A dentist from South Florida, US, has been fired after he was caught on camera ripping down posters of Israeli hostages who were kidnapped during the Hamas attack on October 7. The dentist, identified as Dr Ahmed ElKoussa, was one of the two men who was seen destroying banners of roughly 200 people kidnapped by Hamas that were plastered across Miami, the New York Post reported. The viral footage was shared by the Stop Antisemitism organization on X (formerly Twitter). It showed the doctor, along with another man identified as Xave Ramoul, walking down a busy street with fistfuls of the crumpled paper, sparking social media outcry.
"Miami - two men were spotted removing posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas in the Brickell area. The men appear to be dentist Ahmed ElKoussa (left) and Xave Ramoul (right)," the caption of the post read.
After the video went viral online, Dr Ahmed was fired from his job at a Coral Gables dentistry. In a statement posted on Instagram, CG Smile wrote, "We are very sad to see this situation upon waking up".
"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," the statement added.
However, according to the Post, Dr Ahmed claimed that he was acting in good faith when he and his friend tore the images down. The dentist stated that he was compelled to act after learning that a 71-year-old landlord in Illinois fatally stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy 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, Dr Ahmed'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," he added.
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Further, the attorney also stated that police asked Dr Ahmed to plaster his own counter posters or remove the ones that existed when the dentist called them to raise his concerns. He is now receiving death threats and harassing calls, Mr Hassan said.
"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," Mr Hassan said, adding that Dr Ahmed apologized 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," he told the outlet.
Now, according to the Post, Dr Ahmed will now try to regain his job. His social media pages have been taken down for now.
