There is slightly more to the Hippocratic Oath than many non-medical professionals realise. The full text contains all the well-known bits – do no harm, don’t administer poison, maintain the confidentiality of your patients – but over the course of more than 300 words, there are also pledges about pessaries, kidney stones and dietary regimes.
It is a broad, ancient expression of ethics for an industry that has to adapt and modernise all the time. The role of a medical professional, of course, touches on almost all aspects of life, so recent renderings of the oath might tinker with the translation a bit. Yet, what no version touches on, so far as we can tell, is anything to do with solving
the conflict in the Middle East, a call to political activism, or
prolonged discussions about Zionism.
Attendees at the annual conference of the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ trade union, could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise this week. Meeting in Liverpool for three days to establish policies and priorities for the industry in the coming year – of which, given the state of the NHS, there would have been lots to discuss – members instead found that
43 motions, around 10 per cent of the total, related to Israel, Gaza, Palestine, anti-Semitism or Zionism.
One claimed that Israel is establishing a “system of apartheid”, another called for a boycott of Israeli medical institutions and universities. A third called on the BMA to support doctors who refuse to pay taxes because the UK is “complicit in genocide”.
The slew of motions prompted the Jewish Medical Association (JMA) to warn that Jewish members attending the conference felt “intimidated, unsafe and excluded”. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals, several other BMA members
The Telegraph has spoken to were, at best, perplexed and exasperated so much attention was being paid to global politics ahead of matters relating to British medicine. Others saw it as
typical of a union they view as “institutionally anti-Semitic”, and now “overtaken by Left-wing entryists”.
“It was a disappointing conference in lots of ways, especially in relation to how much time was given to talking about Gaza,” says one doctor and longstanding BMA member, after returning from Liverpool. “There are so many other conflicts around the world where doctors and healthcare professionals are involved, so it seems a shame we didn’t think about them as well.
“Also, because it was spoken about at such length, it stopped us getting on with some of the work I hoped we might have done as a trade union. And then there’s the question of how welcome our Jewish colleagues might have felt, when there’s so much emphasis given to a subject like that.”
The answer to that final question can be given by Prof David Katz, professor of immunopathology at University College London, and executive chairman of the JMA, who also attended. “In Liverpool, there was a hostility in the atmosphere,” Prof Katz says. “How could it be otherwise with these motions? [With]
the depth of venom that has been allowed to evolve?”
Established in 1832, the BMA represents some 190,000 doctors and medical students across the UK, and lists its mission simply: “We look after doctors so they can look after you”. Over its long history, it has occasionally taken stances on overseas conflicts, usually advocating for the safety of healthcare workers.
Given the Israeli attacks on hospitals in Gaza, plus the reels of social media footage taken from inside those institutions, often by doctors, the conflict there is an understandably distressing one for BMA members – and has included acts the union would be expected to condemn. Critics, though, believe its interest is now neither balanced nor proportionate.
“When it [the union] used to stray into international issues, it did so with an equal hand,” says one retired GP, who was a BMA member for 45 years. “[But] it doesn’t involve itself much now in Ukraine, or Sudan, or with the Uyghurs, or any other oppressed minority. It doesn’t comment on US aid cuts. No, it is absolutely obsessed with the Palestinian cause.”
It is, he alleges, a situation that has developed “rapidly in the last four or five years, when the junior doctors committee [now known as the resident doctors committee] started to become very radical, and those making policy were very Left-wing. This was roughly at the end of the Corbyn years, when that sort of politics was becoming very mainstream.”
Though it’s often characterised as “student politics” largely conducted online, the retired GP stresses that “many of the very Left-wing older members are fully signed-up as well”. Just last week, the BMA was accused of a “cover-up” when it dropped an investigation into its president, the highly experienced GP Dr Mary McCarthy, for social media posts about the Middle East conflict. Having initially decided there was a case for McCarthy to answer, after an independent review into a complaint by Labour Against Antisemitism, the BMA decided not to take it further because the issue had not been raised by a member or employee of the union.
She is one of several BMA leaders who have had their online posts scrutinised. In 2023, Dr Martin Whyte, a paediatrician and then deputy co-chair of the BMA’s junior doctors’ committee, was suspended after
joking online about “gas[sing] the Jews”, the “holohoax”, and writing that people should boycott Israel “out of spite”.
One London-based consultant – who was a BMA member until a year ago, when he was one of several doctors to resign his membership after the union published a controversial open letter to the Foreign Secretary urging the Government to call for an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza – claims the union is now practically run by its far-Left members.
