The Silencing of Health Workers Who Speak Up for Palestine

Since October 7, 2023, censorship in the health care system has increased massively. Health Workers for a Free Palestine (HW4FP), a collective set up for people within the sector to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, has documented these experiences.

From the start of the genocide, it felt like there was an immediate move to suppress any physical expression of solidarity with Palestine across the health care system. Indeed, instead of health care organizations, like National Health Service (NHS) trusts, using their power to oppose the deliberate killing of our colleagues in Gaza, individual workers who did were targeted for being “too political” — or even antisemitic.

There is a mountain of stories of workers being told to not show anything that is linked to the genocide. For example, one pharmacist at the Royal Free Hospital in London said that she was “ambushed” into a conversation about her Palestine badge, and an NHS midwife was forced to remove her badge without any hospital policy supporting the request. Often workers are cornered into so-called informal conversations about physical displays of solidarity including badges, pins, and keffiyehs.

All the workers who gave us their testimonies were asked to remove the items while at work as they are deemed “too political,” “insensitive,” or affiliating themselves to one side of a “complex” situation.

A senior nurse at Barts Health NHS Trust was even ordered to remove a background on his video call that displayed a fruit bowl containing a watermelon. This comes after Barts enforced a ban on staff displaying symbols perceived as politically or nationally affiliated.

The growing level of censorship has been felt across the sector. A survey conducted by Healthcare Workers Against Censorship (HWAC) recently highlighted this: it reported that out of 140 workers surveyed, 78 percent had felt pressured to self-censor over fears that they may be accused of antisemitism and/or even face disciplinary action.

These worries cannot be batted away as paranoia. They are rooted in an increasing number of cases of health care workers being threatened with suspension and termination across the UK health service.

The testimonies we’ve documented include the four-month redeployment of a family therapist and nurse within an NHS hospital as a result of a complaint made by an Israeli staff member for actively supporting direct actions and the Palestinians.

A staff member at St George’s Hospital was suspended for a total of ten months (awaiting a disciplinary hearing by the trust) based on her social media activity. Her contract was subsequently terminated over breaking trust guidelines on social media use. In addition, she was reported to Prevent (the British government’s much-criticized counterterrorism strategy) and interviewed by London’s Met police under “suspicion of terrorism.”

She was left with prolonged anxiety: “I couldn’t eat or sleep,” she explained.

It’s unsurprising then that the HWAC found that 17 percent of health care workers reported they were left with no choice but to take time off work due to their solidarity with Palestine (through sick leave or suspension). Sixty-five percent reported that their well-being was negatively affected specifically because of the workplace environment amid the Gaza genocide.

One doctor working at the North General Manchester Hospital was pushed into so-called “constructive dismissal” after she endured months of threatening emails and was forced into multiple meetings with medical directors and senior human-resources personnel — all because she had advocated for a colleague who had faced censorship and racism at work over Palestine.

The doctor was threatened with so-called fitness to practice reviews (putting into question her ability to practice medicine safely and effectively) for not wanting to attend the exit interview. This could have risked her registration with the General Medical Council. She was also told that her employers would contact her new bosses to ensure she was reviewed for “her behavior.” She said that she was “made to feel like a criminal the whole time for wanting to speak for Palestine.”

Another story recently widely shared in British media concerns Nadeem Crowe, suspended from working at London’s Royal Free Hospital for speaking on social media about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Unable to accept the double standards of the health service, and feeling discriminated against as a British-Arab, he felt like he had no choice but to leave the NHS.

The climate of censorship has also disproportionately impacted vulnerable and precarious workers. For example, workers whose visa is employer-sponsored have felt threatened — forcing them to concede to the pressure to remain silent on Palestine. Some have even had their contracts terminated over Palestine solidarity.

Muslim workers reported that because of added racist attention toward their solidarity or even just grief regarding the thousands killed, they experienced disproportionate silencing — and constantly feared allegations of antisemitism. Indeed, since October 7, there’s been an all-too-visible rise in Islamophobia across British society, media, state institutions, and public services. Palestinians and even their supporters in Britain are routinely and blanketly associated with “terrorism.”

“I feel surrounded by people in a field where we are supposed to have empathy and yet I can’t speak about what is happening to my people. I fear people are brainwashed with the mindset still that Arabs are terrorists,” one health care worker explained.

For many Palestinian health care workers in Britain, censorship at work only adds to the trauma of the genocide. The silence from the NHS and their bosses, even as their loved ones are killed before their eyes, has left a sense of total abandonment. It has also led to a broad feeling of mistrust toward their workplaces.

Yet despite all that health care workers are up against, many are conflicted about not doing enough to stop the genocide in Gaza. The last twenty-one months have also shocked workers to learn just how limited their freedom of expression really is.

It has also forced us to understand that we must know our rights, assert them, but also shape them as workers in Britain. Organizing, within HW4FP and several other groups, is not only urgently needed in order to resist the attempts at forcing workers out of their jobs and into silence but also to push back against a state that seeks to quash solidarity with Palestinians.

Health care workers explained how they were ill-equipped to challenge their colleagues and employers when faced with such repression. Few knew, for example, that being forced to remove physical items that display solidarity with Palestine breaches the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act. Both these laws protect the right to personal beliefs and their expression, including in the workplace. And few knew that legally, no hospital policy can override these laws, even if cited by the NHS trust in question.

Keir Starmer’s government is increasingly criminalizing those taking action against British complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It is attempting to delegitimize the Palestinian struggle for liberation by painting resistance — and our support for Palestinian freedom — as terroristic or sympathetic to terrorism.

Nevertheless, we know that the more we fight back, the more likely we are to force our workplaces to rethink their attempt to silence us. Just look at the recent victory of Dr Rehiana Ali, who overturned the General Medical Council’s eighteen-month suspension following a witch hunt led by UK Lawyers for Israel, which complained about her social media posts that expressed solidarity with Palestine. She stood firm in the face of injustice with unwavering commitment to free speech and to the Palestinian people. Now she can return to the patients who need her.

Her case is a reminder of the power of resistance. It is only through collective action as health care workers, just like all workers across every sector, that we can put the necessary pressure on our bosses to not only stop the censorship over Palestine but also end the complicity between our health system and Israel’s occupation.

In this sense, the recent campaign against Palantir technologies is a step in the right direction. Health care workers and activists have highlighted how Palantir technology, deployed by the Israeli military in Palestine to devastate the entire health system, is also used for NHS data management (and imposing an even more hostile environment for migrant services in the UK).

The more of us that speak out, and the more we can rely on each other for support, the more likely that others will feel confident to speak out against the genocide and Israel’s ongoing settler-colonial project.