[News] A pro-Palestinian activist came to Oakland to practice medicine. An outrage campaign followed

[Anti-Imperialist News]

 A pro-Palestinian activist came to Oakland to practice medicine. An
outrage campaign followed
A Columbia medical student protested the genocide in Gaza. A Project
Esther-style smear campaign followed her 2,900 miles to California.
By Raheem Hosseini <https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/raheem-hosseini/>, Staff
Writer - Aug 19, 2025
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[image: Before coming to Oakland to be practice medicine, Gabrielle Wimer,
30, was a Columbia University medical student who participated in a March
sit-in to protest the expulsion of pro-Palestinian student activists. The
act of civil disobedience got her arrested, temporarily suspended and put
her on the radar of a reactionary network that treats student activists
like public enemies.]

Before coming to Oakland to be practice medicine, Gabrielle Wimer, 30, was
a Columbia University medical student who participated in a March sit-in to
protest the expulsion of pro-Palestinian student activists. The act of
civil disobedience got her arrested, temporarily suspended and put her on
the radar of a reactionary network that treats student activists like
public enemies.
Yalonda M. James/S.F. Chronicle

On a Friday morning, three days before the start of her medical career,
Gabrielle Wimer arose in her Oakland apartment, saw the unpacking she still
needed to do and opened Signal. A friend back in New York offered
condolences. Regarding what, Wimer asked.

The truck, the friend wrote.

What truck? Wimer wrote back.

It was a van, actually. A slate-black Mercedes-Benz Sprinter-Cab Chassis
van pulling an LED video screen that projected Wimer’s photo next to an
incendiary — and false — statement: “A violent antisemite is starting her
residency at Highland Emergency Medicine.”

Accuracy in Media, a conservative Washington, D.C. nonprofit, had brought
the van to the Wilma Chan Highland Hospital Campus, where Wimer, a Columbia
University graduate, was starting on June 16. Along with displaying Wimer’s
name and image, the electronic billboard listed a URL where visitors could
send apoplectic form letters to Highland’s parent organization with one
click.

Wimer recalled two reactions to learning about the van: “Are you serious?”
And, “I thought it was over.”

Months earlier, an act of student activism put Wimer on the radar of a
loose network of activists, commentators and provocateurs who equate
criticism of the Israeli government with hatred of the Jewish people, and
conflate sympathy for Palestinians with support for the terrorist group
Hamas.

Their smear campaign shows the lengths that groups operating with limited
transparency and maximum impunity are going to silence individual activists
as the Trump administration squeezes their institutions.

On March 5, Wimer participated in a sit-in inside Barnard College’s main
library to protest the expulsion of two students
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-student-protest-goes-too-far> who
had disrupted an Israeli history class in January. (Barnard is Columbia’s
undergraduate women’s college.) Barnard officials
<https://www.chronicle.com/article/how-gaza-protests-and-trump-threats-have-shaken-barnard-college?emailConfirmed=true&email=raheem.hosseini%40sfchronicle.com&success=false&bc_nonce=n2523c1ncsjk5asv2gcts>
received a bomb threat and summoned the New York Police Department
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/03/05/rosenbury-describes-decision-to-bring-nypd-onto-campus-in-email-to-barnard-community/>.
Officers arrested Wimer and eight others and found no bomb.

After the New York Post
<https://nypost.com/2025/03/06/us-news/arrested-anti-israel-protesters-at-barnard-include-repeat-offender-woman-whose-family-started-hampton-jitney-bus-service/>
and Washington Free Beacon
<https://freebeacon.com/campus/meet-the-columbia-radicals-arrested-for-storming-a-barnard-building/>,
a lesser-known conservative tabloid, named Wimer as one of the “privileged”
“radicals” arrested in March. Physicians Against Antisemitism, which says
it’s a nonprofit that started as a private Facebook group, posted
<https://www.instagram.com/physiciansagainstantisemitism2/p/DHhUrBvx019/>
her residency placement.

