Dr Rahmeh Aladwan allowed to continue to practise despite investigation

Yesterday, the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) ruled that an NHS doctor who uses her social media and public appearances to wage a campaign of hatred against British Jews is fit to continue practising medicine while she is under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC).

Campaign Against Antisemitism has submitted several complaints to the GMC regarding social media posts that appear to have been published by Dr Rahmeh Aladwan.

Below is just a selection of the posts that were referenced in the complaints:

• Responding to another user’s post regarding the GMC, a post, which was published on 25th April, read: “Hey @gmcuk, the world sees you kneeling before your Jewish supremacist masters and the ‘Israeli’ lobby. This is a betrayal of your doctors. Stand with them – not with supremacy, genocide and apartheid.”
• Another post, published on 29th April, read: “I will never condemn the 7th of October.”
• A post, published on 5th July, partially read: “Britain is totally occupied by Jewish supremacy.”
• Another post, which was published on 6th July, read: “Let’s make this crystal clear: anti-Zionism means ‘Israel’ has no right to exist. No debates. No exceptions. ‘Israel’ is genocide. Its supporters are genocidal—and that includes over 90% of Jews on earth.”
• Addressing the Chief Rabbi, a post, published on 6th July, read: “Why do you lie so much Rabbi genocide? Palestinians are Semites, and you support our mass murder you criminal.”
• Another post, published on 13th July, read, “Calling them Zionists instead of Jewish supremacists only helps the mass murder continue,” and “If Jews want to be seen as separate from this horror, they need to stop perpetrating it. Until then, the world sees what they are doing, and no amount of deflection, rebranding, or moral posturing will change that.”
• One post, published on 13th July, read in part: “Jews can deny it all they like but at some point you will have to accept that Jewish supremacy is what is murdering us.”
• Responding to another user, a post was published on 30th July, which partially read: “The Royal Free Hospital in London is a Jewish supremacy cesspit.”

Other posts can be found here.

Dr Aladwan rose to notoriety earlier this year as some of her earlier rhetoric was revealed.

Among the alleged posts were:

• In a reel entitled ‘Resist’, alongside an upside-down red triangle icon, she wrote: “We never condemn the Palestinians. We back their struggle, including armed struggle.” In recent months, the inverted red triangle and its emoji variant have been used by some anti-Israel activists to signal support for proscribed terrorist organisations such as Hamas, inspired by the appearance of the symbol in Hamas propaganda videos to indicate targets for attack.
• Captioning a photo of a Hamas gunman: “A picture of AlQassam a day keeps the Z’s [Zionists] locked away.”
• In reference to the antisemitic Amsterdam pogrom of November last year, she posted a hand-drawn graph with the words “f*** around” along one axis, and “find out” along the other. The caption reads: “You provoke. You pushed. You prodded. You play victim. You deserve to pay. You parasitic pariah. Settlers should feel welcome nowhere. And if they tried that crap in the UK, they’ll be met with resistance too. Seems justice is found on the streets.”

Since then, her rhetoric has escalated.
Despite all this, the MPTS’s Interim Orders Tribunal, in a shocking abdication of its responsibility to protect the public, found that Dr Aladwan had done nothing to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession,” and that there was nothing in the abusive rhetoric she employs against British Jews that “amounts to bullying or harassment.”

Disregarding the copious evidence placed before it, the Tribunal determined that there was nothing to indicate that Dr Aladwan is a risk to patients and that “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…”

In justifying its decision, the Tribunal cited Dr Aladwan’s right to freedom of expression under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In so doing, it chose to ignore the legal precedent established in the Court of Appeal in one of the GMC’s own cases, and pointed out to it by Campaign Against Antisemitism, that demonstrated the limitations of speech that a doctor must respect in order to remain in the profession.

A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “This is an inexplicable and disgraceful decision—one that marks the UK’s continued descent into the abyss, as institutions that carry the responsibility for protecting people from extremists are seemingly bending over backwards to appease and turn a blind eye to them.

“The MPTS has failed spectacularly in its duty. It is staggering that it believes that a doctor who appears to defend armed jihad and violent attacks on Jews, posted a photo of a Hamas terrorist and described a hospital as a ‘cesspit of Jewish supremacy’ should continue to practise. We will be closely following the GMC’s investigation, which must now proceed apace. In the meantime, we are in discussion with our legal advisors with regard to the options open to us.”