The University of Melbourne has cancelled a prestigious lecture by eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter McDonald after Zionist pressure. Wendy Bacon reports.
Eminent Australian cardiologist Professor Peter McDonald who was scheduled to give a prestigious lecture at University of Melbourne in July has been ‘cancelled’ due to behind-the-scenes pressure from Zionists.
In April, Macdonald who is a pioneer and innovator in heart transplant medicine was invited by University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital to deliver the annual Memorial lecture in honour of surgeon John Clarebrough.
The lecture is delivered at the Surgical Forum which is the premier event for the partnership between University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne.
Second time cancelled
This is the second occasion on which Macdonald, who supports Palestinian rights and has attended rallies, has been cancelled due to pressure from Zionists.
Last year he was on forced leave from St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney for seven weeks before the complaint against him by doctors associated with the Australian Zionist Healthcare Alliance ( AZHA) was dismissed following an independent investigation.
Macdonald was contacted but declined to comment for this story.
St Vincent’s crisis triage: heart doctor Macdonald back on the wards after witchhunt
In early May, a Melbourne University staff member posted a promotion for the Surgical Forum on Facebook where Macdonald’s name remained on the program until yesterday when it was removed and replaced with St Vincent’s surgeon Dr Elizabeth Paretz.
A promotional brochure was produced and remains in circulation.
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Open in new tab “Unnamed accusers” – invite withdrawn
On June 12, more than a month after the lecture was first promoted, University of Melbourne Acting Head of Surgery Professor Justin Yeung and St Vincent’s surgeon and Adjunct Professor Matthew Read who chairs the Surgical Forum sent a letter withdrawing the invitation.
“concerns” were raised regarding remarks
They informed Macdonald that “concerns” were raised regarding remarks attributed to you that have been “widely interpreted as antisemitic”.
After “careful” consideration, the organisers had come to the conclusion that the remarks could distract from the forum event. This suggests that those who made the decision understood that if they did not withdraw their invitation, Macdonald’s unnamed accusers would conduct a public campaign against him.
The accusers were referring to a 30 second question that Macdonald asked at a Palestinian Justice community forum last year during which he said that before he had been informed by the Australian government that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was responsible, he considered that Mossad could be behind some antisemitic incidents.
(Mossad itself acknowledges that it conducts extensive covert operations including embedding agents in other countries including Iran.)
No right of reply
Unusually, given the vague and anonymous nature of the allegations and the fact that St Vincent’s knew the 2025 allegations had been dismissed, the organisers gave MacDonald no opportunity to respond to his critics before making their decision.
Following the withdrawal of the invitation and before it became public, MWM became aware that the Forum organisers were informed that the allegations had been dismissed in 2025 and St Vincents removed negative and defamatory statements about him from its website.
Antisemitism? St Vincent’s heartless treatment of cardiologist who asked a question
They were also aware that Macdonald recently presented a ‘Ground Round’ at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney about his monthly visits to run a heart health clinic for the Aboriginal community in Condobolin in NSW for two decades.
This lecture was attended by the CEO of St Vincents Health Chris Blake and was positively received without anyone publicly raising last year’s incident.
Despite the facts
Despite knowing all these facts, University of Melbourne and St Vincent’s refused to reverse their decision.
Their decision denies those who would have attended the lecture the benefit of Macdonald’s first-hand and up-to-date report of his research findings and his practice which has saved thousands of lives.
The event would have proceeded smoothly if it had not been for the determination of unnamed Zionists or those influenced by them to silence and punish Macdonald.
Uni’s tepid response
MWM put questions to the St Vincent’s Foundation which is responsible for the bequest that supports the lecture. We were told that no questions will be answered.
MWM also put detailed questions to Professor Jason Yeung but received no answers.
We also put questions to the Interim Vice Chancellor Glyn Davis asking whether he or other members of senior management were made aware of these events and having been made aware, whether he would investigate.
We got the following response by a Uni spokesperson:
“After careful consideration, the lecture organisers decided to withdraw the invitation to the guest speaker. This will enable the lecture to run smoothly so students, researchers and the wider medical community can focus on the important topics which will be discussed.
“Each year faculties, schools and our partner institutes hold hundreds of events such as this The University supports and encourages the organisers to make the appropriate judgements to ensure they are delivered without any disruptions.”
As a result of the decision, those attending the lecture will not hear about the “important topics” which would have been “discussed.”
