Miami dentist fired for tearing down Israeli hostage posters
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A South Florida dentist was fired Wednesday after he was caught on camera tearing down posters of Israeli hostages plastered across Miami — an act he claims was intended to quell racially charged hatred in the city.
Dr. Ahmed ElKoussa was quickly identified as one of the two men who on Tuesday destroyed banners of the roughly 200 people kidnapped by Hamas that were posted throughout the trendy Brickell neighborhood.
The viral footage shared by the Stop Antisemitism organization showed the pair walking down a busy street with fistfuls of the crumpled paper, sparking social media outcry.
ElKoussa was canned from his job at a Coral Gables dentistry by the next morning.
“We are very sad to see this situation upon waking up,” CG Smile said in a statement.
“Our office CG Smile is not in favor of any of the actions taken by Dr. ElKoussa. We do not support terrorist groups, actions, or supporters.
“He has been removed from our staff, all of our social media pages and groups.”
ElKoussa, however, claims he was acting in good faith when he and his friend tore the images down.
The dentist was compelled to act after learning that a 71-year-old landlord in Illinois fatally stabbed Wadea Al-Fayoume, a Palestinian American boy who had recently celebrated his sixth birthday, 26 times and injured his mother because of their Muslim faith and in response to the war between Israel and Hamas.
“His personal opinion was that posters from either side may potentially incite conflict and he did not want there to be any conflict escalation in his local community,” Hassan Shibly, ElKoussa’s representative and lead attorney at Muslim Legal, told The Post.
“And he was concerned that those posters could potentially trigger conflict — rightfully or wrongfully, he was concerned that they would trigger and escalate conflict.”
ElKoussa called police to raise his concerns with the flyers and was told to either plaster his own counter posters or take down the existing ones, which ElKoussa opted to do, Shibly said.
The subsequent outrage was quick and terrifying: he has since received death threats and harassing calls — the very conflict he was trying to avoid, according to the attorney.
“His intention was never to cause harm to anyone, nor did he at the time believe that doing so would do that. He was just concerned someone may see these posters and react with a hate crime and that may trigger a counter-hate crime and it just becomes endless conflict,” Shibly said, adding that ElKoussa apologies for hurting the Jewish community.
“We can critique his analysis, but it’s an analysis that he did on the spot after hearing that a 6-year-old child was stabbed 26 times.”
ElKoussa will seek to regain his job, which Shibly said he was wrongfully terminated from in a violation of his contract.
The dentist’s own social media accounts have since been taken down and a Yelp page for his dentistry has been flooded with reviews slamming him for his actions.
“If you want a dentist who rips down flyers of babies kidnapped by terrorists, this is your guy. would not let him touch my mouth,” one Floridian wrote.
A Californian reviewer wrote: “This Dentist is hostile and racist! What type of care quality can I expect from a person who has antisemitism tendencies?”
ElKoussa’s counterpart was identified as Xave Ramoul, an Instagram influencer who boasted nearly 35,000 followers before his page was deactivated.
The pair is the latest in a series to be publicly doxxed by the Stop Antisemitism organization after sharing videos of them ripping down posters of the Israel-Hamas war hostages.
The flyers featuring the images of missing civilians in Israel who have been kidnapped by Hamas have cropped up across the country since the terrorist group launched its surprise attack on Oct. 7, killing 1,300 Israelis.
New York University student and former Anti-Defamation League intern Yazmeen Deyhimi issued a public apology after she was identified as one of three students caught tearing apart banners that were plastered outside the city campus.
Deyhimi blamed her behavior on misplaced anger amid “highly volatile times.”
Two teenage girls — who have yet to be identified — were caught vandalizing the same posters on the Upper East Side as a bystander films and questions them.
Around 3,000 people have died in the Gaza Strip, while almost 10,000 have been injured, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Nearly two-thirds who have died have been children.
