Medical tribunal criticised after dismissing case against British-Palestinian doctor

UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) has said that it will be preparing a complaint to the Professional Standards Authority, after a British-Palestinian doctor was let off by the Medical Practitioner Tribunal Service after it claimed that charges he had supported terrorism were “not proved”.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, who was working as a medic in the Gaza Strip at the start of the latest Israel-Hamas war triggered by the latter on 7 October, became a leading anti-Israel voice in the UK in late 2023. He was subsequently elected rector of Glasgow University, his alma mater, in 2024.

UKLFI provided several dossiers to the GMC relating to Abu Sitta’s behaviour, including the sharing of more than a dozen examples of alleged support for terrorist groups or individual terrorists. However, the tribunal only looked in detail at two of these tweets, as well as an article that Abu Sitta had written for a Lebanese paper notorious for its pro-Hezbollah editorial line.

In the piece, Abu Sitta had written about “the martyrdom of the resistance member Ahmed Nassr Jarar, the hero of the Nablus operation, at the hands of the Zionist Occupation Army”. Jarrar’s death, which came as the result of a shoot-out with the Israeli army, came a month after he had shot and killed a Rabbi outside a West Bank settlement.

In Abu Sitta’s evidence to the tribunal, he said that “Jarrar was suspected of killing an Israeli settler. Because Jarrar was killed, rather than arrested and tried, nobody knows whether he killed the settler in question or, if he did, the circumstances in which he did so…It is in this context that I referred to Jarrar as the ‘hero of the Nablus operation’, and to his death as a ‘martyrdom’. My point was that by allowing Jarrar to be killed by without a trial, simply on the say-so of Israel, the Palestinian Authority had made Jarrar a hero in the eyes of many Palestinians. Simply by virtue of Jarrar having died in those circumstances, he became an instant symbol of Palestinian struggle.”

Abu Sitta went on to claim: “I did not refer to Jarrar in those terms because I endorse the acts he was alleged in the press to have committed. I do not. I do not believe that the readers of the article, familiar as they necessarily would be with the nuance of Arab and Palestinian political discourse and life, would have seen my article as an endorsement of terrorism.”

The tribunal said it was “satisfied that, having considered Dr Abu-Sitta’s evidence, there was no intention on his part to be supportive of violence.”

It is unclear whether the tribunal was aware of the fact that while the Rabbi in question was killed on the outskirts of Nablus, Jarrar himself was killed in Jenin, a different West Bank city.

One of the tweets considered by the MPTS, which had been posted in mid-December 2022 and could therefore have only been shared by Abu Sitta on or after that date, showed a picture of George Habash and Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the respective founder of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and Hamas. The caption read: “‘We congratulate our brothers in Hamas and our comrades in the Popular Front on the anniversary of their inception. May you remain sincere, steadfast, and vigilant. May your strength endure and your enemies be humbled. #Hamas _35 #Hamas #Our_inception_is_resistance.”

Hamas, which was proscribed in its entirety as an organisation in the UK in 2021, was founded in December 1987. Despite this, the tribunal said that “During the proceedings, no evidence was elicited nor was Dr Abu-Sitta asked as to when the actual comments were posted or when he reposted them. In the absence of any definitive evidence, the tribunal considered that the repost which Dr Abu-Sitta undertook could have been prior to November 2021. The tribunal has no evidence either way.” The tribunal also said that it “was satisfied that the ordinary reader would perceive the repost to refer to a celebration of the anniversary of the ‘brothers’ and ‘comrades’ of two organisations of resistance in Palestine. There is no evidence before the tribunal that at the time of reposting, either organisation was a proscribed organisation.

“The tribunal was satisfied that the reader of the post would acknowledge the historical significance of these major factions within the Palestinian fabric during an anniversary, not consider it to be material or moral aid to the commission of terrorist acts.”

In a social media statement late last week, Abu Sitta wrote “WE WON. The General Medical Council tribunal has thrown out the complaint made by UK Lawyers for Israel, accusing me of support of violence and terrorism and antisemitism.”

A spokesperson for UKLFI said: “We are very concerned that the GMC failed to give information to the tribunal about the dates of the posts, information we had provided to them. As a result of this omission the tribunal was unable to prove that the pro-Hamas tweet they were considering had been posted after the full designation of Hamas in November 2021. In fact it had been tweeted on 13 December 2022.

“We are also disappointed that the GMC only presented the tribunal with two of Dr Abu Sitta’s many re-posts, commemorating those who carried out violent acts, which UKLFI had provided to them. These showed a pattern of behaviour by Abu Sitta.  The GMC also ignored other concerns about Abu Sitta.

“As a result of the GMC’s poor presentation of the case, it seems that the tribunal has made it acceptable for doctors to commemorate acts of violence and pay tribute to terrorists. This decision has failed to protect the public from this individual, and has failed to maintain public confidence in the medical profession, or to maintain proper professional standards and conduct for its members.”

However, Jewish News understands that the GMC did provide the tribunal with a full evidence bundle. This included a copy of the original referral information sent by UKLFI to the GMC, which stated, for example, that Dr Abu-Sitta had reposted the Hamas-related tweet on 13 December 2022, together with relevant information about context.

A GMC spokesperson said: “We presented the tribunal with all of the available evidential material, ensuring it had all the information needed to reach an independent decision.”

Jewish groups expressed their dismay at the tribunal decision. A Board of Deputies spokesperson said: “It will be of deep concern to British Jews that the MPTS has again cleared an individual despite the GMC arguing that their statements in relation to Palestinian extremist violence constituted misconduct. This reinforces concerns we have been raising consistently with government and shows the urgency of Lord Mann’s rapid review into antisemitism in the NHS in all parts of the UK.”

With Abu Sitta’s links to Glasgow, Scottish Jewish organisations also shared their concerns, with a Jewish Council of Scotland spokesperson saying that the MPTS’ decision in relation to Abu Sitta “underlines the Jewish community’s concerns across the UK about antisemitism within the NHS.” A Glasgow Jewish Representative Council said that Abu Sitta’s ” language and conduct as Rector of the University of Glasgow has been an ongoing cause of concern to the Jewish community in and around Glasgow: this decision of the MPTS will do little to allay these concerns.”

Legal organisations which supported Abu Sitta have said in turn that they plan to file a complaint against UKLFI with the Solicitor’s Regulation Authority.