“Antisemitic” or anti-Israel?
So the situation goes like this: A person is invited to participate in a public university event. Some unnamed individuals claim that the invitee has previously made a remark that some pro-Israeli people considered ‘antisemitic’.
These complainants convey a message that they will create a public fuss if the event goes ahead. The invitee is given no right of reply and is ‘cancelled’.
It’s a laissez faire attitude to political censorship and potential bullying if ever there was one.
MWM also asked the Interim VC Davis: Do you agree that to cancel such a prestigious and publicised lecture on the basis of anonymous allegations without even giving Professor Macdonald a chance to respond does not meet the values of integrity, justice and transparency on which University of Melbourne claims to conduct its affairs?
We got no reply but the answer is obvious. It doesn’t.
Macdonald attack an AHPRA concern
This second attack sends a disturbing message to Australian health workers who are already alarmed by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (AHPRA) joint statement with the Special Envoy for Antisemitism Jillian Segal that the regulator will apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism in its handling of complaints.
Over 1,400 health workers and 60 medical organisations have signed an open letter to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its decision. They warn that AHPRA’s new position will have a “chilling effect” on practitioners advocating for Palestine and have called on the regulator to reverse its decision.
Their concerns are similar to those of the British Medical Association which this week voted to drop the IHRA definition amid growing concerns that “healthcare workers are being punished for having views on international conflicts”.
Pursuit of Macdonald
This second ‘canceling’ of Macdonald provides evidence that some of those who wanted his suspension from St Vincent’s last year did not accept the resolution of the incident in his favour. Macdonald’s seven week absence from his patients at St Vincents for doing nothing wrong was not enough.
An organisation called the Australian Zionist Health Alliance (AZHA) has been a key player in both last year’s attack on Macdonald and the campaign to get APHRA to adopt the IHRA definition.
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The Alliance was formed in August 2025 and since early last year, it has been attacking APHRA for failing to take action against antisemitism.
Dr Jeremy Goldin is one of AZHA’s members. He is a sleep specialist at St Vincents Private Hospital and an Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne.
Goldin was one of three named members of the Alliance Against Antisemitism in Health Care (AAAHC) who signed a letter calling for Macdonald to be immediately suspended and investigated following his comment at the Palestinian Justice Forum.
Goldin has welcomed APHRA’s decision on his LinkedIn account on which he regularly reposts items supporting Israel including description of findings that Israel is committing genocide as a ‘fantasy.’
MWM asked both AZHA’s Public Affairs Officer Sharon Stolier and Goldin if they had played any role in raising concerns about Macdonald’s planned lecture at the University of Melbourne. We received no reply from Stolier whose involvement in well funded far right political organisations including the astro turfing group Minority Impact Coalition was revealed during last year’s Federal election.
Goldin responded, “You’d have to check with the University of Melbourne on this.”
Children and War event junked
Last September, another member of AZHA Dr Doran Samuell was involved in stopping a Grand Round on Children and War being held at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. In the light of this week’s shocking UN Commission of Inquiry report which found that Israel deliberately kills children, that cancellation is a glaring example of a poor decision to cancel.
According to Australian Jewish News, AZHA has been in overdrive collecting material for the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
It has developed an AI tool that uses prompts to help health professionals to prepare submissions and evaluates them against the IHRA definition. The AZHA considers promoting boycotts of Israel, chanting ‘From the River to sea, Palestine will be free’ or “lack of Zionist voices in senior or diversity leadership roles” as examples of antisemitism or anti-zionism.
This week, the Medical Association for the Prevention of War (MAPW) wrote to AHPRA calling on it to reverse its adoption of the IHRA definition which it described as “inappropriate, ill-conceived and divisive”. The IHRA definition … introduces an element of risk for health workers who speak out in relation to Israel’s actions, despite the widespread condemnation globally, including by governments, of those same actions,” wrote MAPW.
This covert attack on Macdonald highlights those risks.
If a senior and highly respected professor can be silenced in this way, what chance does a junior Palestinian or Lebanese health worker or student have?
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Wendy Bacon is an investigative journalist who was the Professor of Journalism at UTS. She worked for Fairfax, Channel Nine and SBS and has published in The Guardian, New Matilda, City Hub and Overland. She has a long history in promoting independent and alternative journalism.
She is a long-term supporter of a peaceful BDS and the Greens.