In April, the shadowy
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/israel-gaza-student-protests-canary-mission.html>
Canary Mission, whose “anti-Israel” blacklist
<https://www.vox.com/politics/410125/canary-mission-the-pro-israel-group-taking-credit-for-student-deportation-explained>
the Trump administration has used
<https://www.jta.org/2025/07/10/politics/deportation-filing-confirms-that-trump-officials-used-canary-mission-list-to-target-students>
to
target students for deportation
<https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/09/pro-palestinian-deportation-documents-trial-00445238?_kx=8jmvm5QASKgBiquKrQTE5riqm2qjiheFzxuePZfEbNM.VVEwpW&utm_campaign=What+A+Day:+Grok+blocked&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Klaviyo>,
added her <https://canarymission.org/individual/Gabrielle_Wimer> to its
catalogue of more than 2,000 students
<https://canarymission.org/students?query=> and nearly 1,600 professors
<https://canarymission.org/professors> in the U.S. and Canada.

When the Free Beacon reported
<https://freebeacon.com/campus/columbia-med-students-condemn-university-after-anti-israel-radical-who-stormed-library-returns-to-class/>
in May that Wimer was sighted on campus, the Columbia Jewish Alumni
Association, a nonprofit that does not disclose its board of directors,
denounced <https://www.instagram.com/cu_jewishalumni_/p/DJSM5W1SFLK/> her
reinstatement <https://x.com/CU_JewishAlumni/status/1919469692143730864>.
Later that month, the Los Angeles nonprofit Israel Emergency Alliance-Stand
With Us started an online campaign
<https://standwithus.quorum.us/campaign/123552/> calling on Columbia’s
medical school to block Wimer’s graduation.

On June 13, Accuracy in Media’s billboard van visited Highland Hospital.

On July 2, AIM posted a pseudo-news segment
<https://aim.org/2025/07/02/accuracy-in-media-brings-mobile-billboard-to-highland-hospital-over-gabrielle-wimers-residency/>
featuring the van and its president, Adam Guillette, misrepresenting Wimer
in interviews, asking two men in a car if they would want to be treated by
“someone who got arrested injuring people taking over a building.” No
injuries were reported from the protest and Wimer was never accused of
violence. Guillette also called police on a critic who spat near his feet.

On July 31, AIM posted a second piece
<https://aim.org/2025/07/31/alameda-health-refuses-to-say-if-arrested-columbia-pro-hamas-rioter-is-still-on-staff/>
accusing Alameda Health System, which oversees Highland Hospital, of
ducking its questions. In the piece AIM incorrectly connected Wimer to a
different protest
<https://nypost.com/2025/02/26/us-news/dozens-of-pro-hamas-students-seize-control-of-historic-barnard-college-academic-building/>
in which a security guard was reportedly
<https://nypost.com/2025/03/05/us-news/barnard-college-bomb-threat-prompts-evacuation-as-anti-israel-protesters-occupy-campus-building/>
injured.

Wimer said she felt a mix of worry and laugh-out-loud disbelief.

“I had graduated, I was ready to focus on becoming the best doctor that I
could be,” she said. “(I) hoped that moving across the country would get me
out of the spotlight, out of the crosshairs of social media. But we both
know that wasn’t the case.”
[image: When Gabrielle Wimer began her residency at Oakland’s Highland
Hospital this summer, the Columbia University graduate was pursued by an
unrelenting campaign to ostracize her from society.]

When Gabrielle Wimer began her residency at Oakland’s Highland Hospital
this summer, the Columbia University graduate was pursued by an unrelenting
campaign to ostracize her from society.
Todd Trumbull/S.F. Chronicle

The mobilization of numerous groups against one individual is straight out
of Project Esther
<https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism>,
the Heritage Foundation playbook to dismantle the American pro-Palestinian
movement
<https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/18/us/project-esther-heritage-foundation-palestine.html>
.

The plan calls for ostracizing, prosecuting and deporting pro-Palestinian
supporters by characterizing them as agents of a Hamas plot inside the U.S.
It tasks Heritage with enlisting its “extensive” conservative network to
that synchronized mission — to “name and shame” individual activists;
“conduct public relations campaigns designed to place” sympathetic public
officials “in untenable positions”; and “shift … the narrative … prevalent
among significant portions of the American Jewish community.”

Crafted largely by the Christian right
<https://contendingmodernities.nd.edu/global-currents/jvp-rejecting-project-esther/>
with limited input from Jewish institutions, Project Esther has been
disavowed
<https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/add-your-name-oppose-trumps-reckless-agenda-on-gaza-and-antisemitism/?ms=21425RedirectLinktree>
by dozens <https://www.jewishtimes.com/the-overreach-of-project-esther/> of
Jewish religious
<https://truah.org/resources/project-esther-exploiting-jewish-fear-to-advance-dangerous-policy/>
and cultural organizations and leaders.

