Can patients still feel safe when doctors openly demonstrate in support of a movement associated with extremism and antisemitism? The demonstration outside Karolinska University Hospital raises questions that should never have to be asked in a democratic country.
Imagine you’re driving along the E4 motorway past Stockholm. Suddenly, another driver makes a careless lane change and crashes into your car. Your vehicle flips over, and you lose consciousness.
When you wake up, you find yourself in the operating department at Karolinska University Hospital. The anesthesiologist has inserted the IV into your hand, and you are about to be put under. The last thing you see before disappearing into the haze is the attending surgeon, wearing a tightly fitted hijab, freezing for a moment as she notices the necklace you always wear—a Star of David…
What feeling will accompany you as you drift off to sleep? Gratitude for being in safe hands—or icy fear?
No longer a normal country
This question should never have to be asked in a normal country—but Sweden is no longer a normal country.
In a normal, democratic European country, every one of us, when we are sick and seeking help—at our most vulnerable moments—should be able to trust in the professionalism and neutrality of the physician treating us.
But as we saw last Wednesday, that is no longer the case in Sweden.
That day, pro-Palestinian activists staged a demonstration outside the main entrance of Karolinska University Hospital, and the images quickly went viral: hospital staff, including doctors, chanting “From the river to the sea” outside their workplace—wearing their medical uniforms—to show support for an imprisoned colleague with ties to Hamas.
Pediatrician Zeinab Bouzekri outside her workplace, Karolinska University Hospital, which is Sweden’s largest hospital. Video: Tiktok/jwalysta
Why? Because they can…
Patients and their families were redirected to side entrances while their doctors played out victims and murderers, shouting their desire to eliminate both the State of Israel and the Jewish people.
The question is: Why do they do it? The answer: Because they can.
Islamists and pro-Palestinian supporters of terrorism have noticed that Sweden, for decades, has remained consistently passive while they themselves have steadily raised the temperature. The country has now reached a point where healthcare staff apparently consider it risk-free to behave in this manner. The organizers and the doctors who participated undoubtedly conducted a risk assessment before gathering outside their workplace with flags, placards, and megaphones.
We may safely assume that they judged the risk of disciplinary action, salary deductions, suspension, revoked medical licenses, or dismissal to be slim to none—otherwise they would never have held the demonstration.
And they were right.
Sweden has abdicated
Hospital management blames the police (“We are not responsible for the sidewalk”), while the police point to freedom of assembly (which these very groups have consistently exploited since October 7, 2023). Politicians blame one another—or perhaps the climate.
Sweden has abdicated—specifically in the face of this particular group.
If you doubt that claim, try imagining the most likely reaction from hospital management, the police, and politicians if these doctors had instead demonstrated alongside the Alternative for Sweden (AfS) in support of Tommy Robinson. We would almost certainly have witnessed Stockholm’s riot police clearing the area, Karolinska’s HR department mass-producing dismissal notices, and politicians indignantly demanding legislative changes and prison sentences.
But by the way, you don’t even need to imagine. Two of the doctors who participated in the action outside Karolinska are employed by the healthcare group Meliva – which last year fired Jewish doctor Gregory-Zvi Wirschubsky, after allegations that Wirschubsky was “killing Palestinian children”.
Britain’s system of “two-tier justice” is obvious enough, but Sweden now measures everything by double standards as well: if you simply belong to the “right” group and hold the “right” opinions, you are, in practice, untouchable.
As a result, Swedish hospitals and healthcare institutions have themselves become political stages where those entrusted with protecting and preserving life now openly advocate killing.
All of it financed by your tax money.
But this is hardly shocking.
Nothing new
On social media, Jews describe their fear of becoming ill in Sweden. Sofie Löwenmark, founder of the Islamism-monitoring website Doku, has written about why she chose to seek cancer treatment in Finland. Terrorism researcher Magnus Ranstorp has revealed that his planned lecture on Hamas had to be moved from Karolinska to the Swedish Defence University.
All because of Sweden’s appeasement of terrorism sympathizers.
Photo: Screenshot/X/Magnus Ranstorp
So let us return to the opening question:
How safe do you feel entrusting yourself to these doctors, to the healthcare institutions where they are allowed to work, and to a state whose only response is excuses?
Would you dare lie down on the operating table or confide your most personal fears and concerns to one of these physicians if you had a Jewish surname—or if a simple Google search revealed that you had criticized Islam, supported Israel, or advocated remigration as a Sweden Democrat?
For my own sake and for the sake of my children, I am highly doubtful.
But this is where we are.
So welcome to Swedish healthcare—if you dare.