Doctor who tweeted about gassing Jews let off with warning by GMC committee
Campaign Against Antisemitism calls the GMC investigation committee decision in the case of Dr Martin Whyte "another spectacular failure"
A British doctor who tweeted “hahaha zeig heil” and “gas the Jews” has been let off with a warning by a investigation committee of the UK’s General Medical Council (GMC), who said it was not his “intention” to be antisemitic.
Dr Martin Whyte was suspended from the British Medical Association (BMA) in 2023 after the tweet, along with several others, came to light. An oral hearing on the issue was held in August of this year.
A representative acting for the GMC said that the tweet was “objectively antisemitic, even if this was not Dr Whyte’s intention.
The full language of Dr Whyte’s tweet read: “hahaha zeig heil hahaha gas the jews hahaha just kidding but have you seen these youtube videos about the holohoax they’re pretty convincing imo…”
Dr Whyte submitted that the tweet was the final comment in a range of six, and was a response to a tweet from “a prominent figure on the political far right”, who “was well-known at the time for having made a widely circulated YouTube video in which he claimed to have trained a dog to respond with ‘a Nazi salute’ in response to the words ‘Zeig Heil’ and ‘gas the Jews’.” Dr Whyte said, therefore, that his tweet was intended to be a satirical comment on this person’s actions, for which he was later criminally convicted. Dr Whyte accepted that it “is possible that a reader without any knowledge of his personal views, might misunderstand the meaning of what he had written”.
Dr Whyte’s tweet was posted on 27 October, 2018 – the same day as the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, in which a far-right terrorist murdered 11 congregants at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Despite the date, there is nothing to suggest that Dr Whyte’s words are linked to this tragedy.
Although Whyte argued that his tweets were intended “satirically”, the committee said this did “not detract from the fact that these could be inflammatory, provocative and highly emotive to many members of the Jewish community and are likely to cause distress”. However, while they ruled that Dr Whyte’s conduct in posting them was “grossly offensive”, they also said that “in the absence of the context in which Dr Whyte used them, the Committee could not find his comments to be either antisemitic, or objectively antisemitic.”
The GMC’s investigations committee went on to say that “although Dr Whyte’s conduct is serious, it falls just short of that which would be considered serious enough to pose a risk to public protection…Dr Whyte is a doctor in good standing and the Committee have seen multiple positive references from professional colleagues and the extensive evidence of his reflection in relation to the allegations. It recognises that the tweets reported in the press represent a tiny proportion of his online activity and that they were posted seven years ago. In the light of this, and the personal and professional impact upon him of the media attention and the subsequent investigation, the Committee regards repetition to be unlikely.”
The decision from the GMC comes in the wake of a number of highly controversial decisions from the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service, which in the last two months has deemed several doctors fit to practice, despite them engaging in regular diatribes about “Jewish supremacy” in the UK. One of the two doctors, Rahmeh Aladwan, has since been referred back to the MPTS for comments she made on the anniversary of 7 October which appeared to glorify Hamas.
A spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism described the GMC investigation committee’s decision as “another spectacular failure”, asking “Is there any level of racism against Jewish people that the GMC would consider worthy of actual disciplinary action? If so, we have yet to see it.
“Anti-Semitism is at record highs in our society and regulators are totally asleep at the wheel.”
A GMC spokesperson said: “We carried out a full and thorough investigation into Dr Martin Whyte’s social media posts. After hearing the evidence, an investigation committee found his posts were grossly offensive. They decided a formal warning was necessary to uphold confidence in the profession, which will appear on the doctor’s online record for two years and must be disclosed to any potential new employers. A warning is formal, significant disciplinary action on a doctor’s registration.”
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