Physicians Against Antisemitism: Who Runs It, Who Gets Targeted, and What the Evidence Shows

Physicians Against Antisemitism (PAA) describes itself as a physician-founded movement fighting antisemitism in healthcare. But its documented activities raise a separate question: What happens when a social-media group publicly identifies medical professionals, circulates accusations about their political speech, and exposes them to professional scrutiny before any independent finding of wrongdoing?

The question is not hypothetical. In April 2024, PAA published slides and the names of two UCLA psychiatry residents within hours of a departmental lecture, according to a corrected report by UCLA’s Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism. The report documented subsequent online harassment and a collective complaint asking that two PAA posts be removed over safety concerns. Separately, a San Francisco Chronicle investigation found that PAA publicized the residency placement of a doctor who had participated in a pro-Palestinian campus protest, as other organizations pursued a campaign against her medical career.

Those records do not prove that PAA directed threats, controlled every related organization, or caused every professional consequence. They do establish that its public accusations and identification of healthcare workers deserve scrutiny independent of the cause the group invokes. The burden of substantiating a serious accusation belongs to the accuser, particularly when a person’s livelihood and physical safety may be affected.

What is Physicians Against Antisemitism?

On its official website, Physicians Against Antisemitism says Jewish physicians in the United States founded the group in 2021. What began as a small Facebook community grew into private physician groups and public accounts on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and X. Its stated activities include exposing antisemitic incidents, supporting Jewish colleagues, and educating audiences about Judaism and Israel.

Combating actual anti-Jewish discrimination in medicine is a legitimate professional concern. Patients must be able to trust that clinicians will not deny care or treat them differently because they are Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian, Israeli, or belong to any other group. The ethical question is whether PAA reliably distinguishes threats to patients from disagreement over a state’s policies, and whether its methods are proportionate to the evidence.

PAA is not a medical licensing board, a hospital disciplinary committee, or a court. Its posts do not amount to official findings of professional misconduct. Yet employers, patients, journalists, and thousands of online spectators may encounter an accusation without seeing the full material from which it was drawn.

As reviewed for this article, the group’s website describes its founding and mission but does not provide a comprehensive, named public roster of the people responsible for its account-level editorial decisions. That is a transparency gap, not proof of secret financing or unlawful conduct.

The UCLA case: two residents named after a psychiatry lecture

The clearest documented case begins on April 2, 2024, when UCLA psychiatry residents Afaf Moustafa and Ragda Izar gave an optional presentation titled Depathologizing Resistance. The session discussed how psychiatry and other institutions have characterized forms of resistance by marginalized communities. It also discussed the self-immolation of U.S. service member Aaron Bushnell, who died protesting the war in Gaza.

The subject was controversial. UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG) characterized the lecture as antisemitic and as normalizing self-immolation. But discussing an event, even a disturbing one, is not automatically the same as recommending or endorsing it. Whether the lecture crossed an ethical line requires the presentation’s full language and context, not merely a description from those who opposed it.

The UCLA task force’s corrected report, pages 18-24, gives a striking chronology:

That last point matters. The concern about the PAA posts was not invented afterward by an unrelated influencer. It was recorded in a collective complaint reproduced in a UCLA task-force document.

The report also distinguishes responsibility. It describes a UCLA faculty member as making the recording and JFRG as hosting it. PAA’s separately documented action was publishing slides and the residents’ names. The report says other online participants later circulated additional personal information. It does not establish that PAA itself posted the residents’ home addresses or instructed anyone to threaten them.

A substantial October 31, 2025 investigation by Will Alden in Jewish Currents independently examined the episode. Alden reported that the unauthorized recording was made by psychiatrist and UCLA volunteer clinical faculty member Kira Stein, who was affiliated with JFRG, and that PAA published material from the lecture on the same day. Palestinian resident Moustafa told the publication she received death threats, experienced nightmares, and arranged additional security at home.

Those are reported consequences, not merely a theoretical possibility of reputational damage. But the source record does not isolate which particular publication caused each threat. Attribution matters precisely because several actors were involved.

What about the allegation that the lecture promoted self-immolation?

JFRG’s account of the presentation is available through its medical-school advocacy archive. The UCLA task force disputes that characterization and describes the discussion of self-immolation as part of a broader academic examination of resistance. Jewish Currents similarly describes Bushnell as an entry point into the lecture’s argument.

The full original presentation has not been independently authenticated and reviewed for this article. Consequently, the responsible finding is not that every allegation made about it was knowingly false. It is that the record contains a serious dispute about the lecture’s meaning, while the residents’ identities were publicized before that dispute was resolved.