The Heritage Foundation was also behind the far-right Project 2025 policy
agenda
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/project-2025-19524368.php>
that President Donald Trump embraced
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/article/border-czar-project-2025-19911317.php>
.

Applying
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/additional-measures-to-combat-anti-semitism/>
Project Esther’s definition of antisemitism as a strictly leftist phenomenon
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-takes-forceful-and-unprecedented-steps-to-combat-anti-semitism/>,
Trump has stripped funding
<https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-08-08/trump-seeking-1-billion-fine-from-ucla-over-antisemitism-allegations>
and independence
<https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-task-force-combat-antisemitism-announces-visits-10-college-campuses-experienced>
from the nation’s top universities, clamped down
<https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/trump-cracks-college-student-visas-countries-opportunity-124400698>
on international students
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/06/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-restricts-foreign-student-visas-at-harvard-university/>
and banned immigrants
<https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/report/trump-2025-travel-ban/#countries>
from 19 African and Middle Eastern countries — while quietly slashing
programs
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-end-dhs-program-designed-thwart-terror-attacks-rcna212209>
and positions
<https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senate-hearing-antisemitism-office-for-civil-rights-rcna198417>
that combat anti-Jewish hate
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/22/justice-department-grants-canceled/>
.

The forces that dictated his approach, meanwhile, remain fixated on
individuals like Wimer, who is left to wonder which can hold out longer:
her convictions or the backlash to them.
*Travels*

Born in France and raised in Connecticut, Wimer, 30, grew up speaking
French with her Haitian grandmother and absorbing the stories of her aunts
and uncles, all of whom were doctors. She imagined joining the
international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, and
dashing off to warzones to bandage the civilians the armies never avoid.

“I kind of wanted to have a career like that, where I could use my language
skills and the skills that I hopefully have as a doctor to take care of
populations and communities that didn’t have access to health care,” she
said.

She attended the University of Chicago, joined its swim team, volunteered
at a local hospital and traveled to Rwanda to volunteer at an HIV clinic.
Both experiences fortified an appreciation for the intimacy borne between
patient and physician, even an aspiring one.

“It’s super vulnerable to be a patient,” Wimer said. “The stories that
people share with their doctors (have) always been really important to me.”

After graduating in June 2016 with a history of science and medicine
degree, Wimer moved to Guatemala to co-found MealFlour, an organization
that shows locals how to raise mealworms, a cheap and sustainable source of
protein in a country weakened by malnutrition
<https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/stories/guatemala-search-cases-child-malnutrition-are-hidden-pandemic>.
She stayed just over two years, long enough to become fluent in Spanish,
and moved to Jordan to be managing director of Paper Airplanes, an American
nonprofit that provides education to refugees
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/article/refugees-biden-trump-19944868.php>
and internally displaced people
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/article/immigration-reform-2024-19875383.php>.
She worked mostly with Syrian students, but also some from Gaza, Sudan and
Iraq.

In Jordan, she crossed the border and spent 10 days in the West Bank, where
roughly 3 million Palestinians and 460,000 Israeli settlers
<https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/west-bank/#people-and-society>
coexist under split governance
<https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/israel-west-bank-and-gaza/west-bank-and-gaza>.
She attended a neighborhood tour led by a Palestinian man who ran an
after-school program. The group came to an informal checkpoint. The Israeli
soldiers manning it told the American tourists they could go through, but
their tour guide had to take the long way around. It all seemed routine,
which is part of what bothered Wimer.

“I just felt embarrassed, I guess, at someone who had lived there their
whole life and who was not being treated the way that I was,” she said.

Missing family, she returned to the U.S. in 2021 and resumed her medical
studies at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, which has
a global health perspective. She was elected class president and gave a
speech at the January 2023 ceremony
<https://www.vagelos.columbia.edu/about-us/columbia-medicine-magazine/archives/spring-summer-2023/vp-s-news/moving-clinical-education>
marking the class’ transition into clinical education.

