Diagnosis: An Epidemic of Maltreatment of Jewish Patients in the NHS

The 1982 British satire movie Britannia Hospital would never be made now: it is critical of the country’s blessed National Health Service (NHS), an institution which officially has no flaws. The film was partly based upon actual off-screen events. In 1975, striking militant union members at London’s real-life Westminster Hospital became aware the then-Health Secretary, war-hero David Ennals, had been admitted to a ward suffering from his old combat-wounds. Shop-steward Jamie Morris immediately declared Ennals a “legitimate target” for maltreatment from picketing porters due to his refusal to cave in to their excessive pay demands.

The Minister’s stay in the establishment, Morris promised, would callously 

be made as uncomfortable as possible … He won’t get the little extras our members provide patients. He won’t get his lockers cleaned or the area round his bed tidied up. He won’t get tea or soup. He won’t get a single smile. 

Disgraceful behaviour, of a kind now thankfully long in Britain’s past—or is it? Accusations of NHS staff deliberately maltreating politically targeted patients are actually more rife than ever. Yet today, it is no longer just low-level porters, tea-ladies and cleaners who are in on the act, but actual doctors and nurses too. The ailing invalids affected are no longer incapacitated Cabinet Ministers, either, but random everyday Jews.

British citizens are often told by open-borders politicians that, without the endless ongoing influx of immigrants, many of them Muslim, the NHS would simply collapse. But foreign doctors carry their foreign cultures and grievances with them like infectious diseases, the end result being that, at this year’s trade union conference of the British Medical Association (BMA), about one in ten motions voted on related not to actual medical-related issues, nor working conditions like pay and pensions, but Israel and the war against Hamas. 

Supposedly this was because doctors and patients were dying under Zionist bombardment in Gaza, but no other international issues involving global conflict zones were prioritised to be voted on there, even though doctors and patients still bleed and die in places like Ukraine and Sudan, too. 

Due to the presence of groups like ‘Health Workers 4 Palestine’ at the conference, who held protests by placing old shoes outside the venue representing dead Gazans in an ironic imitation of Holocaust memorials, the Jewish Medical Association (JMA) said its attending members felt “intimidated, unsafe and excluded.” Imagine being Jewish patients.

Last year, allegations were made that a nine-year-old Jewish boy in need of repeat blood transfusions was maltreated by nurses wearing Palestine badges at the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, where he was forced out of his bed and made to sit on the cold floor. Whenever he attended wearing no visibly Jewish items of clothing, he was treated well; whenever he wore a kippah, he was treated like David Ennals reborn. 

A seriously ill Jewish man in his sixties admitted to a London hospital, meanwhile, was completely ignored when he called for help from his bed. When he recovered well enough to leave it, he discovered why: staff had placed “Boycott Israeli Apartheid” stickers all over the window to his room, which he interpreted as being “a sticker that said I’m Jewish—do whatever you feel like doing because he’s Jewish.” 

Why do such people think they can get away with acting like this? Partly because their captured trade unions encourage them to think they can. 

Several of the BMA’s motions at their 2025 conference related to the issue of freedom of speech, arguing NHS staff should be free to criticise Israel if they disagreed with its actions. Yet the BMA were also asked to vote against taking “punitive measures” against any members who partook in what was called “Palestine advocacy”. The problem is, what does “Palestine advocacy” actually mean? 

After the recent stabbing of Jews at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur by an Islamist, the local NHS Trust asked residents to stay away from A&E Departments “unless it’s urgent,” fearing a multiple casualty event. This merely meant people with trivialities like splinters in their fingers should think twice before bothering anyone, not that car-crash victims should try and glue their own limbs back on in the kitchen. 

But one medic of British-Palestinian descent, Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, disagreed, posting online that, by seeking to clear A&E for Jewish terror attack victims, the racist NHS “weaponizes public health and safety”, as the measure “places a specific community’s security above the healthcare of the entire population, creating a dangerous and discriminatory precedent”, thereby “sacrificing the healthcare of the many to create a fortress for a few.” 

