Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan addresses the Activist Independent Movement’s Nakba77, Birmingham Demonstration for Palestine, outside the local BBC offices and studios in 2025. Photo: Screenshot

The United Kingdom’s top medical regulatory body is facing scrutiny for a recent decision to allow a doctor who on social media called for the ethnic cleaning of Jews and celebrated the terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel to continue practicing medicine.

The General Medical Council (GMC) confirmed that it has re-referred the case of Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, a trainee trauma and orthopedic surgeon, to the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS). The move came just one day after the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a British nongovernmental organization, earlier this week announced plans to challenge in court the GMC’s initial decision to let Aladwan continue practicing without restriction while under investigation.

In a statement, the GMC said it had referred Aladwan to “an interim orders tribunal,” adding that such referrals are made when an interim order “is necessary to protect the public or public confidence in doctors during an investigation.” The new hearing is scheduled for Oct. 23, according to The Guardian.

The controversy follows a Sept. 25 tribunal ruling that Aladwan’s conduct had not done anything to “undermine public confidence in the medical profession” and that her comments did not “amount to bullying or harassment.” The MPTS panel concluded that “a reasonable and fully informed member of the public would not be alarmed or concerned” by her being allowed to continue treating patients.

According to the CAA, Aladwan has repeatedly used social media to share her antisemitic ideology. Posts cited by the group and shared widely online include her description of the Royal Free Hospital in London as “a Jewish supremacy cesspit,” her claim that “over 90% of the world’s Jews are genocidal,” and her call to “globalize the intifada” in response to a report about a deadly terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue.

She also wrote, “October 7. The day Israel was humiliated. Their supremacy shattered at the hands of the children they forced out of their homes. The children who watched foreign jews [sic] execute their loved ones, rape their land, and live on their stolen soil.”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, kidnapped 251 hostages, and perpetrated widespread sexual violence during their invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which became the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Despite such remarks, the September tribunal said Aladwan’s right to free expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights outweighed concerns about public safety. Her lawyers argued that she had exercised her legitimate political speech rights as a Palestinian opposing Israel, describing her as a “direct victim of genocide and dispossession” with an otherwise “impeccable clinical record.”

The CAA called the tribunal’s reasoning “extraordinary,” saying it was “inconceivable that a Jewish person would feel safe receiving treatment from this doctor.” After threatening a judicial review of the GMC’s handling of the case, the group welcomed the regulator’s reversal.

“Just one day after we notified the GMC of our intention to launch a legal challenge, the regulator is re-referring her case,” a CAA spokesperson said in a statement. “Why does it take the threat of legal action from us to get regulators in Britain to do their duty?”

Britain’s Health Secretary Wes Streeting also condemned the original ruling and announced plans to reform medical oversight procedures. He said he had no confidence in the GMC’s judgment and vowed to “root out the evil of racism” from the National Health Service.

“Sickening comments like these have no place in the NHS,” Streeting told The Times. “Action needs to be taken to make it easier to kick racists out of the NHS. The current regulatory system is completely failing to protect patients and staff.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson told The Times that Streeting had ordered officials to draft new rules that would suspend doctors accused of racism or antisemitism while investigations are ongoing, calling it “ridiculous that racist medics are free to continue operating with impunity until a tribunal can be held.”

Streeting’s remarks prompted Aladwan’s legal representatives at Rahman Lowe Solicitors to accuse him of interfering with judicial independence. In a letter to the health secretary, they called his statements “an egregious breach of your duties as a minister to uphold the rule of law and also the independence of both the GMC and of judicial proceedings.”

CAA said it welcomed Streeting’s strong words but insisted that regulators must still act decisively. The organization also warned that Aladwan’s case is not unique, citing “myriad other medical cases” involving antisemitic conduct by health-care professionals.

In recent months, The Algemeiner has reported extensively on rising antisemitism within health-care settings across the UK and also the broader Western world, leaving Jewish patients feeling unsafe and marginalized.

“The Manchester terrorist attack took place in no small part because of a cataclysmic failure in enforcement by the authorities – from our streets to the professions,” CAA said in a statement. “It is evident to any reasonable person that this doctor is wholly unfit to practice medicine. Let us hope the system delivers the correct result this time.”

Aladwan’s posts have remained visible on X (formerly Twitter), where she wrote Wednesday that “a doctor can harm a British patient and get a hearing. Accuse a doctor of ‘anti-Semitism,’ and they’re gone. That’s the hierarchy. That’s Jewish supremacy. This is Britain.”