I was suspended from Emory over my Palestine activism. I will not let it stop me.

 In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

“The doctor’s words echoed in my mind, ‘I’m sorry, Mrs. Odeh. We don’t know your prognosis. We’ve never seen anyone live this long with polio.’ As we walked out of the office, twenty years’ worth of memories of this Muslim woman—this Palestinian refugee, my mother—passed through my head. Memories of watching her clench her teeth and hold back tears because getting up in the morning was too painful. Of raising five children with a body that stopped working decades ago. I mulled over the doctor’s response to my mother’s birthplace: ‘What’s Palestine?’. In 1967, at just a year old, she and her family fled on foot to Jordan. During this forced expulsion, my mother contracted polio, permanently disabling her.

My mother’s experience taught me that health, social issues, and identity are intertwined. People are not always born sick. Oftentimes they contract disease as a result of preventable situations—in my mother’s instance, as a result of fleeing colonization.”

This was the beginning of my medical school personal statement, written more than six years ago. With this excerpt, I also began the testimony for my disciplinary hearing at Emory University School of Medicine. I sat across from three faculty of medicine who advocated for my expulsion in what my PhD advisor, a world-renowned sociologist and expert on racism, deemed a “Jim Crow court”. After being interviewed on Democracy Now! about the Emory encampments in April 2024, I was put through an unjust conduct procedure at my medical school. In that broadcast, Amy Goodman asked about my previous comments on Emory School of Medicine’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza. I gave the example of our surgery clerkship director who participated in Israel’s war crimes by serving in the IDF in early 2024 and was allowed to return to his teaching position at the institution.

When I interviewed for Emory’s medical school in 2018, I asked a senior admissions officer, in these exact words, “Will it be a problem that I am Palestinian, one who will be advocating for the liberation of Palestine?” And he replied, “No, of course not, it won’t be a problem.” Now, several years later, when I am holding true to the promise I delivered both in writing and in words, to be a physician who speaks out against structures of violence, I am being disciplined. I was transparent about my commitment to not just protect life on an individual level, but to tearing down systems that take life on a massive scale. Like many medical schools, Emory has proven that its missions of “care” and “justice” are in name only, there to obfuscate their own complicity in harm.

When I applied to medical school, I made the decision to write my application materials about Palestine. Specifically, my essays advocated for building a health system in which physicians addressed structures of violence, like settler colonialism or incarceration. Addressing and changing the social circumstances that take the lives of black, brown, and indigenous peoples should be considered a form of healthcare.  My undergraduate advisor warned me that my essays would ensure my denial from medical schools as they challenged the notion that U.S. healthcare is inherently benevolent (it’s not). In fact, she said that admissions committees would think I am a “terrorist” for talking about U.S. complicity in the colonization of Palestine. And she was mostly right—I was rejected from almost every school I applied to. However, I had made a commitment to myself then, the same commitment I return to now: no degree is worth my silence on injustice. I applied to medical school because of my duty to care. I wanted to become a healthcare worker to protect black, brown, and indigenous lives from systems of violence that target them. And if medical schools were rejecting me for this promise, then those were not places that could teach me to protect life.

Now, I am being pushed out of my medical training by the very administrators that accepted my initial personal statement and my promise to address systemic harm. I used my voice to call on my colleagues and medical institutions to speak up against the slaughter of more than 200,000 Palestinians. I put my own future on the line to address the normalization of physicians serving in militaries who are guilty of committing genocide as part of our care teams. For my advocacy, I have been repeatedly targeted by medical students, faculty, and deans in the past year for questioning Emory’s legitimization and perpetuation of genocide. Did my words not rise to the gravity of the situation? At Emory School of Medicine, they ask us to be upstanders in the face of violence. But when we do exactly this, they fire, intimidate, harass, or punish us.

