The House Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions Subcommittee heard testimony on Wednesday about discrimination against Jews the medical profession on Wednesday, with witnesses and lawmakers decrying discriminatory unions and biased doctors.
Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.), chair of the subcommittee, said at the hearing that the “alarming rise” Jew-hatred in U.S. workplaces “has only worsened” since the legislators last met to hear testimony on the issue nine months ago.
“Across the nation and around the world, Jewish people continue to face discrimination, intimidation and violence,” the congressman said.
Allen said that the hearing, titled “Bad Medicine: Politics, Unions, and Antisemitism in Health Care,” would “examine how healthcare unions are using their resources to advance an anti-Israel political agenda while harassing and discriminating against Jewish doctors, nurses and other health care workers.”
“Instead of fulfilling their duty to fairly represent all employees, these unions have chosen to engage in divisive, discriminatory and antisemitic conduct,” he said.
One of the witnesses, Dr. Jacob Agronin, a cardiology fellow at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, described how the union that represents him, the Committee of Interns and Residents, a Service Employees International Union affiliate, has forced its members to pay for its anti-Israel advocacy.
“I’m here because my union formally discriminates against physicians based on national origin, openly supports terrorist sympathizers and has made its obsession with a single geopolitical conflict a defining feature of its identity,” Agronin said. “I will soon be compelled by federal law to fund it.”
“The Committee of Interns and Residents has formally recommended that hospitals exclude my Israeli colleagues from employment, and then compels dues from those same colleagues to fund that position,” he said. “If any employer in this country adopted that policy, we would call it what it is: discrimination.”
After the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks, the Committee of Interns and Residents, which represents 37,000 resident and fellow physicians across the country, “adopted a series of resolutions condemning Israel for genocide,” Allen noted at the start of the hearing.
“One resolution endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and called on CIR members to encourage teaching hospitals to cut all ties with Israel—including financial investments, pension funds, retirement accounts, academic partnerships and intellectual property relationships,” he said.
Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the subcommittee, accused Republicans of “weaponizing” the issue of antisemitism and ignoring other forms of bigotry in the hearings that they have held on Jew-hatred since Oct. 7.
DeSaulnier said that Republicans ought to denounce U.S. President Donald Trump and should hold hearings on racism, xenophobia, sexism and Islamophobia if they were “serious” about battling discrimination.
“After nearly a dozen hearings, it is abundantly clear that committee Republicans have no interest in addressing the issue in good faith or discussing an effective response,” he said.
The Democratic witness, Jamie Beran, CEO of Bend the Arc, a progressive Jewish advocacy group, likewise accused Republicans and the Trump administration of “using Jewish safety as a pretext for policies that endanger our neighbors and our democracy” and rejected efforts to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism in law.
“Use antisemitism definitions as educational tools and not divisive speech codes that can be used as pretext to curtail First Amendment protected speech,” she said.
Allen, the subcommittee chairman, said in his opening remarks that he expected frustration from Democrats about the frequent hearings on Jew-hatred.
“I’m frustrated, too,” he added. “But until Jewish workers can expect dignity and safety in their workplaces—and until unions return to their core mission of representing all workers—we cannot afford to stop talking about it.”
In response to a question from Rep. Burgess Owens (R-Utah), Deena Margolies, litigation staff attorney at Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, said that contemporary Jew-hatred and criticism of Israel come together.
“When you demonize Israel,” she testified, “or you hold it to a standard that you hold no other country to and you collectively blame Jewish people for the actions of Israel and you alienate and marginalize,” then “that is contemporary manifestation of antisemitism.”
Agronin, the cardiology fellow, said in response to Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that Jew-hatred in healthcare can spread.
“I do worry it extends to patients. It totally impacts patient care,” he said. “Should patients’ family members have to worry about speaking Hebrew” for “fear of how they may be treated differently by some of their doctors?”
