The Source of His Discomfiture ... Raw Antisemitism

"The health system issues that may have played a role in Manny Moss deciding to leave, they didn't just arise last week or last month or last year."

"The problems with the health system have existed for years, and he could have left at any time before."

"So what it comes down to is the antisemitism and the feeling that this [city] has become an increasingly dangerous or unrecognizable place to live [for Canadian Jewish Montrealers]."

Anonymous source

 

"[Dr. Moss's departure is a blow to the already perilous state of cardiac surgery in Quebec]."

"He's 45 and he's ultra specialized in robotic surgery."

"He's in the prime of his career and he's leaving for personal reasons and obviously for resources reasons."

Dr. Louis Perrault, president, Association des chirurgiens cardio-vasculaires et thoraciques du Quebec 

Dr. Emmanuel Moss sits at the controls as he performs robotic cardiac surgery at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal on Monday May 28, 2018. John Mahoney / Montreal Gazett

 

Canadian Jews, although proud of their citizenship have been shocked in the past several years by a sudden upheaval in civic life in Canada where groups of anti-Israel -- and by extension anti-Jewish-presence -- protesters led by Palestinian student groups throughout Canadian universities alongside incitement and funding from foreign sources have called for a 'final solution', chanting for Jews to 'go back to Poland', railing against Israeli 'genocide' while calling for a 'global Intifada' and the establishment of a sovereign Palestine 'from the river to the sea'. All of which is doublespeak for the destruction of the state of Israel, and a yearning for another Holocaust.

 

Dr. Emmanuel Moss, Institut de cardiologie de Montréal)

That their government, under Liberal party leadership, has done nothing whatever to put a stop to the constant harassment of Canadian Jews -- the malicious marches, the university campus 'Palestinian' tent camps where Jewish students and staff were mercilessly threatened and harassed, Canadian-Jewish-owned businesses vandalized, marches taking place in areas of cities comprising Jewish neighbourhoods -- leaving the Jewish community confused, abandoned, isolated and beyond troubled, wondering how safe they and their families are now in the country they call home.

 

Aside from random Canadian Jews  now and again deciding they've had enough, and preparing to abandon their Canadian roots for other places where they feel safe and secure, there have been high-profile departures, such as that of Professor Gad Saad, formerly of Concordia University, leaving to take up residence in the United States. "I'm now leaving in large part because it became difficult for me, if not impossible, to be a high-profile Jewish professor who supports the right of Israel to exist", he explained. Not did the death threats he received convince him to remain in Canada.

 

Now, the Jewish community in Montreal has been made aware that the chief of cardiac surgery at the Jewish General Hospital tendered his resignation, with plans to move his family to Atlanta. He has cited both rising antisemitism in Montreal, as well as the deteriorating health-care system in the province.  

After working out of the Jewish General Hospital for the past decade, Dr. Emmanuel Moss informed his patients and his synagogue of his impending move to the United States. Although Dr. Moss declined to offer a statement to the press, close sources confirmed the background of disillusionment with rampant antisemitism and the lack of action by authorities to crack down on serious incidents of Jew-hate.

Montreal4Palestine posted this image to Instagram on Wednesday in response to the public outcry, clarifying that the three figures hanging in effigy at a rally on Saturday in Montreal were directed specifically at political figures. (mtl4pal/Instagram)

 

Images that circulated recently of masked anti-Zionist protesters in Montreal staging a mock hanging of an effigy of a kippah-clad man that appeared to depict Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, added its weight of concern over anti-Jew extremism to the incidents of physical assaults, vandalism of Jewish-owned businesses and firebombing of synagogues and bullets fired at a Jewish girls' school.   Incidents too numerous, frustrating and worrying that in total represented a complete rejection of Jewish life in Canada, with no response from the federal government for the years these events have been carried out in the wake of the mass Palestinian terrorist atrocities in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

 

On a more personal, professional level, Dr. Moss's frustration  with limited resources for heart patients in vital need of heart surgery in Quebec, all played on his sensibilities. Obviously, for  him in his professional capacity layered over with his personal reaction in alarm over rising antisemitism played their critical role in his difficult decision to leave Canada. Just recently, Dr. Moss sounded the alarm over a shortage of perfusionists at the Jewish General, with the warning that the scarcity of technicians operating heart-lung machines placed the hospital's cardiac surgery program in jeopardy.

 

Jewish General Hospital, Montreal    Photo: Adama Diop

"From a strategic planning perspective, we have been aware that Dr. Moss could leave at a time of his choosing, for personal reasons, and we have been working on contingencies for some time."

"When he departs, we will have a plan in place to offset any potential negative impact to our cardiac surgery program, with a view of maintaining timely access to high-quality care."

Dr. Lawrence Rosenberg, chief executive officer, west-central Montreal health authority