A nephrologist at Royal Perth Hospital in Australia has been repeatedly harassing both Jewish medical professionals and non-Jewish Zionist medical professionals via online trolling, three doctors told The Jerusalem Post.
Sharon Stoliar, a former midwife and president of the Maternity Consumer Network, spoke to the Post about Dr Omar Azzam, whom she accused of "online harassment, racial vilification and bullying."
Stoliar is not Jewish herself, but is married to an Israeli man and is publicly pro-Israel. Despite having made two formal complaints about Dr Azzam and requesting his suspension, she said no observable actions have been taken, and his behaviour has continued unchecked.
Stoliar's first formal complaint was on March 5, 2025, when she reported that Dr Azzam had used his Instagram accounts, @omarazzam2003 and subsequently @thoroughlyentertained, to make derogatory comments towards her, such as offering her "two neurons to take the number up to a total of five," suggesting she is unintelligent. At the time of the first complaint, his comments online and on the platforms of her organization were not related to her pro-Israel views or Jewish family.
Nevertheless, she argued that his actions violated the Good Medical Practice: A Code of Conduct for Doctors in Australia (sections 5.2 and 5.4), the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, and the Racial Vilification Act 1996, and provided evidence and demanded a full investigation.
She told the Post that RPH took no such steps, and she was not informed of any outcomes due to cited privacy concerns.
Following the first complaint, she said Dr. Azzam's behaviour escalated under new aliases.
A new Instagram account, @goonerite1, with the display name "Shazz" (referencing his prior alias "Shazzam Powers"), resumed trolling my posts. The profile image featured the band Bob Vylan, known for "death to the IDF" chants.
Stoliar explained that the Instagram account is linked to Dr. Azzam via his Facebook profile under his real name, which uses the identical Bob Vylan image and includes the bio text "DD2TIDF" ("Death, Death to the IDF").
In the "Sydney Palestine Action Group" on Facebook, Dr. Azzam posted images of IDF soldiers overlaid with inverted red triangles, a symbol used by Hamas to mark targets for attack and murder.
According to Stoliar, RPH's inaction has created a legal liability. As she pointed out, any individuals harmed by Dr Azzam could rightly claim that the harms were foreseeable, and yet RPH "has ignored or minimised the risks."
Lackluster official response
The hospital was aware of Dr. Azzam's behavior as early as July 2024, when a Jewish doctor complained to the medical director of RPH about Dr. Azzam's online harassment and trolling, and the medical director confirmed they were already aware of the issues with Dr. Azzam. He has also been engaging in harassing other Jewish accounts, Stoliar added.
"The hospital's failure to act on these complaints, and then mine in March 2025, has allowed Dr. Azzam's unrestrained escalation into overt expressions of hatred toward Jews and now Christians, including the use of symbols associated with terrorism," said Stoliar.
"His use of terrorist symbols and expressions of hatred toward Jews and Christians raises grave concerns for patient safety. There is no assurance that these prejudices will not influence his clinical practice, consciously or subconsciously, particularly with unconscious patients under his care, where biases could manifest in harmful ways. It is impossible to prove he is not a danger to Jewish, Christian, or other vulnerable patients at RPH. This constitutes a breach of duty to protect the public and uphold professional standards."
She then made a second complaint to both RPH and Alan Pennington, the Manager of Integrity and Ethics in Western Australia, on October 2.
Stoliar reiterated her call for Dr. Azzam's immediate suspension pending a full independent investigation, and referral to AHPRA (the national regulator) and relevant authorities for potential criminal or regulatory violations.
The response from Pennington said, "I can confirm that East Metropolitan Health Service (EMHS) takes matters of this nature extremely seriously and is conducting an immediate investigation. Once concluded, EMHS will determine the appropriate actions, with consideration to procedural fairness and confidentiality."
Stoliar said that this was a copy-and-paste job that was almost identical to that which she received following her first complaint, giving her no reason to believe that the concerns detailed in this second complaint would be taken seriously.
"I feel like the dismissiveness of our regulator and the hospital has resulted in him being emboldened," she added.
"I don’t understand how Alan Pennington could have viewed all the material and had so many independent complaints and yet ignored all of it and been dismissive," she continued. "[Dr Azzam] could be an excellent physician and highly knowledgeable, but he has let himself, his patients and his colleagues down by engaging in extreme behaviour that should be intolerable for any employer."
A second doctor, A, spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity about his harassment by Dr. Azzam.
A is openly Jewish but says he has not posted about Israel or Zionism, nor has he ever met Dr. Azzam. However, he told the Post that Dr Azzam sent him over 30 messages on Facebook with just a Palestinian flag. When A asked, "Why are you doing this to me?" Dr. Azzam said, "I just like to send pretty pictures to people."
"So for him, whom I've never met, to single me out and a number of other people, it's only because he's lurking on various Jewish social media groups."
"I called RPH and spoke to someone from the medical director's department. I said, 'I just want to let you know about this doctor who's a renal physician. He's been sending me unprovoked messages, and I know he's been doing it to other people, and I've asked him to stop, and he keeps sending them to me, so now I've blocked him. This is a doctor who works in your hospital and is hassling a whole lot of Jewish people for no reason that I can tell whatsoever, except that we're Jewish.' And they acknowledged that they knew something about it, but to my knowledge, they didn't do anything."
The Post also spoke to Dr Doron Samuell, who has engaged with the Federal health department about systemic failures in addressing radicalised health professionals.
"We have highly educated individuals who may excel in their chosen profession relying on evidence-based practices. On issues that provoke strong emotional responses, they appear to forget their usual responsibilities and show poor judgment, often behaving in regressed, destructive ways, putting both their careers and the welfare of patients at risk.
Systemic institutional failures in responding to poor conduct have led to escalating bad behaviours fracturing and polarising the entire health system," he informed the federal health department in a meeting last week.
Samuell has advised the Federal Health Minister to reconceptualise the issue to see antisemitism as a feature of a larger problem that threatens social cohesion. He has encouraged inter-departmental collaboration to first appreciate the scope of the problem. Samuell hopes that depoliticising the health sector will restore trust in our practitioners and institutions. “Our health ministers’ paralysis in addressing needed systemic reform is an avoidance strategy that will ultimately erode patient outcomes,” he told the Post.