Alec Schemmel of the Washington Free Beacon documents a disturbing development at one of the nation’s most prominent schools.
At Georgetown University Medical School, a flurry of social media posts from future medical professionals justifying Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre is raising a troubling question: Can doctors support terrorism?
An array of Georgetown Med students since the attack have taken to Instagram to praise the “Palestinian resistance” and argue that violence against innocent civilians is “inevitable” given Israel’s “apartheid” and “settler colonialism,” screenshots obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. One student, Nicole Olakkengil, even urged her classmates who refuse to “stand … with the resistance” to “maybe try entering a different field,” as “medicine is inherently political.” In some cases, those students are already working in Washington, D.C.-area hospitals.
The students’ willingness to justify, defend, and even praise the worst attack against Jews since the Holocaust raises questions as to how those students will treat Jewish patients when they become doctors—and whether doctors can support terrorism while staying within the bounds of medical ethics.
Georgetown Med itself compels students to recite the Hippocratic Oath at its annual white coat ceremony. That oath calls on doctors to remember that they “remain a member of society, with special obligations to all fellow human beings.” At the school’s 2023 ceremony, held in August, Professor Stephen Ray Mitchell also urged students to practice medicine in a way that is “more inclusive for our patients.”
“These students have disqualified themselves from a career in medicine. No Jewish patient can have confidence that they will treat them consistent with the Hippocratic Oath,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, former University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine associate dean and father of Free Beacon chairman Michael Goldfarb. “There was a long and unfortunate history of physicians in the Nazi regime acting in the most vile and barbarous manner to support that hateful ideology. These students are mimicking that vileness.”