She was doing clinical rotations when war erupted in October 2023. Hamas
orchestrated a surprise attack, killing nearly 1,200 Israeli people and
kidnapping 250 people, and Israel responded with air strikes that killed
some 8,000
<https://www.statista.com/statistics/1616501/monthly-gaza-fatalities-injuries/>
Palestinian people in the war’s first month.

Wimer said she reached out to friends and classmates with loved ones in
both Israel and Gaza, and hoped for a quick end. But the war didn’t end,
and the graphic videos populating her Instagram feed grew more troubling.
She saw bombed hospitals
<https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/hospital-attacks-gaza-and-israel-what-counts-war-crime>
and schools, dead doctors and children
<https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-more-50000-children-reportedly-killed-or-injured-gaza-strip>
.

By 2024, international organizations like the United Nations
<https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/07/un-experts-declare-famine-has-spread-throughout-gaza-strip>,
Refugees International
<https://www.refugeesinternational.org/reports-briefs/untangling-the-reality-of-famine-in-gaza/>
and the World Food Programme
<https://www.wfp.org/news/new-gaza-food-security-assessment-sees-famine-risk-persisting-amid-ongoing-fighting-and>
were warning that Israel’s relentless offensive
<https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/whatsinblue/2024/11/briefing-on-risk-of-famine-in-northern-gaza.php>
and controversial aid restrictions were driving a catastrophe
<https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/09/1154001>. The International Criminal
Court issued arrest warrants
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges>
for
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
<https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu> and his defense minister,
accusing them of targeting Gaza’s civilian population and using starvation
as a tactic.

Netanyahu and his far-right government coalition have forcefully rejected
the ICC’s allegations and jurisdiction, and recently unveiled plans to
expand their military push into Gaza saying they must eradicate Hamas.

Both the Biden administration and Trump administration have largely
defended Israel’s actions, and criticized U.S. college students for how
they’ve protested.

Columbia became an epicenter of the debate. When the university’s
president called
in the NYPD <https://publicsafety.columbia.edu/news/letter-nypd-apr-30> to
dismantle a student encampment in April 2024, the messy aftermath sparked
solidarity encampments on campuses nationwide.
[image: New York police guard the entrance to Columbia University as
protesters rally in support of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil
on March 14, 2025. The university has become an epicenter for the debate
around college activism, and recently agreed to pay more than $220 million
to come out from under heavy scrutiny from the Trump administration.]

New York police guard the entrance to Columbia University as protesters
rally in support of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil on March
14, 2025. The university has become an epicenter for the debate around
college activism, and recently agreed to pay more than $220 million to come
out from under heavy scrutiny from the Trump administration.
Jason DeCrow/Associated Press

Juggling 12-hour hospital rotations with her studies, Wimer said she wasn’t
sure what she could muster, but “I had to do something. It started kind of
small.”

She called elected representatives and attended vigils. She read up on
student-led divestment campaigns, which pressure universities to pressure
companies that do business with Israel. But her activism remained
part-time, peripheral, until the March 5 sit-in increased her profile.

Wimer said she was one of about 100 protesters to occupy Barnard’s Milstein
Center for Teaching and Learning for nearly four hours on a damp Wednesday
afternoon, until police responded to what turned out to be a false bomb
threat <https://x.com/JessicaCostescu/status/1897400022758776983> directed
at the protesters
<https://theintercept.com/2025/04/24/barnard-college-gaza-protests-bomb-threat/>
.

Like other students, she wore a keffiyeh headscarf, which has become a visual
shorthand
<https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/28/style/style-palestinian-keffiyeh-explained>
for Palestinian solidarity or, for critics, proof of Hamas sympathy; Wimer
had bought hers in Hebron, in the West Bank.

“This is not a hateful movement,” she said. “But what’s happening right now
is a genocide. … And if we can’t agree that is wrong, if we can’t be on the
same moral page … I don’t view that as a definitional issue so much as a
devastating feature of humanity and where we are right now.”

The New York Post
<https://nypost.com/2025/03/06/us-news/anti-israel-students-arrested-at-barnard-were-from-other-schools-including-columbia-source/>,
owned by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, characterized the Barnard
protesters as “storming” the library and participating in a “melee.”
The Columbia
Spectator
<https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/03/05/nypd-begins-arrests-at-milstein-sit-in/>,
the university’s student newspaper, said most protesters were already
outside when NYPD officers arrived and began herding them toward Barnard’s
front gates, plucking several out to zip-tie their hands and arrest them.