Dr Aladwan, who thinks an international Jewish lobby holds “25%” of UK MPs in its pockets as “foreign agents,” has a long record of making dubious statements, including that the Royal Free Hospital in North London is a “Jewish supremacy cesspit.”Sick Jews should go there, then—they might actually survive their treatment programmes. 

Called before a medical tribunal, Aladwan waived her usual right to be heard in private, allowing dozens of fellow activists draped in Palestine flags and keffiyehs to gather outside before disrupting proceedings from the public gallery by cheering, laughing and applauding. Nonetheless, she avoided present suspension, thanks to her legally guaranteed right to freedom of speech under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.    

Yet still Aladwan chooses to paint herself as the true victim here, crying that her alleged persecutors have “painted a target on an innocent NHS doctor’s back”, bringing her death threats. She now has a crowdfunding page, “Help me fight the UK ‘Israel’ lobby and keep my medical licence;” seeking £50,000 to ensure “genocide supporters” do not exploit antisemitism claims “as an excuse to implement institutional censorship and bias” against brave, pro-Gaza NHS workers like her.

Naturally, Dr Aladwan does have the perfect right to say what she likes about Israel—as a private individual. The trouble is, she often specifically does so in her public role as a medical practitioner. It is easy to find photos of her brandishing placards at pro-Palestine rallies dressed in her scrubs, openly merging her personal and professional lives for propaganda leverage. She is not alone.

It is not ‘free speech’ to relentlessly ram your political views down the throats of vulnerable sick people lying helpless in a hospital. Yet UK Muslims have been encouraged to think they are above the law for years now, resulting in absurd situations like that in London’s Whipps Cross hospital last year, where an intern was photographed by a Jewish patient wearing a football shirt with the large word “PALESTINE” on the front. The nurses treating him then reportedly threatened to withhold his kidney-dialysis treatment if he didn’t delete it immediately—or, to put it another way, to kill him.  

After complaints, the relevant hospital Trust reviewed their uniform policy to reassert how political and religious neutrality must be maintained at all times so patients of all persuasions should not feel potentially discriminated against or intimidated. Yet, as this measure was introduced specifically as a result of Muslims wearing political symbols, a legal claim demanding compensation and a complete reversal of the policy has lately been launched by three Muslim medics, claiming “indirect discrimination” against their religion. The new rule, they say, “disproportionately affects staff who wish to express pro-Palestinian views.” 

Of course it does. They are the only ones who are “disproportionately” turning up to work dressed as Hamas cheerleaders. Yet for haematologist Dr Sara Ali, “We believe the Trust failed to adequately consider the impact the policy may have on its many staff for whom Palestine is an integral part of their identity, leaving us feel erased and unseen.” But “erased and unseen” is precisely how they should feel in this respect. NHS is supposed to mean ‘National Health Service’ not ‘Nakba Health Service’.

Senior nurse Ahmad Baker, himself Palestinian, whined that he wished to work for an NHS “where double standards are called out, and where no one is asked to leave their identity at the door.” OK. In order to truly combat such “double standards”, someone should introduce Nurse Baker to that nine-year-old boy in Manchester who has to “leave his identity at the door” by leaving off his kippah every time he goes for a blood transfusion lest some indoctrinated Muslim nurses force him to sit on the floor like a worthless Zionist dog again.    

Appalled by all this, the UK’s current Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has creditably now pledged to introduce measures to make it easier to boot such people out of the NHS, but he needs to be careful. As a former kidney-cancer patient, in a constituency whose demographics dictate he is very reliant upon not alienating the local Muslim vote, if he ever gets rushed into his nearest hospital after undergoing a relapse, he might end up recapitulating the unfortunate 1970s experiences of a previous incumbent in the role, David Ennals. 

Perhaps it’s about time they did a re-make of Britannia Hospital, with a new cast and a new title: Al-Britannia Hospital, instead.