As Stanford faculty, staff, students, alumni, patients and allies who work in or care about the Stanford Medicine community, we take issue with the misleading and divisive Stanford Daily opinion piece entitled “Stanford Medicine community demands an end to Stanford’s complicity in genocide.” The letter is replete with falsehoods and purports to represent the views of the entire Stanford Medicine community. It does not.
Healthcare providers and researchers are trained and entrusted to make recommendations and decisions based on evidence. As such, we are compelled to ask the signatories of the letter: Did you consider the accuracy of your narrative? Did you review the evidence? Did you listen to both sides carefully, or even at all? You call for the boycott of a sovereign democratic nation fighting to defend itself from a terror organization whose sole mission is to annihilate it. It is incumbent on each of you to be informed before making such serious and inflammatory accusations and demands that are not only misleading, but also extremely hurtful and divisive to our Stanford community, and endanger patient care.
The letter is grounded in the modern blood libels of “Genocide in Gaza” and “Apartheid in Israel.” The authors rely on non-evidence-based opinion pieces and misinformation as “evidence,” which is disappointing and reckless coming from physicians, researchers and medical students. Further, the authors completely ignore and disregard Hamas’s primary responsibility for the war and for the casualties and destruction in Gaza.
Accusing Israel of genocide fails to meet definitional and legal standards. It was the assessment of the Biden administration that the war in Gaza is not a genocide. Joan Donoghue, former president of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) made clear that the ICJ did not decide the claim of genocide was plausible, and Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, said that Israel’s war with Hamas is not a genocide. Military experts including General Sir John McColl and officer John Spencer have evaluated Israel’s war in Gaza and determined that the civilian to militant casualty ratio is historically low for modern urban warfare.
Likewise, Spencer has concluded that Israel is going above and beyond to prevent civilian casualties. A report submitted to the International Criminal Court by the High Level Military Group, an independent body of former chiefs of staff, senior military officers and cabinet ministers with decades of expertise in conflict and the legality thereof, described why claims against Israel of intentional starvation and unlawful killing in Gaza are false. An International Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report has stated that “the available evidence does not indicate that famine is currently occurring” debunking claims that Israel is causing “starvation” in Gaza. Israel has distributed hundreds of thousands of flyers and made countless phone calls to warn civilians of military operations at the expense of military effectiveness while risking its own soldiers’ lives. According to Humanitarian Efforts Israel, Israel facilitated the vaccination of over 1 million Gazan children for polio. These actions are entirely inconsistent with “genocide.”
The letter notably ignores the fact that Israel’s current military operations were taken in response to the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, 2023, in which Hamas committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity including torture, murder and disfigurement of hundreds of innocent civilians. It also ignores the ongoing imprisonment and execution of hostages.This massacre occurred 20 years after a voluntary withdrawal of all Israeli citizens, including graveyards, from Gaza. During this time, Hamas was the elected government of Gaza and used donated funds to build terror infrastructure, including tunnels and rockets under civilian infrastructure. Hamas leaders have repeatedly promoted rhetoric and policies aimed at annihilating Israel and killing Jews around the world. The letter’s signatories lament the impact on hospitals while ignoring the fact that Hamas systematically uses hospitals to store rockets and hide amongst the civilian population, and that, according to international law, hospitals lose their protected status when used for military operations. The letter fails to issue any consideration to the fact that Hamas started this war and fights from among and under civilian populations, typically disguised in civilian clothing in an attempt to increase civilian casualties. In fact, Yahya Sinwar stated that increasing Palestinian civilian deaths is beneficial to their cause.
Similarly, the claim that Israel is engaged in a form of “apartheid” is false. Even activists who promote this claim against Israel admit that it is slanderous. Apartheid is defined as segregation based on race. Yet in Israel, Arabs, Druze and Christians enjoy full citizenship and human rights not available in any other country in the Middle East. In the West Bank, under the Oslo Accords, jurisdiction over Palestinians and Israelis is divided between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. There too institutionalized racism does not exist. Checkpoints and other security measures are necessary to prevent terrorists from infiltrating into Israel and killing innocents in buses, cafés and restaurants or using vehicles to ram civilians.
Indeed, prominent South Africans who have had first-hand experience of apartheid reject the claim that Israel is an apartheid state. The former president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, who negotiated with Nelson Mandela to end the apartheid regime, said that it was “unfair” to refer to Israel as an apartheid state. One of Israel’s most famous critics, retired South African judge Richard Goldstone, wrote that accusing Israel of apartheid “is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.”
The authors also promote the demonstrably false claim of “medical apartheid” in Israel. Every Israeli citizen, no matter their race or religion, has access to the same medical care.
Palestinians living in the West Bank have their own medical system, which they govern. Before Oct. 7, there was ample collaboration between the two.
The letter calls on Stanford to join the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement (BDS). We would like to remind the signatories that there is ample evidence linking BDS to terror organizations, and proponents of BDS say their goal is to eliminate the state of Israel. BDS opposes the existence of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state and rejects diplomatic efforts aimed at a two state solution between Israelis and Palestinians. Their activists consistently and violently target Israelis and Jews living abroad for no reason other than their nationality, much like the Nazis once did to Jews. BDS also supports the Oct. 7 massacre, while Israel was beating back Hamas infiltrators from their invasion into Israel, BDS was calling for solidarity with Hamas. Demanding that Stanford align with the BDS movement would embroil the University in a violation of California law, by implementing a policy against a sovereign nation that is recognized by the government of the United States.
The accusations and goals of the letter cannot be separated from the Islamic Republic of Iran-funded student protests and propaganda over the past year — protests that call for violence against Jews (“Long Live the Intifada”) and we consider the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Israel from their ancestral homeland in the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” These are hate-filled protests that do not seek a peaceful solution to the conflict. Rather, like BDS, they seek the annihilation of the only Jewish state. It is extremely offensive to all — particularly Israelis, Jews and those dedicated to a peaceful future in the Middle East — to read this letter and learn that healthcare professionals at Stanford support the same propaganda and demands as these groups.
We do not expect physicians to be knowledgeable in international affairs and legal issues, but we do expect them to be responsible, and not spread biased and false narratives about topics they are unfamiliar with. The demands of the letter are based on libelous and unfounded accusations which reflect poorly on Stanford Health Care, the School of Medicine, our campus and our community. It is irresponsible for physicians and other healthcare professionals to publicly demand that Stanford Medicine succumb to their political and biased stance.
Patients who support Israel, or who simply support a peaceful resolution to this conflict, may be inclined to check whether their doctor has signed this biased letter, and to avoid them for fear of unprofessional treatment — or opt to avoid Stanford Medicine for their medical care altogether. Political indoctrination has no place in healthcare, and undermines the very values of inclusivity and compassion that define our community. We must ensure that Stanford Medicine remains a place of healing, not a breeding ground for intolerance and hate.
Joshua J. Blinder M.D. is a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. This article was co-signed by members of the Stanford Medicine community who reject hate and anti-Israel bias, including 511 Stanford faculty, staff, students, alumni, patients and 3,641 allies.