“I was very fond of the BMA. My father was a doctor, his obituary was published in the
British Medical Journal [owned by the BMA], but it seems to have been hijacked in the last few years. It’s probably been under the surface for a long time, but they seem to prioritise things that aren’t health-related.” he says.
“I would consider myself left-of-centre, but I don’t really have a home in the BMA any more, and I think a lot of Jewish doctors feel that. The whole situation in the Middle East is tragic, I have every sympathy with Palestinians, as I do with the victims of October 7. But it’s far from the only conflict going on in the world where innocent people are being killed, yet the BMA seems to have an obsession with the Palestinian issue, such that they are alienating a lot of Jewish doctors. They will end up having an organisation with very few Jewish doctors. And maybe some people in the BMA want that, I don’t know.
“I can’t really say exactly why they’re so focused on Israel and Gaza, but it’s a bit like the way that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was. They just don’t seem to have a neutral approach to it, which I find very sad, and it does smack of anti-Semitism, the way they seem to be quite obsessed with this particular issue. The fact is: the huge number of motions at the BMA conference [to do with Israel] means Jewish doctors don’t feel that safe in the BMA. I’m talking to you anonymously, and I’m not even a member any more. It’s just not a safe or friendly environment for Jewish doctors.”
As it is, many Jewish members of the BMA are now resigning in protest. One letter, shared with
The Telegraph, accuses the union of being “institutionally anti-Semitic [and] unable to represent me fairly or safely” any more.
“As an adult and a professional, I expect to be represented by an organisation that engenders respect, and represents me with professionalism and gravitas in keeping with the serious responsibilities and obligations we as doctors have to our patients, our colleagues and the wider community,” the doctor writes.
“Being represented by a group of irresponsible militants playing dog whistle student politics, indulging in rank and toxic racism (in the form of Jew hatred) and infusing this old and venerable institution with both, is not something I am prepared to be associated with.”
The BMA points out that one of the motions put forward in Liverpool this week specifically called for support for Jewish people, and was proposed by a Jewish medical student, who urged that members “differentiate between pro-Palestinianism and anti-Semitism”.
That said, quite how the BMA came to have its annual conference so dominated by geopolitics and activism – as one member put it, “in the same week that Nato is meeting, has the BMA picked up the wrong agenda?” – is a question many members might recall asking last year, too.
It was reported in 2024 that
one in 10 motions put forward for the Belfast-hosted event had to be removed from debates on legal grounds because they related to the Israel and Palestine conflict, and “risked being perceived as discriminatory, more specifically, anti-Semitic”. At the time, Prof Katz wrote to the BMA to say JMA members “are deeply concerned that the meeting environment could become itself a vehicle for discrimination and Jew hatred.”
A year on, members attending the BMA conference were met with not only another agenda with a heavy emphasis on the situation in the Middle East, but a protest staged by the activist group Health Workers 4 Palestine outside the venue in Liverpool. The demonstration featured “old shoes” representing healthcare workers killed in Gaza – a visual statement synonymous with the shoes of Jewish people killed at concentration camps during the Holocaust, and considered anti-Semitic by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Inside, often hostile debates raged. Prof Katz, in attendance as ever, strode around attending as many as he could. A well-known figure at BMA conferences, he has never been shy to speak out about anti-Semitism in his profession, regardless of the crowd.
One day this week, he says, he was having a quiet coffee when suddenly he had company. Sikh, Hindu and Christian colleagues in turn took seats next to him. “We just wanted to make sure you didn’t feel on your own here,” they told him. “Under such circumstances,” Prof Katz says, “small gestures count.”
A BMA spokesperson said: “We are totally clear that anti-Semitism is completely unacceptable. There is no place for it in the BMA, NHS, or wider society and we condemn anti-Semitism in the strongest possible terms, as we do with all discrimination based on race, religion, sexuality, gender or disability.
“The BMA’s annual representative meeting is an inclusive space, where wellbeing of members and staff is our priority and we’ve put in place a number of measures and sources of support to ensure this. We are also confident that we are complying with all of our obligations under the Equality Act and our own EDI policies.
“The BMA has a long and proud history of advocating for human rights and access to healthcare around the world, and motions submitted to this year’s conference by grassroots members from across the UK reflect the grave concerns doctors in the UK have about the Gaza conflict and the impact on civilians and healthcare. Resolutions passed at the conference made clear calls around the principles of medical neutrality and the need to respect international humanitarian law that are applicable to all conflicts.
“Motions were also submitted on the crises in Ukraine, Yemen, and Sudan, all of which the BMA has spoken out about and taken action on in recent years.”