UCLA itself became a site of competing allegations about antisemitism and anti-Palestinian discrimination. In 2026, the U.S. Justice Department sued the University of California, alleging a hostile work environment for Jewish and Israeli employees. JFRG-associated faculty members, including Stein, subsequently joined that litigation as intervenor plaintiffs, according to the federal case docket. Those are litigants’ allegations, not judicial findings about PAA’s Instagram publications. They do not erase the contemporaneous documentation of the residents’ exposure and reported threats.

The decisive accountability question remains unanswered in PAA’s own public materials: What evidence was considered before naming the residents, who approved the posts, and what review occurred after fellow medical professionals warned that those posts endangered them?

Gabrielle Wimer: a protest arrest followed her into residency

In 2025, newly graduated physician Gabrielle Wimer moved to Oakland, California, to begin emergency-medicine residency. Earlier that year she had participated in a March 5 sit-in at Barnard College protesting student expulsions linked to pro-Palestinian activism. She was arrested, temporarily suspended by Columbia, and eventually allowed to graduate. The criminal case against her was dropped in June.

Her professional placement nevertheless became a target of public attention. According to Raheem Hosseini’s August 19, 2025 investigation for the San Francisco Chronicle, PAA posted Wimer’s residency destination after conservative outlets had publicized her arrest. Other organizations, including Canary Mission and Accuracy in Media (AIM), then publicized allegations about her and sought consequences for her education or career.

On June 13, 2025, AIM brought a digital billboard van to the hospital where Wimer was beginning residency. Its message portrayed her as a violent antisemite. The Chronicle found that no injuries had been reported from the Barnard sit-in and that Wimer had not been accused of violence. AIM’s own July 2 account of the billboard action confirms it brought the van and questioned her suitability to treat patients.

PAA did not operate that billboard, according to the available record. The Chronicle identifies AIM as responsible. Nor does the reporting establish that PAA caused Wimer’s earlier Columbia suspension. The distinction makes the episode more instructive: multiple organizations could each contribute different pieces to a campaign, without proof that one group directed every other participant.

Wimer’s arrest for participation in a protest was a matter of public record. An arrest, by itself, does not establish antisemitism, violent conduct, or an inability to care for Jewish patients. Those are separate factual questions requiring separate evidence. Publishing a new doctor’s residency placement in the context of an accusatory campaign makes the consequences of that distinction unusually concrete.

The Chronicle reported that PAA did not respond to its request for comment. Wimer continued treating patients in Oakland when the article was published. This case documents professional targeting and reported distress, not proof that she lost her residency because of PAA.

Is PAA doxxing healthcare workers?

The word doxxing is used differently across journalism, research, law, and online platforms. It often means publishing private or identifying information to facilitate harassment. Merely mentioning a public professional’s name is not automatically unlawful doxxing. But a person’s name, workplace, photograph, and professional destination can become part of a targeted exposure campaign even when some of those details were already obtainable elsewhere.

The evidence supports three distinct findings:

1. Verified public identification: The UCLA report documents PAA publishing the two residents’ names and slides. The Chronicle documents PAA publicizing Wimer’s residency placement.
2. Documented safety concern: UCLA’s task-force report reproduces a complaint specifically asking for removal of PAA posts because signatories believed the posts endangered trainees. Jewish Currents independently reported threats against Moustafa.
3. Unresolved responsibility: The available record does not prove that PAA published the additional private addresses circulated by others, instructed threats, or directly caused a particular employment decision.

This is why an indiscriminate claim that PAA personally caused every subsequent harm is weaker than the documented record. The organization can be held accountable for what it published without attributing every downstream action to it.

Other cases show why allegations must be examined individually

PAA’s broader activity also tests the difference between identifying genuine discrimination and turning a contentious political expression into a professional accusation.

The Oregon example is an essential control case. Expressing the intention to refuse care because someone is Jewish, or using dehumanizing language against Jews, is not equivalent to criticizing Israeli military policy. Reporting such conduct can serve a real patient-safety purpose. But identifying a genuine incident does not give an organization blanket credibility for unrelated accusations.

A watchdog cannot borrow proof from one case to compensate for missing proof in another. Catching one bigot does not make the next allegation true.

Australia offers a practical standard for legitimate complaints

Australia’s health regulator, Ahpra, has published unusually concrete social-media guidance for healthcare practitioners. It explains that practitioners ordinarily should not be investigated merely for expressing political views and gives examples of posts unlikely to justify discipline, including advocating a peaceful end to war, protecting healthcare workers in conflict, and requesting accurate reporting. Posts involving threats, discrimination, patient-safety risks, or serious misinformation may be different.

