A federal judge is weighing whether a lawsuit, in which a Jewish Emory University professor alleges that he was falsely accused of abetting genocide for serving in the Israeli military, can proceed.
Dr. Joshua Winer, a surgical oncologist at Emory University School of Medicine, accuses defendants, including the medical student Umaymah Mohammad, Doctors Against Genocide Society and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, of defaming him and conspiring against him after he took leave after Oct. 7 to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, treating wounded soldiers.
The complaint accuses the defendants of saying that Winer aided and abetted genocide and war crimes, declaring him unfit to practice medicine or teach students and seeking to have Emory strip him of his faculty appointment and clinical privileges.
Attorneys for the defendants have moved for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta to dismiss the case.
The court will now decide if the case will proceed to discovery or whether the claims are dismissed, according to Lauren Israelovitch, senior litigation counsel at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, which represents Winer.
“We expect a decision in the coming months,” she told JNS. “The case is now at an inflection point.”
“At its core, this case concerns a coordinated effort to destroy Dr. Winer’s career through false accusations of the most serious kind, made because of his Zionism and his service in the IDF,” she told JNS. “We’re confident that his claims will withstand scrutiny and move forward so that he has a fair opportunity to present his case before a jury.”
On Monday, Doctors Against Genocide Society filed a Rule 11 motion, which Israelovitch said is a sanctions motion that argues “that the claims lack a sufficient basis and were brought for an improper purpose.”
“Rule 11 sanctions are an extraordinary remedy and are applied sparingly with caution,” she told JNS. “Courts impose them only in rare circumstances, and we are confident this motion will be denied.”
In the motion, Doctors Against Genocide argues that Winer’s case against the group relied on two Instagram posts made in response to the suspension of Mohammad, a medical student and defendant in the case.
Mohammad was allegedly suspended for saying in an interview with Democracy Now on April 26, 2024, that Winer “aided and abetted in a genocide, aided and abetted in the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza and in the murder of over 400 healthcare workers and is now back at Emory, so-called teaching medical students and residents how to take care of patients.”
She has filed her own suit against Emory.
