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Australian health professional faces discipline on bogus antisemitism charges

The Health Workers Rank-and-File Committee (HWRFC) in Australia has been informed that another medical professional has been doxxed by pro-Zionists thugs and reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA), following fraudulent allegations of antisemitism for having publicly opposed Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.

Health workers at Sydney mass protest against Gaza genocide, February 11, 2024.

The individual is one of scores of health workers, including doctors, nurses, psychologists, midwives, optometrists, paramedics, pharmacists and physiotherapists, who have been targeted by Zionists for participating in demonstrations or voicing their opposition to the Israeli war crimes on social media or other public forums.

Many of the so-called complaints of antisemitism to AHPRA, which regulates over 825,000 health practitioners through 15 professional boards and has wide-ranging powers, have been lodged anonymously. AHPRA’s investigative powers, however, are opaque and have been widely criticised by Australian medical professionals, including recent calls by the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association for a royal commission into the organisation.

These anti-democratic assaults on health workers are intensifying under conditions where the corporate media and Albanese Labor government, in collaboration with the Zionist lobby, are whipping up political hostility against all those opposing Israel’s military onslaught. In fact, as the WSWS reported in December last year, the Zionists have weaponised AHPRA’s complaint process by demanding that medical professionals opposing Israel’s military onslaught on Gaza be investigated and even deregistered.

While AHPRA has not provided precise numbers, it admitted two months ago that 39 individuals were being investigated, many of these in response to anonymous complaints. The HWRFC, however, has been informed that this figure is a gross underestimation.

On January 17, the HWRFC condemned the doxxing and use of AHPRA to target doctors and other health workers, and called on workers, students and youth to send messages of support. The comments published on the World Socialist Web Site over the past three months make clear that health workers will not be silenced by these ongoing Zionist threats.

The email published below is from the health worker who had read the HWRFC resolution and is now being “investigated” by AHPRA. The person is not named in order to protect them from any further harassment or threats. The email states:

“I fully support this campaign. I was recently reported to AHPRA after a discussion about the genocide in response to an article published on a medical practitioners’ social media page. I and others have faced similar attempts at being silenced on other closed medical sites even though discussions about other world issues, especially involving Ukraine, were supported.

“The attempt to equate Zionism with Judaism and to deem someone antisemitic if Zionism is identified as a well-documented political ideology is disingenuous. It is shameful that neither AHPRA nor the AMA, nor the government are highlighting this phenomenon of intimidation of our healthcare workers. This silencing is an affront to our self-proclaimed standing as a democratic nation.

“How can the very people entrusted to “do no harm” stay silent when more than 400 of our healthcare colleagues have been targeted, detained, abused and murdered, including an Australian?

“The indiscriminate bombing and sniping of thousands of innocent civilians, mainly women and children, and the systematic destruction of hospitals and vital social infrastructure is horrific. 

“How can anyone see this and stay silent, much less a healthcare worker? This political targeting and harassment for opposing the Gaza genocide is also happening as we speak to artists, writers, actors and students. 

“I remember years ago spending hours watching Holocaust documentaries and crying in disbelief that this could have ever happened. ‘Never again,’ the world proclaimed. I am now numb with disbelief that it is happening again. And that the world that once lectured so robustly on humanity and morals is not just allowing it but silencing those that would speak up against it. For shame.”

We urge health staff, students, and workers, in Australia and internationally, to oppose the reactionary attack on “freedom of speech” and other basic democratic rights by Zionist forces and demand that AHPRA reject all politically motivated and vexatious “complaints” against medical practitioners opposing the Gaza genocide.

We also call on health workers everywhere to support the HWRFC’s campaign by sending statements of support to these addresses:

Email: sephw.aus@gmail.com
Twitter: @HealthRandF_Aus
Facebook: facebook.com/groups/hwrfcaus

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