Why the British Medical Association is speaking out on Gaza
Palestinians inspect the damage at an ambulance repair yard hit by Israeli strikes in Gaza’s al-Maghazi refugee camp on 24 March 2025
Hosnieh Djafari-Marbini writes in Middle East Eye on 9 July 2025:
Across the UK and around the world, the tide has turned. From musicians chanting at Glastonbury, to students occupying campuses, to doctors’ unions passing motions of solidarity, public opinion has shifted. People are demanding an end to active participation in genocide and ethnic cleansing.
The votes two weeks ago at the British Medical Association’s annual representative meeting – the largest gathering of doctors in the UK – are a powerful symbol of that shift.
I am a senior National Health Service (NHS) anaesthetist. I work in operating theatres, where the stakes are high and the duty clear: do no harm, save lives where you can, ease pain where you cannot. Like most health workers, I hold dear the belief that every human life holds equal worth, and that providing dignified care should never be conditional – not on race, nationality or politics.
But in Palestine, the very foundations of our profession are being destroyed with impunity.
For the past 21 months, we have witnessed a brutal and unrelenting war on healthcare. More than 1,400 Palestinian health workers have been targeted and killed – nurses, paramedics, midwives and doctors. Hospitals have been reduced to rubble; ambulances bombed, blockaded and buried in sand. Patients have died of treatable wounds, because Israel blocks basic supplies from entering the territory.