In October 2025, Ahpra told Michael West Media it had received 209 notifications concerning 101 practitioners relating to antisemitism or Islamophobia since October 2023. It said approximately half of those notifications concerned each category, 190 had closed, and two practitioners had been referred to tribunals for alleged professional misconduct. Those were all relevant notifications across the regulator, not complaints attributable to PAA.

The figures show why the distinction matters: a complaint is not a finding, a closed complaint is not necessarily evidence of harassment, and even a complaint ultimately dismissed can demand time, legal advice, and substantial emotional energy from the clinician involved.

Criticism of Israel is not automatically antisemitism

An organization concerned with anti-Jewish discrimination must be able to identify it accurately. That requires separating Jewish identity and patient safety from Israeli government policy and political ideology.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition, frequently invoked in institutional debates, expressly says criticism of Israel comparable to criticism of any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. Its illustrative examples also recognize that hostility toward Jews can manifest through arguments about Israel, depending on context.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, drafted by scholars as an alternative interpretive framework, more explicitly distinguishes evidence-based criticism of Israeli policies, opposition to Zionism as a political ideology, and nonviolent boycotts from antisemitism in themselves. The two frameworks differ, particularly over how certain anti-Zionist statements should be assessed, but neither makes every expression of solidarity with Palestinians inherently anti-Jewish.

A useful distinction for healthcare workplaces is straightforward:

The surrounding humanitarian facts are not imaginary. In May 2025, the World Health Organization reported that at least 94% of Gaza’s hospitals had been damaged or destroyed. A healthcare worker calling attention to that documented crisis is discussing a grave medical and humanitarian issue. Such speech does not become proof of anti-Jewish prejudice simply because the state whose military actions are criticized is Israel.

Likewise, criticizing a government’s actions is not a license to threaten Jews, justify attacks on Jewish civilians, or discriminate against Jewish patients. The same evidence-based threshold should be applied to every clinician, regardless of which side of the conflict they support.

When an accusation becomes a professional pressure campaign

The common mechanism in the documented cases deserves more attention than a simple tally of people named online:

Statement or protest -> public identification -> accusation of antisemitism -> amplification -> institutional or professional pressure.

That sequence is an investigative model, not a proven chain of causation in every incident. It becomes troubling when a public accusation is treated as if it were the result of a completed inquiry, particularly if the underlying material is cropped, ambiguous, or disputed.

Three practical problems follow.

First, the evidentiary threshold can collapse. A headline or social caption may be shared thousands of times while the original lecture, thread, or conversation is unavailable to readers. At UCLA, a serious interpretive dispute over an academic lecture reached social media within hours. A reader viewing the allegation alone could not independently resolve that dispute.

Second, professional consequences can precede formal findings. Hospitals and training programs must assess genuine patient-safety concerns. But they also receive complaints generated by online campaigns, where intensity and volume are not measures of truth. A complaint may demand a response even when the underlying conduct does not warrant discipline.

Third, corrections may not catch up with accusations. A public identity, allegation, or search result can remain discoverable after its context changes. The more serious the allegation, the more important it is to have a visible process for corrections and responses.

The American Medical Association’s guidance on social media says physicians should consider the implications of their online conduct for professional integrity and should disseminate information that is accurate. Its guidance on political communications also recognizes physicians’ political rights while requiring that political differences not interfere with patient care.

Those standards do not prohibit a physician from criticizing another physician. They do make accuracy, professional responsibility, and patient trust relevant to the accuser as well as the accused.

Who runs PAA, and what relationships can be verified?

PAA’s public website says it was founded by Jewish physicians but does not provide a full account-management roster. The most specific independent identification in the reviewed reporting comes from Jewish Currents, which reported in October 2025 that psychiatrist Katherine Hulbert operated PAA’s Instagram account anonymously. That is a journalistic attribution; it does not establish that she authored every post, founded the organization, or personally directed every campaign.

Jewish Currents also reported that the PAA account described working "behind the scenes" with Canary Mission, StopAntisemitism, and Jew Hate Database. That reported statement warrants further documentation of actual relationships. It does not, by itself, prove shared funding, a common employer, coordinated threats, or control over other organizations’ activities.

The viral Instagram reel that helped prompt scrutiny of PAA identified additional physicians as alleged founders or moderators. Those specific roles were not independently corroborated for this article, so they are not repeated as established facts. Identifying an individual as a participant in a public organization should be based on an authenticated role or public action, not a montage alone.

