Re-weaponising antisemitism

The British government’s proposed changes to NHS and healthcare regulation are a frontal assault to stifle dissent. These proposals will:

• ban medical staff from solidarity actions such as displaying ‘political identifiers’ on their uniforms or wearing generic clinical attire, scrubs or white coats, on political marches; and
• transform the disciplinary process for doctors and other professionals in a way that makes them easier to debar from practice.

The context for both these moves is the prominent role that doctors and other health service staff have played both in humanitarian assistance and in publicising the extent of the Israeli onslaught. This has made them a prime target for silencing by a Government mired in complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide.

The Mann Review

The move to prevent health service staff from showing solidarity with Palestine is one of the proposals in the Mann ‘Rapid Review’. The background to this Review is complicated. Racialised minority groups have documented a persistent racism within the NHS, which Black and minority ethnic (BME) staff and patients alike have suffered.  JVL wholly supports measures to improve the service to combat this appalling discrimination. Yet rather than tackling racism towards black and brown people and other minorities full on, the Government commissioned a supposedly ‘independent’ Review from Lord John Mann. Mann had previously jointly fronted, with the Board of Deputies of British Jews, a report into antisemitism. The Government announced its acceptance of all the Review’s recommendations on the day it was published in June 2026, only allowing a consultation period to 21st July after protest.

In October 2025 JVL joined Doctors in Unite and other Jewish and non-Jewish groups in protesting the appointment of John Mann to carry out this ‘Rapid Review’; we also provided evidence of the proposed partisan management of racism within the NHS. Now that the Review has been published and the government is proceeding at breakneck speed, many healthcare workers are speaking out. Their statements and open letters offer robust and authoritative analysis of the repressive consequences of implementing the Review’s recommendations. Rather than summarise their work in this statement (but see our forthcoming article for a fuller explanation), we highlight here issues that come from our perspective as Jews.

As is clear from its title (Review on antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS) Mann’s report promotes Jewish exceptionalism. The only evidence offered in justification for this is i) a very selective interpretation of NHS work-place surveys together with ii) the partisan qualitative ‘study’, commissioned from Mann by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. On this fragile basis the Review has somehow come to the conclusion that anti-Jewish discrimination is ‘unique’ within the NHS and needs special protections. The evidence offered to support Mann’s prioritisation of racism towards Jews is fragmentary at best, and there is none to support the banning of political insignia.

Jews and the Jewish community are referred to throughout the Mann Review. There is no acknowledgement of the comparably serious racism towards travellers and people of Gypsy or Roma identity, who were also victims of the Nazi genocide. Muslim staff and patients are referenced, in a clumsy attempt to provide ‘balance’, but Jews are mentioned far more frequently despite the gross disparity in the size of the two groups. The only reference to the genocide in Gaza is where Mann, in his introduction, declares that it is ‘frankly disgusting’ for anyone to see antisemitism as connected to events in the Middle East. What Mann finds disgusting is not a basis for policy.

There is recognition in the Review that not all Jews are defined by religion, but no attempt to capture the diversity of Jewish opinion. The assumption of the media (too often) and certainly of Mann, is that what the Board of Deputies, or the Chief Rabbi, says they say for all Jews. The idea that all Jews are the same, operate as a unit, is the bedrock of antisemitism. It is shocking that John Mann has been entrusted with this area of policy.

Silencing the doctors

The government has also announced its intention to change the disciplinary system for doctors. Extraordinarily it turned to John Mann, possibly even less qualified in medical matters than he is on Jews and antisemitism, for advice. That advice, against the whole direction of medical opinion since at least 2018, is to maintain the General Medical Council’s right to appeal to the High Court against decisions of fitness to practice tribunals.

The reason for this volte-face is transparently obvious. It is to silence doctors or punish those who refuse to be silenced. The case of British-Palestinian surgeon Professor Ghassan Abu Sitta, who has played a heroic role in Gaza, exposes the motivations for this decision.

The GMC brought the case against Abu Sitta following a complaint by the ubiquitous lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). Its complaint was formally about social media posts from years previously, though the motivation was evidently to silence his advocacy for Palestine. In January this year he was comprehensively cleared by a Fitness to Practice Tribunal that was having none of it. But the GMC has decided to use its right of appeal to the High Court. Even if cleared Abu Sitta will have incurred legal costs into six figures (he is appealing for support) to defend himself against this vindictive further legal challenge, calculated to serve as a warning to other doctors not to engage in advocacy for Palestine.

The Government’s repressive measures will combine to stifle freedom of expression and dissent on one of the most important moral and political issue of our time, the genocide in Gaza and the oppression of Palestinians. The NHS with 1.6 million staff is the largest employer in the UK. The repression of their rights is outrageous. We call on Andy Burnham as incoming Prime Minister to cancel these antidemocratic proposals as a first step towards reversing the move towards a more authoritarian state.