The NHS has an anti-Semitism problem, and Wes Streeting wants to fix it. This week he announced plans to ‘make it easier to kick racists out of the NHS’. Policing hate is already the job of regulators, and systems that depend on judgement and restraint rarely benefit from political tinkering.
Streeting’s move comes partly in response to Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, who has said the UK is ‘totally occupied by Jewish supremacy’ and has repeatedly published social media posts which appear to celebrate October 7th. She has said Israelis are ‘worse than Nazis’ and endorsed comments describing public outrage over the Manchester synagogue killings as ‘racism and Jewish supremacism’ – which was ‘Western civilisation’. A tribunal has refused to place interim restrictions on her practice, pending further review, since ‘a reasonable and fully informed member of the public would not be alarmed or concerned to learn that Dr Aladwan had been permitted to continue in unrestricted medical practice whilst the GMC investigation continues.’
The tribunal judged that Dr Aladwan’s comments did not amount to ‘bullying or harassment’. Might patients feel bullied or harassed by Dr Aladwan saying ‘the Royal Free Hospital in London is a Jewish supremacy cesspit’? The tribunal said not. If I were a Jewish patient seeing Dr Aladwan, I suspect I’d feel differently. The Guardian’s report omits her most inflammatory comments, making her sound almost reasonable.
She isn’t. Her views are indefensible. But whether Wes Streeting needs to step in is a different question. I share his outrage, but free speech means tolerating indefensible views. Government cannot and should not attempt to take responsibility for citizens being decent, or bar them from being hateful. That’s our business, not theirs. Culture is too important to be regulated; civility too fragile to be legislated. But extremes of hate speech must be taken seriously. The GMC has shown itself willing to do that. Last month Manoj Sen, a surgeon, was struck off. ‘Die Juden sind unsere Ungluck’ he had written – the Jews are our misfortune – adding, amongst other anti-Semitic flourishes, that he was ‘regretful enough rats were not liquidated at Auschwitz.’
The urgency for action also seems lessened because, though often described as a trainee surgeon, including by herself, the GMC register lists no NHS ‘designated body’ for Dr Aladwan. That means she has no Trust oversight and suggests she has no current medical employment.
Perhaps she isn’t working by choice, or because the £30,000 she’s crowdfunded to fight her case makes it needless. In any event, the NHS doesn’t appear to be employing her – reassuring, really, to find it isn’t asking her to head up DEI training.
Yet, even if she is not currently practising, her case raises an awkward question: what should happen when doctors’ private opinions are abhorrent, yet expressed outside the clinic? I lean towards free speech absolutism – or feel that I should. But, like communism, it tends to work better in theory than in practice, and Dr Aladwan’s speech is not being restricted. No one has stopped her speaking out. She has the right to hold obnoxious and deluded opinions, and the right to voice them, even though doing so causes harm.
Dr Aladwan’s vomit of social media, with its October 7th denial, is revolting. But our commitment to free speech is nothing unless we defend those we disagree with most. Had Dr Aladwan kept her personal and private life separate, I would be willing to support her. Doctors are people, and unless people have a right to be imperfect they have no rights at all. Doctors, bluntly, have a right to be racist, a right to be anti-Semitic, a right to be as obnoxious as anybody else.
What they don’t have the right to do is to fuse their professional life with their bigotry so that patients lose trust in being treated fairly. When a doctor broadcasts hatred while speaking as a doctor, they undermine that confidence for everyone. I have referred to Rahmeh Aladwan as a doctor because that is how she refers to herself – prominently. Her social media feed gives her title twice. Photos picture her in scrubs.
This deliberate fusion of her professional identity with her political speech is where the regulatory line is crossed. But judging where that line falls is rarely simple.
On her X feed someone complained about a post by an American paediatrician on September 2024, after a number of Hezbollah pagers exploded, which said ‘Today, Israel created free gender-changing surgery for the masses.’ The complainer said they felt unsafe at the prospect of being treated by such a Jewish supremacist.
Supposing that paediatrician had been British, should she have been fired? Struck off? I mocked the Hezbollah pagers in this paper. A complaint about me would have been considered by the GMC – they consider all complaints – but I suspect they would not have acted. Yet the difference is a value judgement, supported by cultural norms, not a matter of absolutes. The line is contestable and governments – which do not exist to make us good but to subdue our worst excesses – are not at their best when policing such matters. There is a high bar when it comes to suspending or removing a doctor’s licence. I hope, and not solely for personal reasons, it is never lowered.
When he was elected Starmer said his government would tread more lightly on our lives. They haven’t done so. Streeting is right that the NHS has an anti-Semitism problem, and right to detest hatred. I hope he succeeds – and remembers to detest, too, the idea that decency can be legislated.
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