How to Pose as a Reasonable Critic of Israel (With a Little Help from the Media)

Essay for Politico by two surgeons who volunteered in Gaza is an illustration of how the media can launder Israel’s virulent critics to render their views palatable, or even compelling to a mainstream audience.

By David Adesnik, The Washington Free Beacon

Mark Perlmutter is an orthopedic surgeon from North Carolina. He is Jewish but believes that Zionism is “sadism” and “the moral equivalent of Nazism.”

Feroze Sidhwa is a trauma surgeon from California. He alleges that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.

Yet in an essay for Politico, Perlmutter and Sidhwa present themselves as physicians lacking “any political interest in the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—other than wanting it to end.” From this perch of supposed neutrality, they accuse Israel of “murdering children” yet do not have a bad word to say about Hamas, even though their article goes on for nearly 5,000 words.

The essay by Perlmutter and Sidhwa is an illustration of how the media can launder Israel’s virulent critics to render their views palatable, or even compelling to a mainstream audience. This phenomenon is hardly new, but with a bit of help from Google and X (formerly Twitter), it has become far easier to expose.

In all fairness, Perlmutter and Sidhwa do have a story worth telling. They traveled to Gaza in late March as part of a humanitarian mission for which they volunteered via the Palestinian American Medical Association. They tell the story of a malnourished nine-year-old girl named Juri who had festering wounds, a split femur, and other grave injuries. The surgical team had to wash clumps of maggots off Juri before they could operate, and they warn that she will suffer from severe and permanent disabilities despite their best efforts.

Juri’s story is one that deserves to be told, but by a narrator who is prepared to consider the responsibility Hamas bears for her plight. Perlmutter and Sidhwa oppose the horrors of war but cannot bring themselves to acknowledge that Hamas started it. They make a single oblique reference to the events of October 7 and include neither an explicit condemnation of the attack nor expression of sympathy for its victims. Likewise, they express no concern for the Israeli hostages who remain captive in Gaza.

An editor would not have had to conduct much due diligence to discover the two surgeons’ bias. Perlmutter’s comments on X read like the signs at a campus protest encampment. He describes the Israeli government as fascist, compares a pro-Israel physician to Josef Mengele, and, lest anyone miss his point, simply says, “Israel’s genocidal behavior parallels that of Nazi Germany in the 40s.”

The bias of Perlmutter’s coauthor is no more difficult to discern. Sidhwa has 20 years of experience as a critic of the Jewish state. He first wrote about the subject as a student, contributing a pair of essays to the Israel-bashing website Electronic Intifada in 2005. In the first essay, he mounted a defense of Columbia University professor Joseph Massad, who is once again a figure of controversy thanks to his praise, the day after the October 7 massacre, for the “astonishing” and “astounding” achievements of an “innovative Palestinian resistance.”

Describing the teenagers he saw in Gaza, Sidhwa says that they “look like they came out of Auschwitz.” Perhaps he does not know that Israel has cooperated with the United Nations and other providers to facilitate the entry of more than 40,000 truckloads of food and other essential goods into Gaza.

As surgeons, Perlmutter and Sidhwa express profound regret for the battering of Gaza’s hospitals during the war, for which they hold only Israel responsible. After demanding an end to U.S. military aid, they write, “We must decide, once and for all: are we for or against murdering children, doctors and emergency medical personnel?” An issue they do not raise, even to dispute, is Hamas’s exploitation of hospitals for military purposes, a war crime.

Since the group took control of Gaza in 2007, journalists have documented its use of al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the coastal strip. During a major clash between Israel and Hamas in 2014, the Washington Post described al-Shifa as the group’s “de facto headquarters.”

On X, Perlmutter alludes to his knowledge of the problem. Responding to another user who pointed to Hamas’s presence at al-Shifa, Perlmutter responded, “If a rat enters an orphanage, do you burn down the whole orphanage and incinerate all of the children just to kill the rat? ‘Oh, but you knew the rat was there [with the] children, why didn’t you say something?'”

This comparison to a single rat entering an orphanage is misleading. In late March, Israeli forces said they captured hundreds of fighters inside al-Shifa, while killing nearly 200 in the battle to clear the facility. The military also released video footage showing the fighters lying dead inside the hospital, still holding their guns. (The editors blurred out the faces of the dead, but not their guns.) The footage also showed the weapons Israeli troops found in the MRI and maternity wards. Even before the battle, the New York Times reported on how Hamas “maintained a hardened tunnel beneath the complex that was supplied with water, power and air-conditioning.”

Before publishing this piece, I contacted Perlmutter and Sidhwa to give them an opportunity to comment. Sidhwa responded at length. He pointed to an open letter that he and Perlmutter sent to the White House after publishing their essay, in which they condemn “the horrors committed on October 7 by Palestinian armed groups.” Sidhwa also firmly defended the assertion that he and Perlmutter have “no political interest” in the outcome of the war. In his view, he is purely a humanitarian worker, and even his contention that Israel is committing genocide amounts to an observation, rather than taking sides in the conflict.

Perlmutter and Sidhwa close their essay by asserting that a cut-off of U.S. military aid will force an end to the war. They place no demands on Hamas or its sponsors in Tehran, not even to release the hostages. While they hope their testimony helps to end the war, they cannot see that silence about the danger posed by Hamas is one of the surest means of perpetuating the conflict.

Perlmutter did not respond to a request for comment. Politico pledged to add an editor’s note to the piece after the Washington Free Beacon presented the outlet with Perlmutter and Sidhwa’s views on Israel.

David Adesnik is a senior fellow and director of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.