Healthcare alliance calls for Royal Commission submissions

The Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance (AZHA) has initiated a coordinated strategy to gather evidence of health-sector antisemitism for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion. The alliance is calling on doctors, nurses, researchers and students to submit reports specifically regarding incidents in healthcare environments to ensure these experiences form part of the official record.

Founded in 2025, AZHA is the first Australian group to represent both Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist healthcare professionals. AZHA co-founder and president Dr Deborah Bell told The AJN that since October 7, 2023, many workers have faced harassment in staff rooms and through online professional groups.

Examples cited included a consultant singing ‘If I Were a Rich Man’ to a junior Jewish doctor, and a Jewish doctor being told they did not need overtime pay because they were Jewish.

To facilitate the submission process, the Alliance has developed a four-stage framework designed to lower the barrier for participants. The system includes a portal with guided prompts to help professionals structure their testimony in under 15 minutes.

Bell said, “The Royal Commission process rewards organised, voluminous, and credible evidence. Informal complaint is invisible. Structured submission is not”.

The organisation uses an AI-powered pipeline to evaluate submissions against the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. Following the close of the commission, AZHA intends to maintain a permanent archive of the evidence to preserve institutional memory.

Bell highlighted that Jewish practitioners have faced “vexatious complaints” lodged with the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency. She cited one instance where a Jewish doctor was told, “You don’t need to be paid overtime, you’re Jewish, you’re a rich doctor”.

AZHA co-founder Sharon Stoliar, a midwife who identifies as a Zionist, has previously described the situation as one in which healthcare was “twisting what the word Zionism means,” with those associated with Jews or Israel being “tarnished, abused, bullied, harassed, complained against [and] attacked.”

Stoliar has also raised concerns about patients, noting that many Jewish and Israeli patients were concealing their religion and country of origin out of fear of harassment from medical staff.

Royal Commission commissioner Virginia Bell AC said it was vital for the inquiry to hear directly from Australians with first-hand experience. The Commission is set to examine the drivers of antisemitism and the adequacy of institutional responses.

The Royal Commission will hold its first hearing block in Sydney from May 4 to May 15. Members of the community have until the end of May to lodge their submissions.

For more information visit azha.professionalopinions.com.au/