Cardiologist Peter MacDonald Can’t Save Lives as the Zionist Lobby Has Seen Him Suspended

Australian cardiologist Professor Peter MacDonald has been suspended for over a month, as St Vincent’s Hospital dropped the health professional from its roster based on complaints from Zionist lobby group Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care that related to remarks he made in doubt of allegations that Iran was behind two local arson attacks at a public forum on Palestine.

MacDonald has been suspended by St Vincent’s and the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute, over an incident that involved his commenting that he considered Israeli intelligence agency Mossad to be the more likely culprit behind the arson attacks, while he was in attendance of a Palestine Justice Movement forum on Gadigal and Wangal land at Marrickville’s Addi Road Centre.

The cardiologist’s statement referred to an August ASIO announcement that asserted arson attacks, which were considered to be part of a broader spate of so-called antisemitic property damage crimes, had been perpetrated by Iran. MacDonald made a quip about the attacks more likely having been the work of Mossad, which the crowd responded to with much laughter.

The idea that regular people in this country who express opposition to the mass slaughter and starvation of Palestinians by the Israeli state, which ultimately seeks to appropriate their land once it is ethnically cleansed, will be set upon by a group of anonymous Zionists and charged with having openly expressed antisemitism, or hatred towards Jewish people, is now commonplace.

This prevention of a cardiologist from saving people’s lives is part of a wider McCarthyite campaign, which targets criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza as antisemitism, and it commenced when Israel began this mass atrocity in October 2023. And another thing the constituency has recently become privy to is that such a witch hunt can be progressed despite most realising it’s a sham.

Witch hunting with the Zionists

“I learned earlier this week that Iran was behind the terrorist attacks-the antisemitic attacks here in Sydney. I thought it was a no-brainer that these were Mossad-engineered events,” MacDonald said before the Saturday afternoon crowd at Addi Road. “Am I being totally naïve or has the Zionist lobby taken over ASIO as well.”

The Australian suggests there was something wrong with the keen response from the forum audience, which involved appreciative laughter and clapping. The incidents that ASIO and MacDonald were referring to involved the firebombing of Bondi’s Lewis’ Continental Kitchen in October 2024 and an arson attack upon the Addas Israel Synagogue of Melbourne last December.

The Zionist lobby is an entity that was not a commonplace feature of the Australian political sphere, until the outbreak of the Gaza genocide in October 2023. The sole purpose of this lobby it would seem is to conflate criticism of settler colonial Israel with the type of dehumanising antisemitism that facilitated the genociding of six million Jewish people during World War II.

The Federal Court found that journalist Antoinette Lattouf was wrongfully terminated by the ABC, due to her opposition to the genocide. Lattouf was subjected to the same treatment as MacDonald: a WhatsApp group called Lawyers for Israel made complaints to the ABC about the need for her to be sacked. The groups complaining about Lattouf and MacDonald are both part of the Zionist lobby.

And this turning to penalise their employees on the part of large institutions, like the ABC and St Vincent’s, has repeatedly played out over the last two years in the local setting, as employers appear more concerned about the illogical assertions of the Zionist lobby in respect of offending Israel, than any real concern for their employees’ rights to oppose an illegal genocide.

Political comments condemned as racism

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin wrote to Macdonald on 2 September 2025, outlining that while the Jewish community is used to assertions that Mossad is in the habit of perpetrating “false flag operations”, he didn’t expect them from “an eminent Australian cardiologist”, as usually they’re made anonymously.

Ryvchin doesn’t elaborate upon why the Jewish community in Australia would care either way as to whether Professor MacDonald’s belief that Mossad, instead of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, carried out the arson attacks. In that sense, it further doesn’t logically follow that a heart surgeon should be suspended over suggesting Israeli intelligence was behind any incident anywhere.

The Council of Australian Jewry head added that he couldn’t understand how MacDonald could “conclude and openly assert, with no evidence, that the ‘Zionist lobby’” – by which the doctor presumably meant Ryvchin and his colleagues – has ‘taken over’ ASIO” and he then asserted that it was an abomination to have suggested Mossad had carried out any false flag operations.

A spokesperson for St Vincents told The Australian in early September that while “the individual”, or MacDonald, had appeared at the Palestine Justice Movement forum as a private citizen, “his stature as a high-profile and senior clinician” required it to comment. The institution then washed its hands of any association with his remarks and said if its code of conduct was breached it will take action.

The Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute said in a 3 September press release that the institution categorically disagrees with MacDonald’s comments, which it found “antisemitic and conspiratorial”. It then condemned “antisemitism, racism and all forms of discrimination”. However, it failed to spell out what racism has to do with the comments made about a foreign intelligence agency.

The antisemitic witch hunt

Launched automatically in October 2023 – as all Zionist lobby participants are preprogrammed with an understanding of which way to push the dominant sociopolitical discourse – the antisemitic witch hunt has captured many more than MacDonald and Lattouf. And it should be recognised that the strength the lobby had in being a relatively unknown entity in late 2023, is now dwindling.

The Zionist lobby challenge against journalist Mary Kostikidas charging her with antisemitic online posting may be struck out on Thursday. A similar case falsely charging the University of Sydney’s Dr Nick Riemer and Professor John Keane commenced last week, while long-term Palestinian rights advocate, writer Randa Abdel-Fattah, has had her academic grant suspended.

Following a spate of so-called antisemitic arson and graffiti attacks in Greater Sydney over October 2024 through to February 2025, the Australian federal police and NSW police announced in March that their investigations had led to the conclusion that the crimes were staged by organised crime figures overseas, seeking to portray a spate of Jewish hate crimes for their own purposes.

ASIO, however, then announced in August that two crimes had been carried out by Iran and that nation’s ambassador was then expelled. But in looking at the circumstances of these two particular arson attacks, the assertion that Iran was behind them becomes problematic, especially as Israeli sources pointed to the likely source of the intel leading to this conclusion coming from Mossad.

Underlying these assertions made by the Zionist lobby is the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The charge of antisemitism is so substantial, as it invokes the dehumanising hatred of the Nazis towards the Jews. Yet, this is now being used to deflect from the fact that Israel is utilising dehumanising hatred to facilitate the attempted annihilation of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Professor Peter MacDonald is now suspended from working because he criticised Israel and was falsely labelled with expressing hatred towards Jews. These cases are obviously deceptive, according to much of the constiuency, and the understanding of this is rising.

So, it would seem in the local setting that the Zionist campaign to deflect criticism of Israel via the conflation of this sentiment with antisemitism is failing, and these false assertions are being recognised by increasing numbers for what they are, and that is deflection from the genocidal and apartheid entity known as Israel, while it tries to annihilate the Palestinian people of the Gaza Strip.