A Personal Letter to the NHS

The identity of the author has been kept anonymous by the editorial team for privacy reasons. Please note we don’t accept submissions from unverified or anonymous sources.

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to work in the NHS. From a young age, I was inspired by the idea that no matter who you are, where you come from, or how much money you have, you can walk through the doors of an NHS hospital and receive care without judgement or barriers. The NHS represents the very best of what a society can be – a place where compassion, care and equality come before everything else. I always wanted to be a part of that, to contribute to something larger than myself. That sense of purpose has shaped my entire career, and until recently, filled me a deep sense of belonging and pride.

But that all changed after October 7th, 2023.

I still recall turning on my phone on the eve of October 8th (as an orthodox Jew, I was forbidden from using technology during the Simchat Torah festival the day before) to discover the internet flooded with heartbreaking videos and reports of the largest massacre of Jewish people since the Holocaust. My people, my family and friends in Israel, were suffering horrors that I thought had been relegated to the darkest pages of history. Again. It was happening again. But what disturbed me, almost as much as the go-pro footage of the massacre itself, was my NHS colleagues proudly rallying behind the perpetrators and their ‘cause’. Social media posts of “This is resistance” and “They had it coming” were everywhere. Whilst the dead Jewish babies were still warm, my colleagues were out in the streets chanting in support of their killers.

I have always known that some of my Muslim colleagues held different views from me when it came to the Israel – Palestine conflict. They knew I was a proud Zionist, and I knew they were Pro-Palestine. That was never a problem. We understood the politics were complicated and we always left it at the door. Despite our differences, we got along – because we were colleagues first, duty bound to serve our patients, and humanity always came before politics. But that all changed after October 7th. When they started openly celebrating the rape and death of Jewish teenagers at a music festival – calling it justice or resistance – something broke. It was no longer about politics. It was about Jewish life, and whether it held any value to these people. That line I thought we would never cross had been shattered, and I’ve been struggling to make sense of it ever since.

I went to work the next day visibly disturbed. I still couldn’t shake the images of what I had seen. The death toll was still rising and the names of hostages – some as young as 9 months old – were slowly being announced. But my colleagues, I knew, were celebrating. I carried on with my day, duty-bound to my patients, doing my best to avoid my Muslim colleagues. Sometimes we would have to treat a patient together, and we would manage, but then I’d check my phone during breaks, only to discover that one of my colleagues had been posting pro-terrorist propaganda, just moments after working beside me. It became too much to bear.

The first thing I did was go to my boss. I broke down in her office, trying to explain the insensitivity and pain I was facing. Fearing a wider issue within the hospital, she advised me to take a day leave to cool down and de-stress. De-stress? My cousins had just been called up to war, and my colleagues were praying for their death, and her advice was that I need to go home and de-stress? It felt like an attempt to sweep this under the carpet. I felt silenced.

I reached out to the Campaign Against Antisemitism and the CST, sharing screenshots of my colleagues’ violent social media posts. They advised me to contact the police. So I did. But after weeks of investigations, the police concluded that no crime has been committed, and that the hospital should handle the matter. By this point, some of my Muslim colleagues had blocked me on social media, and they had all stopped talking to me. But I could still see what they were posting. Non-stop antisemitic libels and threats. Surely someone would take this seriously. I escalated the matter to the highest levels of hospital management. Their response? Since my colleagues didn’t explicitly list their workplace in their social media bios, they were free to post whatever they wanted, and the hospital could not intervene. Only the police could act. So, back to square one.

Next, I contacted my local MP, and my husband travelled to meet a senior member of the government to discuss it with him in person. My local MP never responded. The other government official expressed his deepest concern, promised to investigate, and then disappeared without a word. Everywhere I turned I was ignored. For months I would cry myself to sleep, dreading the thought of going back to work the next day. My husband pleaded with me, time and again, to walk away and leave behind my hard-earned career in the NHS. I was not only emotionally afraid, but I was also physically afraid. After all, was it such a stretch to think that if someone can celebrate terrorism, they might be capable of taking similar actions themselves?

After many months of constant distress and looking over my shoulder, I finally took some time off work, hoping that when I returned, things would have quietened down. That was wishful thinking. It seems the situation has only intensified. The nightmare is far from over.

I remember the first time reading about this issue in the press. An article in the Daily Mail,^[1] about a Jewish 9-year-old patient, forced to sit on the floor in an NHS hospital. The victim was a family friend. That’s when I realised my experiences weren’t unique and this problem was a lot bigger than a few terror-supporting social media posts. If NHS staff could celebrate the murder of Jews in the Middle East, what was stopping them from neglecting their Jewish patients in the UK, or worse, deliberately harming them!

The problem has only grown. Articles have since appeared in the Telegraph,^[2] reporting that the NHS is failing to protect Jewish doctors from antisemitic abuse by their colleagues. And just recently, an article in The Times claimed that “NHS staff are more likely than members of the public to perpetrate antisemitic abuse in hospitals.”^[3] A further incident of a Jewish Healthcare worker being called a “Baby Killer” was quoted in Prime Minister’s Questions the following week, prompting an acknowledgment from the Prime Minister of “the completely unacceptable” situation.^[4] But nothing’s changed.

In the US, supporters of Hamas are expelled from medical schools and face deportation. For some reason, here in the UK, we seem determined to brush this issue under the carpet. But when will it be enough? How much further will we allow this to go? What must happen to me, to my Jewish colleagues or patients, for this country to acknowledge that this has gone too far? When will we realise it is truly unacceptable for those employed to provide care equally to all, to then celebrate the death of the very people that they may be called upon to treat?

I don’t want the NHS to only wake up when it’s too late – when too much harm has already been done. Allowing staff to celebrate the murder of innocent people and defend terrorism is not a matter of political disagreement – It’s a betrayal of everything the NHS is supposed to stand for. This issue cannot be ignored any longer. The NHS needs to confront it openly and take action. Staff who promote hatred and glorify violence have no place in a system built on trust and humanity. If the NHS truly values the safety and dignity of all its staff and patients, it must have the courage to draw the line – before more Jewish staff like me are left feeling abandoned, vulnerable and unwelcome in the place we have given so much of ourselves to.

I still want to believe in the NHS. But right now, that belief is slipping away. I am asking you – all of you – to see us. To hear us. To protect us. Because your silence is complicity. And your indifference is betrayal.

Yours Sincerely,    

A Jewish NHS Worker

^[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13224083/Jewish-boy-hospital-bed-sit-floor-NHS-nurses-wearing-pro-Palestine-badges.html

^[2] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/19/nhs-doctors-anti-semitism-scared-israel-palestine/

^[3] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/antisemitic-abuse-nhs-staff-culprits-zjkccx5sq

^[4] https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/starmer-condemns-antisemitism-in-nhs-after-jewish-staffer-called-baby-killer/