Birtish Anti-Semetism in the National Health Service

Some like to joke that the NHS is Britain’s national religion. But it is
no longer a secular one. Sectarianism has become rife across the health
service and perhaps the most frightening thing is that people are no
longer hiding it. Some, like the Labour MP Jess Phillips, even revel in it.
“I got through quicker,” the Birmingham MP said last week of being
whizzed through A&E, apparently because of her political views. “The
doctor who saw me was Palestinian ... and he was sort of like, ‘I like
you. You voted for a ceasefire’.’’

It is probably best for her that she stepped away from X (Twitter) last
month after a post in which she appeared to justify scenes of masked men
intimidating a journalist. Because she may have been asked about a
two-tier NHS and what might have happened had she dared to – God forbid
– speak against the terrorist group Hamas. Or what her treatment might
have been if she was a well-known Jewish MP.

The NHS – like the university, arts, charity and trade union sectors –
no longer feels like a safe space for Jewish people. It is an
organisation in which people like Dr Wahid Shaida, who gloried in the
October 7 massacre as a “welcome punch on the nose”, is allowed to work
as a GP. Where the Health Workers for Palestine hold demonstrations
outside hospitals. Where nurses wear Palestine badges – with
complainants told it is a free speech issue.
The General Medical Council has reported that the number of complaints
about doctors subjecting Jewish colleagues to anti-Semitic abuse after
October 7 jumped from eight to 60. According to one poll, three quarters
of Jewish healthcare workers have suffered at least one anti-Semitic
incident since October 7 – and half reported feeling unsafe at work.

Jewish doctors and NHS workers have told me of their fear that, if they
complain, it will only make things worse. One told me: “I wouldn’t tell
any doctor or nurse treating me that I’m Jewish because I hear what is
said ‘behind the scenes’ and its frightening.”

Jews often have their ethnicity on their records because certain genetic
diseases are more prevalent in the community. But some have become so
frightened of experiencing anti-Semitism when they are most vulnerable
that they have asked for their religion to be erased.
The NHS is aware of the problem but even its attempt to fight it causes
problems, as it emerged this week. Online anti-Semitism training at the
Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust was subject to an
attack before it had even started when an “important notice” in its
weekly bulletin warned staff against attending, saying: “We have
determined that this training and its content may be inappropriate”. Its
chief executive Claire Murdoch later apologised.

Something has gone very wrong if the NHS – which controversially spends
around £40 million a year on Diversity, Equality and Inclusion at a time
when it can ill-afford any wastage – is no longer safe for Jewish
people. It is hard to say whether well-paid DEI executives are blind to
the problem, or simply not up to the job of addressing it.

The NHS’s noble history includes the time of the Troubles when, in
Northern Ireland, Catholic doctors worked on Protestant Unionists and
vice versa because politics was left at the door. No longer. Our
healthcare service has a sickness, but is anyone willing to talk about a
cure?