Ahmad Baker, a nurse at Whipps Cross Hospital in east London, has worked for 25 years in Britain's National Health Service without complaint from patients or staff. That was until a poster on a virtual call derailed his career.
His activism on political and human rights issues related to Palestine, where he is from, until that point.
Trouble started with warnings from senior staff, about the image of a watermelon he had been using as a background for virtual calls. A colleague warned the image could be “anti-Semitic”.
Bosses tightened uniform restrictions this year, banning pin badges and lanyards displaying flags or political causes not approved by the hospital. This followed complaints from Jewish patients who said they felt unsafe seeing hospital staff wearing Palestinian badges or symbols.
Mr Baker is one of three healthcare professionals now suing the Barts Health NHS Trust for discrimination over the policy. He is part of a growing number of people caught up in legal action against NHS trusts as a result of disciplinary action targeting Palestinian sympathies.
He says the new policy infringes on his right to express his identity as a Palestinian. “We are going through a genocide and we’re not allowed to express our opinion,” he told The National.
The policy, he added “was clearly targeting one group only” – those expressing support for Palestine. “It’s a pattern we’ve seen across many hospitals,” he said.
Mr Baker believes the image of the watermelon was singled out because he is Palestinian. “The issue with the painting behind me was who was sitting in front of me,” he said. “It’s not the painting that was problematic, it’s the prejudice of the person I was speaking to.”
He has compared the new uniform policy to stop and search – a street policing power which was shown to be disproportionately be applied to young black men.
Impartiality rules
At least seven people are suing their NHS trusts over grievances, including harassment and discrimination against their beliefs. They say the NHS’s professed commitment to inclusivity ends with support for Palestine.
They are part of a wider movement of medical professionals who believe it is their duty to speak out on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the killing of fellow healthcare workers. Some are pushing for their trusts and the wider NHS to divest from tech services such as Cisco for internal communications and data management software Palantir, whose defence solutions have been used by the Israeli military in Gaza.
But others – including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer – believe a line has been crossed and that expressing support for Palestine is not a humanitarian but a political issue that compromises the NHS’s key mission of universal health care.
Jewish medical staff and patients have complained they feel unsafe being treated by professionals showing visible support for Palestine.
Yet attempts to police these expressions of support have resulted in a backlash that could outlast the conflict in Gaza, with the number of legal claims growing.
To date, no doctor or medical professional has been barred from practising after dozens of investigations into pro-Palestinian activism, including by regulator the General Medical Council and counter-terrorism’s Prevent programme. But two doctors were arrested for social media posts that appeared to defend Hamas – a proscribed terror group in the UK – after being cleared by the Medical Practice Tribunal Service.
Unsuccessful referrals to regulators and watchdogs come at a cost: midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital last year after pressure to delete her social media posts about the Gaza war, is now suing the NHS for harassment. It emerged the hospital had referred her to Prevent and the Nursing and Midwifery Council in March 2025 – more than a year after her resignation. Neither Prevent nor the NMC pursued the referral.
Some doctors say their personal details have been shared online – including a consultant who said her hospital had received more than 1,400 complaints days after a picture of herself participating at a pro-Palestine protest was circulated online, with calls for her to be sacked.
Yet the NHS and its regulators also face backlash from the other side of the debate, who say they are not doing enough to curb expressions of support. “There are cases that our country’s medical regulator should be taking seriously, they should be taking all steps necessary to keep patients safe and I do not see the evidence that this is the case,” said Health Secretary Wes Streeting in June.
Review under way
Mr Starmer commissioned a review of anti-Semitism in the NHS last month. This follows a separate review published in July warning of rising anti-Semitism across British society including a “specific unaddressed issue” within the NHS.
But there are concerns that medical professionals, in particular those of Palestinian or Arabic origin, will be unfairly targeted by the newly commissioned review.
The British Medical Association, the trade union representing doctors, said it was “fully committed” to the review and expected it to engage “all affected groups” and “acknowledge the different forms of racism”.
“Historically, strategies to address racism within the NHS have been inconsistent,” a BMA representative told The National. “Therefore, we anticipate that any public sector initiative will include equality impact assessments, which will engage all affected groups and acknowledge the various forms of racism that impact different ethnic groups of doctors working in the NHS."
It affirmed that doctors should have the right to criticise the conduct of groups in wartime, particularly in cases where health care is affected.
“Doctors and medical students must be able to legitimately challenge the actions of states and armed forces, especially when health care is under threat, without being unfairly accused of any kind of discrimination or threatened with disciplinary action."
A national survey of the experiences of Muslim healthcare professionals across the NHS this month will seek to determine whether respondents have felt discriminated against for expressing support for Palestine. It is conducted by the British Islamic Medical Association.
The General Medical Council is also under pressure to end a disparity in which ethnic minority doctors are being referred at double the rate of white colleagues. It has pledged to close this gap by 2026.
