Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah served in Gaza, and reported horrific crimes against the Palestinian patients he cared for there, he came back to the UK and decided to advocate for those patients. His advocacy was widely published by the world’s media. A few weeks later, UKLFI (a political lobby group) reported him to the GMC on allegations of antisemitism, supporting violence and terrorism.

The Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, has been reported as publicly stating that he would “haul in” the GMC’s leadership to discuss the GMC’s “abysmal failure” in its response to antisemitism accusations, many of those accusations have been organised and put forwards by UKLFI, the same political lobby group which levied accusations against Dr Abu Sittah. Under these circumstances, the GMC has a positive duty to act independently and be seen to act independently, in order to maintain the confidence of the medical profession and of patients. Instead, the GMC has been publicly silent in response to highly publicised political interference in their regulatory function.

The Interim Tribunal refused to uphold the GMC’s very serious accusations against Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah. It simply accepted “google translations” provided by UKLFI which mis-translated his Arabic-language posts and the GMC then unquestioningly used this false evidence against him. The fact that the GMC simply accepted translations by a pro-Israel lobby group against a Palestinian doctor, without even taking a minimal standard of care by commissioning an independent translation of Dr Abu-Sittah’s posts, suggest that the GMC is ready and willing to blindly follow a racist narrative which assumes that Palestinians are antisemitic and support violence and terrorism.

The Full Tribunal completely cleared Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah of the very serious accusations which the GMC charged him with. The Full Tribunal had a chair who was legally highly qualified, the Tribunal’s judgement used an objective legal test, and provided full legal reasons for its decision. But the GMC’s Section 40A Panel, chaired by the GMC’s chief executive, decided it “could not understand” the judgment. This suggests a political decision rather than an objective legal reason for overturning the Tribunal’s ruling.

We have lost confidence in the GMC’s leadership to deliver the independent regulation our profession and patients deserve. Charlie Massey and Anthony Omo (GMC Counsel and Director of Fitness to Practise) have already demonstrated fundamental legal and regulatory incompetence — failing to distinguish a criminal conviction from a fitness to practise finding in the Bawa-Garba case. But Dr Abu-Sittah’s case reveals something far graver: a leadership that has capitulated to political pressure and a racialised narrative which dehumanises Palestinian doctors and patients — pursuing a man who has never been charged with any crime, never questioned by police, and who has been exonerated by the GMC’s own independent tribunal twice. That is not regulation, that is persecution.

As of today, over 2,200 British doctors have signed a petition calling for the resignation of GMC’s leadership. This petition has been delivered directly to the GMC.

The GMC continues to refuse to engage in dialogue or take these calls for accountability seriously. We are now mobilising to apply further pressure to not only do the right thing, but to do their jobs properly.

We now ask colleagues and comrades to continue to stand in solidarity, whilst calling for accountability while submitting this e-action.

To find out more and support Dr Ghassan’s case, please click the link below: