A website called Michael West Media has published a hit piece on the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA). More specifically, their planned class action lawsuit on behalf of health professionals who have faced vexatious complaints of an antisemitic/antizionist nature. But Michael West Media is dishonestly portraying it as an attack on those “who express concerns over Israel’s aggression against doctors and others in Gaza.”
Oh, and they have attacked yours truly.
Multiple pro-Israel platforms, including Israellycool, @Notmydoctor48, and @physiciansagainstantisemitism2, have published names, workplaces, photos, and social media posts of Australian doctors expressing concern about the destruction of hospitals and targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza. Members of the public are urged to ‘report’ these clinicians to AHPRA and make complaints to their employers.
General practitioner Dr Akil Islam became the subject of multiple articles on Israel-based website Israellycool after posting about Gaza on LinkedIn and speaking at community rallies.
“They set up this site so that at the click of a button, people could report me to AHPRA,” he told MW.
“People also contacted my workplace asking for me to be fired.”
The article was promoted on the Israellycool Instagram page with the caption “Please join me in reporting Dr Islam to the @ahpra_nationalboards”.
The eSafety Commissioner issued a notice to Israellycool, finding that the webpage constituted “cyberabuse material” and “the Material would appear to be designed to encourage those who follow and agree with the views of the person responsible to harass the complainant by contacting their workplace and the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency”.
Instead of removing the material, the website published a further three articles on Dr Islam. The website’s author then collaborated with Avi Yemini, a far-right Australian-Israeli commentator, to produce a YouTube video ridiculing the eSafety Commissioner’s notice.
After multiple complaints were made against Dr Islam, he received a call from AHPRA informing him that an investigation had been commenced. Dr Islam says he was not informed of the substance or source of the complaint.
“I wasn’t allowed to know who made the complaint, what the complaint contained, what material the complaint was based on, except for the fact that APHRA took issue with me saying, ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free,’ which is not in breach of anything.”
“When they did give me the formal complaint letter, the due date for response was prior to the date the letter was created – so it’s just a complete shambles.”
When Dr Islam contacted his medical indemnity insurer, they told him hundreds of similar complaints had been lodged nationwide, so many that, additional staff were hired to process them.
“When I contacted my medical indemnity insurance, they informed me that there were hundreds of complaints like this. They told me that they had to recruit more people because of these complaints, and basically nobody has had any findings made against them from these investigations,” he said.
Dr Islam was eventually cleared. He noted that the opaque and prolonged process had chilling effects.
“The AHPRA complaint eventually fizzled out, and they exonerated me. It was a baseless complaint, but it’s a method of intimidation to silence doctors who don’t want the impunity of Israel to continue.”
Allow me to address these accusations.
I have never “published names, workplaces, photos, and social media posts of Australian doctors expressing concern about the destruction of hospitals and targeting of healthcare workers in Gaza.” This is a grotesque lie. What I have done is expose those who disseminate antisemitism and/or support of terrorism – which is precisely what I did with Dr Akil Islam.
As a reminder, he has disseminated both:
This has nothing to do with him supporting Gazans and everything to do with Jews, Israelis, or anyone who detests terrorism and antisemitism feeling safe with Dr Islam as their GP.
I am glad my posts have caused this antisemitic terror supporter so much inconvenience, but disappointed to learn the APHRA only took issue with him saying, ‘from the river to the sea Palestine will be free.’ Their inaction shows how the AZHA’s class action is the right way to go.
Meanwhile, the authors of this dishonest piece include someone who won the 2021 Democracy’s Watchdogs Award for Student Investigative Reporting and a nomination for the 2021 Walkley Student Journalist of the Year Award – as well as a former investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS, and who worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian. Current journalist Mary Kostakidis amplified this piece. The state of journalism..