“I was one of those people,” Wimer said.

She said she spent a few hours in a New York City jail. The next day, her
name was pinballing around the internet. Even her high school newspaper covered
her arrest <https://06880danwoog.com/tag/gabby-wimer/>.

She took down her social media, but heard what was being said anyway.
Well-meaning friends shared concerning social media posts about her.
Strangers left threatening voicemails and texts. Her parents received two
nasty letters. A former MealFlour colleague relayed an angry email.

Columbia suspended
<https://communications.news.columbia.edu/news/update-university-actions-after-disruption-barnard-college>
Wimer and three other arrested Columbia students, though it didn’t specify
on what grounds.

A day later, pro-Palestinian student leader Mahmoud Khalil
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/columbia-student-deportations-20267994.php>
was taken by immigration authorities despite having a green card.
Columbia’s then-interim President Katrina Armstrong did not acknowledge
<https://president.columbia.edu/news/leading-through-challenging-time> the
extraordinary detention, having declared
<https://president.columbia.edu/news/responding-federal-action> that
combating campus antisemitism was her “number one priority” as she sought
to win back $400 million in federal funding the Trump administration had
canceled.

Columbia declined to comment on student disciplinary actions. In a
statement, it said that it balanced students’ right to free expression
against their right to participate in academic activities.

“Our focus is on preserving our core mission to teach, create, and advance
knowledge while ensuring a safe campus for all members of our community,”
the statement read.

Last month, Columbia agreed
<https://president.columbia.edu/news/resolution-federal-investigations-and-restoration-universitys-research-funding>
to pay the federal government more than $220 million to resolve multiple
investigations and protect its access to future research funding. It
previously acceded to White House demands
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/21/columbia-university-funding-trump-demands>
to restrict student activism and add conservative faculty
<https://president.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/03.21.2025%20Columbia%20-%20FINAL.pdf>
.

Bowing to similar pressure
<https://www.kqed.org/news/12046971/uc-caves-to-trump-pressure-and-bans-israel-boycotts>,
then-University of California President Michael Drake banned the UC’s
student governments
<https://dailybruin.com/2025/07/03/student-governments-across-uc-campuses-banned-from-anti-israel-boycotts>
from boycotting companies that associate with Israel.

The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office is currently prosecuting
12 Stanford University students
<https://da.santaclaracounty.gov/stanford-protesters-charged-destructive-building-takeover>
on felony vandalism and trespassing charges over the June 2024 occupation
of the president’s office.

Rachel Lederman, senior counsel at the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund,
which is representing
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.aclunc.org_sites_default_files_Complaint-2520For-2520Injunctive-2520and-2520Declaratory-2520Relief.pdf&d=DwMFAg&c=euGZstcaTDllvimEN8b7jXrwqOf-v5A_CdpgnVfiiMM&r=5CPaPDOlOkY16QzU2lqiNu1tVTlm74Nl-YVny0GMu4s&m=MzZN_wMlxirdJE5aEvNVHDjz9_jN0_c8I5P0jLG2ToytMDyLgm-TXUUq5mYI-SnO&s=sf8dHBU0AZlNrC1klHvLMolIfQRcntGBSM6DChnqajo&e=>
UC Santa Cruz students who were banned from campus after being arrested
during pro-Palestinian demonstrations, called the criminal prosecution
“unprecedented at Stanford.”

Thomas C. Seabaugh, a Los Angeles civil rights attorney also involved in
the UC Santa Cruz lawsuit, said pro-Palestinian students correctly called
attention to a genocide and were unfairly punished by their schools, their
government and far-right vigilante groups like the Proud Boys.

“All these crackdowns were designed to silence students and to terrify
them,” he said. “And to a certain degree, I think it’s worked. … The
students have been taken aback by how ferocious the response has been.”

Wimer said her suspension lasted five weeks. She described it as a dizzying
time: The online harassment campaigns were ongoing. Her university’s
disciplinary process was changing in real time. She was facing the
possibility of criminal charges. She felt tired, anxious and numb. Parents
and friends used the word “zombie” to describe her.

“Knowing that people were pushing and calling for me to not graduate from
medical school without knowing all the work that I had done and my
motivations for becoming a doctor was very stressful,” she said. “I didn’t
know what was going to happen.”