Tightening uniform policies
Solicitor Lianna Wood, a partner at Leigh Day who is representing Mr Baker, Ms Mohamied and three others involved in legal action over the issue, said these cases appear to be the “tip of the iceberg”.
She has received numerous enquiries from people seeking legal advice who have said they were subjected to warnings or disciplinary hearings. Among them was a Palestinian who had been told not to wear hair braids in the colours of the Palestinian flag.
But while many medics will raise a grievance at their hospital, many will also stay silent. The handful of people who did bring claims face negative press publicity. Fees for legal action are often sourced through crowdfunding.
Lawyers are working on novel ways to protect NHS workers seeking to express support for Palestine.
The new Barts uniform policy was "very broad in scope, covering all staff at all times whether or not they are client facing" and so far has been used only against those expressing support for Palestine, Ms Wood said. “Although the policy is expressed in neutral terms, our clients believe they are particularly directed at the expression of support for Palestine,” she said.
While a Palestinian should be able to wear their flag and express their culture and heritage under the Equality Act, “discrimination by association” may also offer some protection to non-Palestinians who are subject to discrimination for expressing support for Palestine, she explained.
Other NHS trusts increasingly appear to be moving towards adopting the same policy, according to doctors who spoke to The National.
A UK-based surgeon who has been to Gaza on a mission said there had been recent internal emails at her trust banning the use of lanyards that were not issued by the workplace.
In her 15-year career in the NHS she had seen colleagues "wearing all kinds of lanyards ... for football teams, for fashion brands, during the doctors' strikes there were lanyards calling for pay restoration, or supporting Ukraine”.
Her hospital has not yet enforced the ban but she fears suspension because of her Muslim origins and that she “looks Arab”.
Her attempts to talk to colleagues about her surgical experiences in Gaza were also met with resistance, despite exchanges about humanitarian work being a part of NHS working life. “We have real trouble raising the humanitarian issue. They’re afraid we will offend people,” she said, of her hospital's bosses.
Transparency gap
In many cases, a hospital’s heavy-handed and opaque handling of an individual case is at the heart of the legal action.
Dr Nadeem Crowe is among those suing his former employer, the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, over harassment and discrimination. He had worked at the hospital for 16 years, first joining as a trainee, then as a bank worker.
During a shift in mid-August last year, he received an email saying he had been suspended and needed to leave the hospital immediately. Though the reason given was a series of posts on X, the hospital would not specify which ones had triggered a complaint.
Dr Crowe said his repeated requests to find out what the contentious activity was were denied, until he obtained them later through a Freedom of Information request. He was allowed to return to work after suspending his account on X – which had fewer than 200 followers.
But Dr Crowe decided to resign shortly afterwards, frustrated at the way he had been treated. He has since found work at a private hospital.
Family therapist Mira was investigated and barred from her workplace after she and a colleague tried to organise a peaceful protest in support of Palestine during a lunch break.
The pair had approached two colleagues to let them know of their plans, and to “reassure them” that the demonstration would be directed only at the Israeli government, Mira told The National.
The next day, the hospital told all staff that such a demonstration would be prohibited. Then they placed Mira and her colleague under investigation, without informing them.
The hospital invited the team for a facilitated discussion with an external psychotherapist about the conflict, where Mira said she spoke openly about her views, not knowing these were contributing to an investigation.
When Mira was finally informed of the investigation two weeks later, she was barred from entering the hospital and accused of threatening the “personal safety” of NHS staff and of “bringing the trust into disrepute” for considering the demonstration.
The three-month investigation found there was “no case to answer” and that the trust had breached its own disciplinary policy in its treatment of the members of staff.
Mira and her colleague are now taking the trust to an employment tribunal, alleging they were discriminated against over their beliefs.
Quitting the NHS
Some are choosing to quit the service, which is already plagued by workforce shortages.
Omar Abdel Mannan, a paediatric neurologist working at one of the London’s top children’s hospitals, said he left the NHS months after receiving numerous complaints related to his volunteer work supporting British doctors on mission in Gaza. He now works between London and Switzerland.
The first complaint came after he had organised a panel for doctors returning from Gaza to share data and testimonies, he said. The second was over media interviews he had given in which he “described destroyed hospitals and powerless neonatal wards”.
The complaints were not taken forward by his employer, but he was asked to reduce his campaigning activity on Gaza. Dr Abdel Mannan said they had sent a clear message. “Raising one’s voice for Palestinian lives is to risk one’s reputation, career and livelihood,” he said.
“The chilling effect ultimately forced me to step away from the NHS – not because I had stopped believing in medicine, but because I refused to stop bearing witness.
“In this environment, the boundary between my academic freedom and institutional reprisal narrowed to a line I was no longer trusted to cross.”