The same discipline applies to financial claims. PAA’s founding narrative and accounts are publicly described, but this review did not verify a comprehensive list of donors, an organizational ownership structure, or any covert foreign sponsorship. No such claim is made here.

What can be asked now is more basic and more important: Who has authority to approve an accusatory post? What sources are required? Are original statements preserved? How are corrections handled? Can a targeted clinician respond before an allegation is amplified? And what is the organization’s policy when colleagues say its posts are placing them at risk?

Why the group’s stated mission does not settle the ethical question

The distinction between a cause and a method is central to this investigation. Antisemitism in medicine is real and deserves serious responses. A healthcare worker who threatens Jews or says they will deny Jewish patients care raises a different concern from a healthcare worker who supports Palestinian self-determination or criticizes an Israeli military operation.

A group that publishes both kinds of cases must prove it knows the difference. It cannot rely on the seriousness of antisemitism as a substitute for the evidence required in any particular accusation.

PAA’s documented actions at UCLA and in the Wimer controversy put identifiable medical professionals into public debates with consequences extending beyond ordinary disagreement. The UCLA task-force report records explicit safety concerns about PAA posts. The Chronicle documents the publication of Wimer’s residency destination amid a wider effort to question her fitness to practice medicine. Those are facts relevant to public accountability, irrespective of whether everyone involved sincerely believed they were acting against prejudice.

The question is not whether members of PAA have ever called attention to a real problem. The question is whether the organization’s methods consistently satisfy the obligations that come with the influence it seeks to exercise over medical reputations.

A responsible accountability standard would require, at minimum, complete and fairly presented evidence; a clear distinction between political speech and patient-safety threats; proportionality before public naming; a documented opportunity to respond; and prompt, visible corrections when an allegation cannot be sustained.

Without those safeguards, an anti-discrimination label can become a shortcut around the very fairness and evidence requirements that protect patients and professionals alike.

What is established, disputed, and still unknown?

These distinctions are not concessions to the organization’s narrative. They are what makes serious criticism verifiable.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Physicians Against Antisemitism?

The PAA website says a group of Jewish physicians in the United States founded it in 2021. It does not provide a comprehensive named founder list in the material reviewed here.

Is Katherine Hulbert involved in Physicians Against Antisemitism?

An October 2025 Jewish Currents investigation identified psychiatrist Katherine Hulbert as an operator of PAA’s Instagram account. That reporting does not establish sole control, authorship of every post, or the exact scope of her current role.

Has Physicians Against Antisemitism been accused of doxxing?

Yes. The UCLA task-force report treats the public exposure of psychiatry residents as part of a doxxing and harassment episode, and records PAA publishing their names and slides. Whether an individual publication meets a particular legal definition is a separate question. The report does not prove PAA itself published home addresses.

Did PAA cause UCLA residents to receive death threats?

The residents’ identities were circulated by PAA and others before threats were reported. Jewish Currents documented one resident’s account of threats and added security. The available evidence does not establish who sent those threats or that PAA instructed them.

What happened to Gabrielle Wimer?

After participating in a March 2025 protest and being arrested, Wimer faced university discipline and an online campaign. The criminal case against her was dropped in June. PAA publicized her residency placement, while Accuracy in Media, a different organization, operated a billboard attacking her professional reputation. She continued practicing as a resident when the Chronicle reported the story.

Is criticism of Israel automatically antisemitic?

No. The IHRA definition expressly allows ordinary criticism of Israel, and the Jerusalem Declaration further distinguishes several forms of political criticism from anti-Jewish prejudice. Particular statements still must be assessed in context, especially when they involve stereotypes, threats, or discriminatory treatment.

Is Physicians Against Antisemitism a registered nonprofit?

The organization describes itself as a physician-founded movement, and the Chronicle reported that it said it was a nonprofit. This review did not independently verify a particular tax-exempt entity or filing associated with PAA. Organizational status should not be inferred from a social-media description alone.

The accountability standard

An allegation of antisemitism can be serious enough to merit an investigation without being sufficiently proven to justify a campaign against someone’s career. That is the distinction public watchdogs must preserve.

The UCLA and Gabrielle Wimer cases show PAA participating in the public identification of medical professionals amid contentious accusations. The UCLA record additionally documents a specific request to remove PAA posts because fellow clinicians feared for the subjects’ safety. Those facts do not answer every question about motive or causation. They do show why the group’s activities cannot be evaluated simply by repeating its mission statement.