In April, Wimer said she appeared before a sort of academic tribunal on
Zoom. She provided character references, emphasized her volunteer work and
argued her case.

“I have spent my whole life trying to become a doctor so that I can take
care of people,” she recalled saying. “And my activism and anything else
that I’m accused of stems from my love of humanity and my dedication to
people, and my belief that every life is valuable.”

Columbia lifted Wimer’s suspension, but barred the class president from
attending her graduation ceremony and banned her from campus for a year. In
June, the criminal case against her was dropped.

Wimer downplayed the punishment. She’d been reading about Dr. Hussam Abu
Safiya <https://www.amnesty.org/en/petition/release-dr-hussam-abu-safiya/>,
a former hospital director in northern Gaza who has been in Israeli custody
since December 2024. “And I get to be a doctor,” she said.
*Dr. Wimer*

Working in an Oakland emergency department is like the HBO show “The Pitt,”
Wimer said, though no day has been quite that hectic. Some have come close.

Some shifts, the doors swing open to a trauma-train of gurneys sledding in
from different disasters: car wrecks, shootings, stabbings, falls. Wimer
has locked fingers and pushed hard on chests, urging spent hearts to go on.
She’s waved the ultrasound wand casting for brain bleeds. She’s watched
attending physicians run trauma codes, knowing that one day it will be on
her to lead a team with a cool, decisive head amid all those sights and
sounds.

“Those days are very busy,” she said. “But I like it.” Part of what drew
her to medicine, she said, was the relentless humanity, the constant
engagement with people experiencing that elemental desire: to have their
hurt tended. “That’s what I get to do everyday,” she said.

Slower days, she gets to do the other thing that means much to her: talk to
people from different walks. Her Spanish has gotten a lot of use and she’s
dipped into her conversational Arabic. She’s heard Vietnamese, Mandarin,
Cantonese, Russian and some of the 120-odd
<https://www.visitoakland.com/blog/post/20-things-you-didnt-know-about-oakland/>
other languages spoken in the diverse East Bay city
<https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/oaklandcitycalifornia/PST120224>.
She’s heard snippets of immigration stories from all over.

In the pediatric ward, she’s asked kids with mysterious pains how school is
going, what’s stressing them out and what they’re looking forward to. She
has consulted Poison Control on overdose victims and called psychiatric
facilities about attempted suicides, finagling a bed for someone willing to
be convinced that they want to live.

It’s a lot of stimulation and task switching, with computer breaks to log
onto UpToDate, the resource for doctors staying up on always-evolving
medical procedures.

It’s everything Wimer hoped it would be. She’s surrounded by colleagues who
want to be exactly where they are, and by patients who gladly, proudly call
Oakland home.

“It takes a while to get to know a new place, but I think I’m starting to,”
she said. “I definitely have felt more welcome and supported here than I
did at Columbia.”

Outside the hospital, it’s been quiet. Wimer avoids Googling herself, but
hasn’t heard of a new provocation or mobile billboard sighting. Canary
Mission has been preoccupied with New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran
Mamdani. Accuracy in Media’s online petition to get her fired is still up.
But AIM has, for the time being, turned its focus to Iowa and North
Carolina, where it secretly recorded university employees in an attempt to
expose diversity, equity and inclusion defenders.

As for whether these groups are rattling a Project Esther-style daisy chain
of outrage, Kevin Rachlin, Washington director at the Nexus Project, a
coalition of Jewish academics and advocates that issued an early warning
<https://nexusproject.us/nexus-resources/project-esther-a-nexus-project-briefing/>
about the Heritage Foundation plan, said it’s the other way around.

“Project Esther is actually stealing from those groups,” Rachlin said.
“They were doing these doxxing campaigns first.”

When it formed in 1969, AIM fashioned itself a media watchdog and was
motivated by founder Reed Irvine’s belief that news coverage of the U.S.
war in Vietnam was too critical, and coverage of antiwar protesters too
sympathetic. Today, AIM focuses less on criticizing institutions and public
officials than it does on trolling individuals.

