Doctor Who Lost Job Over Tweets About Giving Jews Wrong Meds Seeks Hearing
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
By Aiden Pink August 27, 2019
A doctor whose job offer was withdrawn after the hospital discovered her history of anti-Semitic tweets is seeking a hearing with the State Medical Board of Ohio, the Cleveland Jewish News reported Monday.
An attorney for Dr. Lana Kollab confirmed that she had requested a board hearing but declined to reveal what course of action she was seeking.
Kern Medical Center in Bakersfield, California withdrew its job offer to Kollab in April after it determined that she had “submitted information that was false, misleading, and incomplete” during the matching process.
Kollab was forced to resign from her residency program at the Cleveland Clinic last year after the website Canary Mission, which tracks the social media of pro-Palestinian activists, uncovered several anti-Semitic tweets that she wrote in college.
“I’ll purposely give the yahood the wrong meds,” she tweeted in 2012, using the Arabic word for “Jews.” The following year, she posted a picture saying, “People who support Israel should have their immune cells killed so they can see how it feels to not be able to defend yourself from foreign invaders.”
A July 10 letter from medical board secretary Dr. Kim Rothemel to Kollab and her attorneys, which was acquired by the Cleveland Jewish News, stated that Kollab admitted in a deposition to having told Kern that she left the Cleveland Clinic because of a death in the family and not because of the tweets.
“Although you asserted at your June 2019 deposition that you now feel ashamed of your discriminatory comments, when asked if your tweets reflect good moral character, you admitted they do not,” Rothemel wrote. She added that the board could take disciplinary action against Kollab, including which ranged from probation to revoking or limiting her medical license.
Ironically, Kollab attended medical school at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. which describes itself on its website as being “Rooted in Jewish tradition, built on Jewish values.”
Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
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