A medical resident at the Cleveland Clinic was ousted from her position after an organization reported on her long history of making anti-Semitic statements on social media.
Among the comments made by Dr. Lara Kollab cited by watchdog group Canary Mission was a statement that she would give all Jews the wrong medicines.
#8: Recent @WeAreTouro med school grad Lara Kollab said this before enrolling: "ill purposely give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds…”https://t.co/Ue1aXuDOpB pic.twitter.com/7ghsHCdfiK
— Canary Mission (@canarymission) December 31, 2018
The Canary Mission report records dozens of statements made by Kollab calling for violence against Jews, defending Hamas, and supporting terrorists. She also described her activities working with anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) groups.
Kollab was a supervised resident at the Cleveland Clinic, which is consistently ranked among America’s top hospitals. She graduated from medical school earlier this year and began working at the clinic in July.
Last night, the Cleveland Clinic posted a statement saying that she was no longer employed there:
Cleveland Clinic was recently made aware of comments posted to social media by a former employee.
This individual was employed as a supervised resident at our hospital from July to September 2018. She is no longer working at Cleveland Clinic. In no way do these beliefs reflect those of our organization. We fully embrace diversity, inclusion and a culture of safety and respect across our entire health system.
Perhaps ironically, Kollab received her medical schooling at a private Jewish-sponsored school, the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Last night, Touro denounced Kollab’s statements and invoked the school’s “Jewish tradition of tolerance and dignity”:
Touro College is appalled by the anti-Semitic comments reportedly made by Lara Kollab, a graduate of the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine. The mission of Touro College is to educate, perpetuate and enrich the historic Jewish tradition of tolerance and dignity.
— Touro College (@WeAreTouro) December 31, 2018
We are shocked that one of our graduates would voice statements that are antithetical to Touro and to the physicians’ Hippocratic Oath. We have received word from the Cleveland Clinic where Dr. Kollab was last affiliated and learned that she is no longer employed there.
— Touro College (@WeAreTouro) December 31, 2018
According to the state of Ohio, her medical license was issued in July 2018 and won’t expire until June 2021.
All of her social media sites were removed following Canary Mission’s report.
Her website, now deactivated, provided this self-description:
An interview she published with her father, Mahmoud Kollab, in 2013 identifies him as a former resident of Nablus in the West Bank. He claims to have been imprisoned by the Israelis at the age of 18 in 1977. He arrived in America after being admitted to a school in Chicago, by way of Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait.
In an analysis of her interview, she concludes:
One thing is for certain: If peace is to ever be achieved in the Holy Land, the discrimination, dehumanization and oppression must stop and the occupation must end, because if people continue to experience traumatic events in the context of the conflict, they will never be able to forgive and move past the pain to a peaceful future.
And yet she engaged in the very discrimination and dehumanization of Jews she decries.
Canary Mission has itself come under fire from critics and by those it profiles. Last February the watchdog group was suspended from Twitter, with the social media platform claiming the suspension was because of “hateful conduct.”
After many pro-Israel groups publicly complained about the suspension, Twitter reinstated their account. But only a few days later, they were blocked from accessing the site, a move that Twitter said was “in error.”
This past October, the non-profit group was targeted by Haaretz, based on research by The Forward that described the organization as a “shadowy online blacklist” and exposed some of its donors — oddly, the very behavior that Canary Mission gets criticized for.
Canary Mission has also been targeted by the far-left online website The Intercept, bankrolled by eBay billionaire Pierre Omidyar. The Intercept complained that Canary Mission’s reporting on public statements made by college BDS supporters was hurting their activism.
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