A British medical ethics panel last week acquitted a physician who allegedly called Nazi persecution a “fabricated victim narrative” promoted by “Jewish supremacists,” defended the Oct. 7, 2023, massacres and glorified Palestinian terrorists as “martyrs.”
The ruling by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) that Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan can keep working for the National Health Service (NHS) despite making those statements on social media after Oct. 7, 2023, prompted criticism by the U.K.’s health secretary and anti-racism activists as well as a call by a former attorney general for a review of her case.
Aladwan has defended her comments, which included calling Israelis “worse than Nazis,” stating, “I will never condemn the 7th of October,” denying that any rapes took place during the Hamas-led massacres in 2023, and saying that “Jewish supremacy and extremism existed before” Nazism, “and no fabricated victim narrative will ever justify or excuse colonizing Palestine and committing genocide.”
The MPTS tribunal ruled on Thursday that there wasn’t sufficient evidence to establish that Aladwan posed a real risk to patients or that her posts amounted to “bullying or harassment.” Allowing her to continue practicing would not undermine public confidence in the medical profession, the MPTS claimed.
After the ruling, she posted on X: “I support the Palestinian right to resistance, including armed struggle,” adding that “Hamas should be de-proscribed.
“Jewish Supremacy—It is synonymous with Zionism,” and “World jewry remains largely in support of jewish supremacy (Zionism), terrorism, and extremism,” Aladwan wrote.
Antisemitism, she added, “is a misnomer. It’s identity theft. Most jews are not Semites. Palestinians are the Semites.” Anti-Jewish hatred “is also irrelevant here, as the central issue is the Holocaust being perpetrated against the Palestinians,” Aladwan wrote. “The jewish lobby and jewish supremacists need to have some shame.”
Wes Streeting, the secretary of state for health and social care, wrote on X following Aladwan’s acquittal: “The racist language of ‘Jewish supremacy’ reflects the values of Nazis, not the NHS. I fail to see how medics using such language with impunity doesn’t undermine confidence in the medical profession. I have no confidence in our regulation system.”
Michael Ellis, a former attorney general for England and Wales, has Steering to launch a judicial review into the tribunal’s decision to allow Aladwan to continue practicing.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism called the ruling “inexplicable and disgraceful.”
Earlier this month, a hospital in north London suspended another physician for claiming publicly that all Jews have “feelings of supremacy” and downplaying antisemitism.
Whittington Hospital in the London suburb of Highgate suspended Dr. Ellen Kriesels, a consultant developmental pediatrician, for statements she made online and with signage at an anti-Israel protest.
An account bearing Kriesels’s name on X last month featured the claim that “Virtually every Jew has some feelings of supremacy (result of their Zionist upbringing) and they might oppose Zionism, but they are not going to challenge their precious community. That just doesn’t feel right to them!”
In one post about the Oct. 7 massacre, she wrote: “Always trying to frame the Jews as victims. So ridiculous. So exhausting.”
At a Sept. 6 protest event, Kriesels was photographed holding a placard depicting the Israeli flag with the Star of David replaced by words such as “Rape,” “Lie” and “Kill.”
In July, the Board of Deputies of British Jews published a report that said that evidence suggests that “there is a specific unaddressed issue of antisemitism within the NHS,” referencing the U.K.’s National Health Service. “Many Jewish employees within NHS organizations feel that antisemitism in their workplace is not being addressed; for example, that that the issue of antisemitism has ‘simply been swept under the carpet’.”
Britain tallied its second-highest annual total of antisemitic incidents in 2024—3,528—according to the Community Security Trust (CST), a Jewish security group.
According to CST’s Antisemitic Incidents Report 2024, that was a decrease of 18% from the 4,296 anti-Jewish hate incidents
recorded in 2023.
There were 1,662 recorded antisemitic incidents in 2022, 2,261 incidents in 2021 and 1,684 in 2020.