Medical ethics does not become less demanding when a physician speaks as an advocate rather than a clinician. For anyone seeking professional consequences against someone else, the standard should be the full record, accurate characterization, proportionate action, and an opportunity to correct the accusation before its damage becomes permanent.

An organization claiming to defend trust in medicine should be prepared to meet that standard itself.

Methodology and editorial note

This article is a source-based investigative explainer, not a complete independent audit of PAA’s social-media archive. It draws on PAA’s own mission statement, UCLA’s corrected task-force report, published statements from JFRG, independent reporting, professional ethics guidance, and regulatory material. Some original Instagram posts were not independently retrievable during this review; where necessary, claims about their contents are explicitly attributed to identified reporting or documentary sources. No original interviews or new requests for comment were conducted for this article.

The UCLA report cited here was corrected on May 7, 2025 to amend its attribution of a separate 2022 episode. This article uses the corrected version. Readers with original posts, corrections, or substantiated information are invited to challenge or supplement the record. The factual record and relevant legal proceedings may evolve after the October 26, 2026 review date.

References and Further Reading

Primary organizational and institutional records

• Physicians Against Antisemitism, official website. The organization’s account of its founding, membership structure, stated mission, and public activities. An interested-party source, not independent verification of its claims.
• UCLA Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism, corrected third report (May 7, 2025). The most detailed documentary account of the psychiatry lecture, PAA’s publication of names and slides, subsequent harassment allegations, and the collective complaint. The task force’s conclusions are its own and should be read alongside underlying testimony and competing accounts.
• Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, UCLA medical-school advocacy archive. The group’s own characterization of the April 2024 lecture and related disputes. Included to document what the critics of the lecture asserted.
• U.S. Department of Justice, February 24, 2026 UCLA employment-discrimination lawsuit announcement. Documents the later, separate litigation about alleged anti-Jewish workplace discrimination at UCLA; the allegations are not rulings on PAA’s posts.
• Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse, United States v. Regents of the University of California docket. Tracks filings, including the intervention of faculty members involved in the broader UCLA dispute.

Investigative reporting and cases

• Will Alden, "Portrait of a Campus in Crisis," Jewish Currents (October 31, 2025). Independent reporting on UCLA’s political conflict, the role of JFRG and PAA, reported account operation, and threats experienced by a medical resident.
• Raheem Hosseini, "A pro-Palestinian activist came to Oakland to practice medicine. An outrage campaign followed," San Francisco Chronicle (August 19, 2025). Documents Gabrielle Wimer’s protest history, professional placement, PAA’s post, and the roles of other organizations, including AIM.
• Accuracy in Media, July 2, 2025 account of its Highland Hospital billboard action. The advocacy organization’s own description of a campaign that should not be misattributed to PAA.
• Anthony Effinger, "OHSU Investigates Antisemitic Comments Allegedly Made by Nurse on Social Media," Willamette Week (February 26, 2025). Reports on PAA’s use of redacted posts and the evidentiary limits of an early accusation.
• Daniel Edelson, "Oregon nurse fired after antisemitic social media posts," Ynetnews (March 29, 2025). Follow-up reporting on explicit anti-Jewish remarks and the employer’s action; an additional perspective on the same case.
• Stephanie Tran and Wendy Bacon, Australian healthcare complaint investigation, Michael West Media (October 31, 2025). Reporting on professional complaints, several advocacy groups including PAA, and regulator-supplied notification figures. Its campaign-wide claims must not be treated as PAA-specific statistics.
• Defending Education, Palos Verdes High School yearbook controversy (June 5, 2024). Interested-party documentation that PAA shared material from a student-written yearbook page.

Professional standards and definitions

• Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, social-media guidance. Regulator-issued examples distinguishing ordinary political advocacy from discriminatory or unsafe professional conduct.
• American Medical Association, Professionalism in the Use of Social Media. Ethical expectations for physicians’ online activity, accuracy, professionalism, and public trust.
• American Medical Association, Political Communications. Guidance recognizing physicians’ political speech rights and their obligations to provide impartial patient care.
• International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, working definition of antisemitism. The widely cited working definition and its examples, including language protecting ordinary criticism of Israel.
• Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. A scholarly framework differentiating anti-Jewish discrimination from several forms of political criticism of Israel or Zionism.
• World Health Organization, "Health system at breaking point as hostilities further intensify in Gaza" (May 22, 2025). Primary humanitarian evidence concerning damage to Gaza’s hospital system, providing factual context for healthcare-worker advocacy.