It has visited the Bay Area at least a half-dozen times since October 2022
<https://aim.org/2022/10/13/aim-mobile-billboard-confronts-berkeley-laws-ban-on-jews/>,
when AIM drove a boxy U-Haul-style truck covered in Adolph Hitler images to
UC Berkeley.
[image: A mobile billboard sponsored by Accuracy in Media passes Piedmont
Avenue during the UC Berkeley Law School commencement at the Greek Theater
in Berkeley, on May 10, 2024. The conservative Washington D.C. nonprofit
has sent its mobile billboard vehicles to Bay Area campuses numerous times
over the years, and more recently targeted a medical resident at an Oakland
hospital.]

A mobile billboard sponsored by Accuracy in Media passes Piedmont Avenue
during the UC Berkeley Law School commencement at the Greek Theater in
Berkeley, on May 10, 2024. The conservative Washington D.C. nonprofit has
sent its mobile billboard vehicles to Bay Area campuses numerous times over
the years, and more recently targeted a medical resident at an Oakland
hospital.
Jessica Christian/The Chronicle

UC Berkeley journalism professor Edward Wasserman, who has examined the
undercover recording tactics
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/undercover-journalism-Project-Veritas-17476621.php>
used by Project Veritas, AIM’s more successful successor, said the groups
are less interested in an honest debate about the war in Gaza or any other
subject than they are in “making it as difficult as possible” for
individuals to criticize the Trump administration.

“There’s a cruelty and a harshness and a coarseness involved in this that I
find really disturbing and problematic,” Wasserman added. “I feel for this
(person). And I don’t know anything about this doctor, but God almighty. …
It’s really, really mean.”

AIM did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests to interview Guillette.

Canary Mission also did not respond to the Chronicle. Neither did
Physicians Against Antisemitism, the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association or
Israel Emergency Alliance-Stand With Us.

Alameda Health System did not respond to emails.

Wimer knows that, by speaking to the Chronicle, she may experience a
renewed barrage of organized outrage
<https://www.sfchronicle.com/us-world/article/nazi-antisemitism-israel-hamas-18476691.php>.
She doesn’t want that. She’s still recovering from the last firestorm. But
she said she won’t run from it, or adulterate her values, or forget Gaza.

An independent medical study
<https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.06.19.25329797v3.full.pdf>
released in June estimated the war in Gaza killed nearly 84,000 people
<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02009-8> through January, with
more than half of the dead being women, children and adults over the age of
65. The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, does not include the
more than 1,000 Palestinians who were killed from May 27 to July 21 while
seeking humanitarian aid, according to the United Nations
<https://www.un.org/unispal/document/ohchr-palestinians-in-gaza-continue-to-be-killed-by-starvation-or-by-bullets-from-the-israeli-military-while-trying-to-access-food/>
.

Local health officials put Gaza’s death toll around 60,000
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/29/gaza-death-toll-60000/>.

Last month, two of Israel’s leading
<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/28/israel-committing-genocide-in-gaza-say-israel-based-human-rights-groups>
human rights organizations
<https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/07/israel-opt-israeli-organizations-conclude-israel-committing-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza-in-another-milestone-for-accountability-efforts/>
accused their government of perpetrating a deliberate
<https://www.phr.org.il/en/genocide-in-gaza-eng/?pr=18564> genocide
<https://www.btselem.org/publications/202507_our_genocide>.

Meanwhile, Wimer said her patients are scared. Of what happens if
immigration agents enter the hospital. Of what happens when Trump’s
<https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/07/president-trumps-one-big-beautiful-bill-is-now-the-law/>
One Big Beautiful Bill strips them of Medicare
<https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-truth-about-the-one-big-beautiful-bill-acts-cuts-to-medicaid-and-medicare/#:~:text=Medicare%20benefits%20will%20be%20cut,You%E2%80%91Go%20Act%20of%202010.>
after the 2026 midterms. The fear, it seems to catch like an infection. And
Wimer, well, she’s a doctor now.

“Figuring out how to keep people safe in the East Bay and ending the
genocide are both very important to me,” she said. “There’s only so much I
can do in the emergency department.”
Aug 19, 2025
Raheem Hosseini <https://www.sfchronicle.com/author/raheem-hosseini/>
Reporter

Raheem Hosseini is a writer-at-large focused on California and its
relationship with the U.S. He served as the Chronicle’s race and equity
editor from February 2021 to March 2025, and is the former news editor of
the Sacramento News & Review, his hometown alternative weekly. He has a
bachelor’s degree in contemporary literature from UC Berkeley.
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