Lara Kollab, the former resident at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic who gleefully boasted that she would give the wrong medication to Jewish patients, has now, according to Cleveland.com, been “permanently prohibited from practicing osteopathic medicine or surgery in the state of Ohio, or from participating in another medical training program.” The only salient question here is: what took them so long?
This has been in deliberation for at least a year and a half. The Jerusalem Post reported as long ago as January 2019 that the “Jewish-American advocacy group Proclaiming Justice to the Nations [PJTN] filed a complaint with the state of Ohio Medical Board insisting the medical license of Dr. Lara Kollab [be revoked] after it was revealed she tweeted she would provide Jewish patients under her care with the wrong type of drugs.”
Even worse, Kollab’s vicious statements were made as far back as 2012. Why didn’t the Ohio Medical Board revoke her medical license immediately?
Kollab was a doctor of osteopathic medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. But then Canary Mission published a report on her fiendishly hateful anti-Semitic tweets, including one in which she declared that she would “purposely give all the yahood [Jews] the wrong meds.” In another tweet, she wrote: “Studying for my med micro final, came across this. Clearly, I pay attention in class and write very useful notes.” Accompanying that tweet was a handwritten note that read: “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.”
Kollab’s Twitter feed was a cesspool of hatred for those she called “Jewish dogs.” She said: “walking through the streets of palestine is funny- every person who gets mad says something along the lines of ‘Allah yo5odhom el yahood’ [Allah will take them, the Jews].” She reveled in her own hatred: “so basically every mseba [insult] I say is directed at the yahood [Jews] haha. even if I do something really stupid I say ‘hebel yihbilhom el yahood’ [stupid stupid Jews] hehe.”
It isn’t surprising that a devout and observant Muslim would have a seething hatred of Jews. The Qur’an tells Muslims that the Jews are the strongest of all people in enmity toward them (5:82), are accursed by Allah (9:30), and are always scheming against the Muslims (2:79; 3:75-3:78, 3:181, etc.). There is a great deal more anti-Semitic material in the Qur’an and Sunnah. These and other Qur’anic passages likely provide some insight into Kollab’s mindset.
In the Hippocratic Oath, doctors pledge that they will “do no harm or injustice” to their patients. Kollab not only repeatedly expressed her vehement hatred for Jews, but actually stated explicitly that she would give them the wrong medicine in order to do them harm.
So why did any complaint need to be filed? Why did it take so many years for her medical license to be revoked?
One reason may have been because she apologized and played the victim, as is so endlessly effective today.
“As a girl in my teens and early twenties,” she explained, “I had difficulty constructively expressing my intense feelings about what I witnessed in my ancestral land. Like many young people lacking life experience, I expressed myself by making insensitive remarks and statements of passion devoid of thought, not realizing the harm and offense these words would cause.”
Laying it on thick, she added: “These posts were made years before I was accepted into medical school, when I was a naïve, and impressionable girl barely out of high school. I matured into a young adult during the years I attended college and medical school, and adopted strong values of inclusion, tolerance and humanity. I have learned from this experience and am sorry for the pain I have caused. I pray that the Jewish community will understand and forgive me. I hope to make amends so that we can move forward and work together towards a better future for us all.”
As heartfelt and sincere as this may seem, it is noteworthy that Kollab never saw fit to say anything like it until her hate-filled tweets came to light. If she really had this change of heart, why didn’t she delete her old tweets and apologize for them before Canary Mission found them? Her apology has the look of damage control rather than a genuine change of heart.
The Ohio Medical Board is to be commended for not taking Kollab’s apology at face value. But another question inevitably arises: if Lara Kollab had been a Jewish or Christian or Hindu or Buddhist doctor who wrote about giving Muslims the wrong medication, would there have been any question about revoking her medical license immediately? Was the long lag designed to protect the Ohio Medical Board from suspicions of “Islamophobia”?
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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