Antisemitic Doctor Who Called Jews “Dogs” and Threatened To Give Jewish Patients “Wrong Meds” Finally Loses Medical License

By 

Jordan Sekulow

|
September 4, 2020

We’ve warned you that the plague of hateful antisemitism is on the rise in our country and too many people seem willing to turn their heads. The ACLJ refuses to look away.

We are fighting antisemitism all the way to the United Nations. And when a Muslim doctor in Ohio threatened on social media that she would “accidentally” give Jewish patients the wrong medication, we demanded she lose her license.

After a lengthy investigation, that’s exactly what the State Medical Board of Ohio did. According to a recent Fox News report:

A woman who made anti-Semitic remarks years ago on social media, including one tweet saying she’d purposely give the wrong medication to Jewish people, has had her medical certificate permanently revoked by the State Medical Board of Ohio.

Lara Kollab surrendered her training certificate to practice osteopathic medicine and surgery in Ohio on July 22. The State Medicine Board of Ohio decided to “permanently revoke” that certificate on Aug. 12.

We reported on Ohio Doctor Lara Kollab’s sickening antisemitic rants and threats against Jews which included her saying, “Allah will kill the Jews,” calling Jewish people dogs, and noting that she is “brutally unsympathetic” about the Holocaust. As we said at the time:

Should a doctor who makes threats about giving Jews the wrong medication with the intent to cause harm be entitled to practice medicine? The answer is no. The medical license should be permanently revoked. Threats to cause harm must never be tolerated in any setting – including the medical field.

Kollab deleted all of her social media after receiving national exposure for her hateful posts.  Even in her half-hearted (at best) apology, she attempted to downplay her posts, chalking them up to youthful insensitivity, and still continued to justify her inexcusable comments:

As a girl in my teens and early twenties, 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.

In other words, she basically said I shouldn’t have said what I did about Jews, but it’s technically the Jews’ fault.

That’s not how this works, Ms. Kollab. That is antisemitism, also known as racism and bigotry. And you threatened to poison and potentially kill Jewish patients. A hate crime. And as we told you at the time, she was in medical school, well into adulthood, when she wrote on a notepad:

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.

It’s important to note Kollab is also a fervent supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, further exposing BDS for what we’ve always told you it is – thinly veiled antisemitism.

The ACLJ filed a formal complaint to the Ohio State Board of Medical Examiners, urging that body to revoke Kollab’s license based on her vile, dangerous, antisemitic rhetoric, as it puts patients’ safety at risk. As we said in our complaint:

Dr. Kollab’s statements and intentions go far beyond the realms of free speech. Allowing her near any patients could literally jeopardize lives. Dr. Kollab is obviously unfit to practice medicine: Her medical school has released a statement saying that they were shocked and appalled at her behavior. The Cleveland Clinic, where Dr. Kollab had been employed, promptly fired her when they became aware of her dangerous posts . . . . [T]he purpose of this letter is to officially ask the Board to revoke her medical license permanently, so that no other clinic or medical practice in Ohio might inadvertently hire her, and no other patients will be put at risk. The matter giving rise to this letter involves blatant and open antisemitism, which has no place anywhere in society, and certainly cannot be allowed to fester in a professional medical setting.

Thankfully, Ohio took the action we requested.

Kollab was terminated from her job at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic; and not long after, southern California hospital Kern Medical Center rescinded its previous job offer to Lara Kollab, releasing a statement not specifically mentioning her antisemitic posts, but saying: “[O]ur mission is to teach and train our resident physicians to always provide exceptional care to all patients, regardless of race, religious background or social standing.” It seems pretty clear why they opted to take back their job offer.

And now the State Medical Board of Ohio has revoked her medical license as well.

This is a victory, but not one to celebrate. It’s a sad reminder of the dark specter of antisemitism haunting our nation. This is a matter of human safety. Kollab not only used insensitive, antisemitic language, she directly threatened lives. That cannot ever be tolerated or taken lightly. Lara Kollab can never be trusted to prescribe medicine or perform medical treatment.

Sadly, antisemites like Kollab feel empowered to express their venomous, unfounded hatred for Jewish people by global institutions like the United Nations (U.N.), which is funding an anti-Israel slush fund, and refused to condemn terrorist attacks on Israel.

We will continue to fight rampant racism and anti-Jewish sentiment spreading across America and around the world, including at the U.N., and defend the interests of our great ally Israel.