occurred at a musical festival near the Gaza border with a caption that read “Zionists colonists get a taste of their own medicine.” She was fired, but she would still be practicing medicine if WC4BL had their druthers.
Zaki Massoud took to Instagram after the October 7th massacre to appeal to “stop walking on eggshells, afraid of what people will think. Let them call it terrorism. Extremism. Barbarianism. We call it liberation. Decolonization. Resistance. Revolution.” NYU Langone Winthrop Hospital thankfully disagrees with WC4BL and called the statement grounds for termination.
Abeer AbouYabis, a physician at Emory Winthrop Cancer Center, was investigated and ultimately fired for several pro-Hamas statements, including “They got walls we got gliders glory to all resistance fighters.” What precisely her employer needed to investigate is unclear, but none of it matters as far as WC4BL is concerned.
As Sally Satel chronicles in a recent Commentary piece, WC4BL has been signal boosted by the Association of American Medical Colleges and recognized as a resource for “antiracism” efforts. While WC4BL might be a good resource for defending terror apologia issued through the press organ of the Revolutionary Maoist Coalition, medical institutions interested in fighting rather than elevating bigotry should seek guidance elsewhere.