With the rise of global antisemitism across the media, academia, arts and culture, and international sports, perhaps the one place people would expect to be sterile from political and religious conflict would be healthcare.
Alan Skorski recently interviewed Dr. Jacob Agronin, a Fellow in Cardiology, who recently testified in Congress before the Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Education and Workforce about the strident antisemitism that he and fellow Jewish Doctors are facing from their union, CIR, Committee of Interns and Residents, which is part of the largest labor union in America, SEIU.
Dr. Agronin testified that CIR, which represents 37,000 physicians, openly supports figures associated with Hamas and Hezbollah, including Mahmood Khlail, the former Hamas-supporting Columbia student targeted for deportation by the Trump Administration.
In his testimony before Congress, Dr. Agronin outlined the non-healthcare issues that CIR adopted through resolutions which are directly in line with Hamas and their supporters:
The Apartheid and Genocide Determinations
The resolution formally declares, as a matter of CIR organizational doctrine, that Israel maintains 'an apartheid occupation against the Palestinian people' and that Israeli actions constitute genocide under the UN definition.
The BDS Endorsement and Its Specific Directives
The resolution formally endorses the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement and, directs CIR to pursue it through a specific set of actions.
The COPE Political Action Directive
The resolution directs CIR to decline endorsing any political candidate who supports legislation criminalizing the BDS movement.
The Explicit Rejection of the Antisemitism/Anti-Zionism Distinction
The resolution states that 'CIR rejects the conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.'
The Claim That Anti-Zionist Organizing Is Being Falsely Conflated with Antisemitism
The resolution asserts that 'elected officials and the media continue to exploit fears of rising antisemitism and continually conflate anti-Zionist/anti-war organizing with anti-Semitism.'

When asked what motivated him to testify before Congress and bring attention to the dangerous CIR Union, Dr. Agronin said, “I didn’t want any of this…but someone had to stand up and say something.”
The two issues that concern Dr. Agronin and other Jewish doctors is that they are being forced to pay dues to a union they didn’t ask to join, and that directly targets them and Israeli doctors, and second, that the resolutions adopted by CIR have nothing to do with medicine or saving lives, but about politicizing medicine and aligning with the same activists who took over college campuses following the Hamas October 7 massacre in Israel.