In the last year, Emory School of Medicine’s administrators have targeted  students, including myself, for their support for Palestine; ranging from their speech to their private social media posts. In order to silence us, we have been asked to apologize and promise not to speak on Palestine in order to keep our positions in medical school. This violence is not just extended to students, but to Emory’s own faculty.  In October of 2023, Emory Healthcare fired a Palestinian hematologist/oncologist based on false accusations of antisemitism. Emory is perpetuating the same racist and eliminationist logic that kills Palestinians in Gaza by weaponizing false accusations of antisemitism to ruin the lives and careers of Palestinian students and faculty outside of Gaza. In this way, Israel can kill Palestinians in Gaza, while relying on American medical institutions to ruin the lives of Palestinians and those in solidarity here. Although U.S. medicine’s legacy of anti-black racism, colonization, and genocide speaks for itself, Gaza has exposed just how carceral our care institutions are.

American physicians are not just bystanders to the U.S. and Israeli genocide, but are an integral part of maintaining the legitimacy of the West’s war crimes. For instance, some faculty at the Emory School of Medicine are serving in the IDF as it is committing a genocide. While others have publicly parroted Israeli talking points, claiming that civilian or NGO casualties in Gaza are accidental, and in fact are the faults of the victims. Still others, who practice pediatric medicine, have tweeted “You are a joke. Pigs.” in response to the UN Human Rights Council observing a moment of silence for the loss of Palestinian life. 

These are just a handful of the physicians at Emory. Even academic medical institutions, like the Journal of American Medical Association, publish egregious pieces by healthcare workers that justify the bombing of hospitals in Gaza. This genocide relies not only on IDF soldiers pulling the trigger, but also on U.S. physicians and institutions legitimizing the destruction of Gaza’s health system. What kind of care are medical students learning when these are our mentors and educators? What kind of care are patients receiving from doctors who believe in the legitimacy of apartheid, and that some human lives are not as important as others? These physicians are creating a world in which only some people—those who look like them—deserve care and protection. Israel would not be able to commit the annihilation of Gaza publicly without the support of U.S. healthcare workers. This genocide is happening because our medical schools and healthcare institutions are preventing us from using our power and privilege to stop it.

The medical school administration at Emory suspended me on November 19th, 2024, citing violations of “respect” and “professionalism” due to my interview on Democracy Now!. I brought attention to an Emory physician-faculty’s aiding and abetting a genocide and the destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza. They have attempted to silence my advocacy to end the genocide and U.S. healthcare’s complicity in structural violence. But they have failed to scare or silence me.

I am a Palestinian who is still alive. And I will make sure to use my breath to fight for every life that Israel, the U.S., and Emory is trying to extinguish. No matter the cost.

Israel is more threatened by Palestinian healthcare workers than by the resistance fighters because of their ability to teach life. To teach courage. To teach care. That is why Israel is targeting the health sector and health providers of Gaza with the full might of one of the most well-endowed militaries in the world. Just as physicians in Gaza put their lives on the line to protect one another, so will I. These are my physician mentors; not the ones who run our medical institutions.

Just like Israel, U.S. medical institutions are afraid of those who fight for life and refuse to normalize complicity in violence. For every act of care we share, for every life we save, for every voice we raise in opposition to death, we are victorious. No matter if my advocacy leads to my expulsion or not, I have held onto my moral compass and my promise of care. That is my victory. Victory is not won by how much land can be stolen, how many people can be murdered, or how much power you can accumulate, as Western empire would have us believe. Victory is won by maintaining our love for one another, holding sacred every life like it is our own, and choosing to protect each other no matter the cost.

Like my mother, who fought against the odds to live, despite the Israeli and U.S. death machines, I will fight for life. I will fight for life. I will fight for life.

Although material victory has yet to touch Gaza, Palestinians there have demonstrated care, compassion, sumud, resilience, and faith beyond what most people can imagine. Physicians like Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya have continued to practice medicine even when their children have been murdered for it, or Dr. Hammam Alloh who refused to evacuate and leave his patients behind in al-Shifa hospital. What victory is more noble than that? 

Alhamdulilah for a victory in suspension. Gaza’s victory is already here, suspended in the heavens. Only now we fight to have it touch the Earth. Our collective victory is near. I have no doubt.

For God is sufficient for me, and He is the best disposer of affairs.

In response to my suspension, a community-led effort to support me has been launched. It  can be found here.

Editor’s note: As of the time of publication, Emory University did not respond to a request for comment on the allegations made in this Op-Ed.