Apparently just mentioning the word “Palestinian” can get a medical-school class canceled, at least if the professor doing the mentioning is Jewish. Sheldon Rubenfeld, in a course he has taught at Baylor College of Medicine for the past twenty years, routinely cites his own experience helping a suicidal Palestinian to illustrate the need for physicians to set aside their own political biases. Last spring, this example caused an unexpected reaction:

[T]wo Baylor faculty members informed me that a student in this lecture filed an “anonymous grievance” because the student “felt uncomfortable.” They offered almost no specifics other than my use of the word “Palestinian” and said that the course could be canceled if students filed additional anonymous grievances. A faculty member from Baylor’s Center for Professionalism then told me that the policy of anonymous grievances is based on the school’s belief that medical students are a “vulnerable population.” . . . A few weeks later, the course was canceled.

But that is only one symptom of a much deeper problem, Rubenfeld explains:

Students at elite universities now engaging in protests that oppose Israel’s existence and call for violence against Jews will bring their anti-Semitism with them to medical school, where this or any other of their harmful biases are unlikely to be challenged.

Since October 7, we have seen confirmation that anti-Semitism has crept into medicine. In social-media posts, Dana Diab, an emergency-room physician in New York City, applauded Hamas’s massacre as giving Israelis “a taste of their own medicine”; for this she was fired.

Unless DEI, which incubates anti-Semitism, is eliminated from medical education, the consequences for today’s patients, especially Jewish patients, could be grave. Medical educators must recall that the first responsibility of physicians is to do no harm to a truly vulnerable population: their patients.

Ron Ben-Yishai, reporting from a visit to IDF forces in the Gaza Strip, analyzes the state of the fighting, and “the persistent challenge of eradicating an entrenched enemy in a complex urban terrain.”

Hamas, sensing the war’s end, is mounting a final effort to inflict casualties. The IDF now controls 65 percent of Gaza’s territory operationally, with observation, fire dominance, and relative freedom of movement, alongside systematic tunnel destruction. . . . Major P, a reserve company commander, says, “It’s frustrating to hear at home that we’re stagnating. The public doesn’t get that if we stop, Hamas will recover.”

Senior IDF officers cite two reasons for the slow progress: meticulous care to protect hostages, requiring cautious movement and constant intelligence gathering, and avoiding heavy losses, with 22 soldiers killed since June.

Two-and-a-half of Hamas’s five brigades have been dismantled, yet a new hostage deal and IDF withdrawal could allow Hamas to regroup. . . . Hamas is at its lowest military and governing point since its founding, reduced to a fragmented guerrilla force. Yet, without complete disarmament and infrastructure destruction, it could resurge as a threat in years.

At the same time, Ben-Yishai observes, not everything hangs on the IDF:

According to the Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman, the IDF is close to completing its objectives. In classical military terms, “defeat” means the enemy surrenders—but with a jihadist organization, the benchmark is its ability to operate against Israel.

Despite [the IDF’s] battlefield successes, the broader strategic outcome—especially regarding the hostages—now hinges on decisions from the political leadership. “We’ve done our part,” said a senior officer. “We’ve reached a crossroads where the government must decide where it wants to go—both on the hostage issue and on Gaza’s future.”