Respiratory consultant Dr Aarash Saleh and senior nurse Ahamad Baker say a uniform policy which bans shows of solidarity with Palestine is ‘discriminatory’
By Marco Marcelline
A Whipps Cross Hospital consultant who is suing Barts Health NHS Trust for banning staff from wearing Palestine solidarity pins, has accused the trust of “racism”.
Aarash Saleh, a respiratory consultant, is taking Barts to an employment tribunal for changing its uniform policy to ban staff from wearing clothes or symbols that display support for nations, or causes that the trust does not back.
Joined in making the claim by Whipps Cross senior nurse Ahamad Baker and Royal London Hospital doctor Sarah Ali, Aarash said the policy “deliberately” targets Palestine support “under the guise of being neutral”.
Speaking to the Echo, Aarash said the uniform policy change, enacted in March, had created a sense of “fear” among staff who felt it was not safe to openly express their opposition to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
He says he had been troubled for some time by the trust’s lack of vocal concern for what was occurring in the besieged strip. “When Israel’s bombing campaign against civilians started, and there were initial reports of hospitals being bombed, the only sort of comments that were coming out from the trust executives were comments about antisemitism or Islamophobia.
“There was no recognition of this humanitarian crisis unfolding. And we wrote to our trust leadership and asked them to say something and they basically refused.”
Aarash details several incidents where staff had attempted to hold talks about Israel’s assault on Gaza’s medical system and the resultant humanitarian crisis there.
“One staff member was extremely careful, balanced and factual in what they were saying during a talk but they were taken into an office afterwards and given a warning because it was potentially offensive or upsetting to colleagues to talk about the Gaza humanitarian crisis.”
A further attempt by Whipps Cross staff to run a bake sale for the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), saw an unnamed “senior trust executive” try to stop it from going ahead.
Barts Health directed the Echo to a statement where the trust said it aimed to be “completely apolitical and non-biased”.
But Aarash points out that staff were not only allowed to express solidarity with Ukraine amid the ongoing Russian invasion, but were “encouraged” to do so.
Until the start of this year, Barts sent medical equipment to Ukrainian hospitals that had suffered Russian bombardments. This included 60 patient monitors, 17 ventilators and over 100 anaesthetic machines.
In a July 2022 press release put out by the trust, Richard Aldridge, lead technologist from Royal London Hospital’s adult critical care unit said: “When I saw images of hospitals being bombed on the news, and people fleeing Ukraine because of the invasion, I thought that we as a trust could assist by donating items that the public could not normally do.”
This “contradiction” of previously being allowed to support Ukraine but banned from showing solidarity with Palestinians, “speaks of institutional racism hiding behind the guise of neutrality”, Aarash explained.
Meanwhile, international and Israeli human rights groups have called the ongoing disaster a genocide.
In a 65 page report released on 28th July, Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) found that Israel had targeted Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure in a “calculated and systematic” manner, through “targeted attacks, the killing and detention of hospital staff, and obstruction of medical aid”.
PHRI’s director Dr Guy Shalev has pressured for “urgent action” from the global health community to assist struggling medical staff in the region.
Barts Health, Aarash says, are not only missing from the conversation, but have directly engaged with the pro-Israeli lobby group UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) to “help mould” the trust’s new uniform policy.
The policy change came around when UKLFI sent a formal complaint to the trust late last year, asserting that pro-Palestinian symbols worn by staff could be deemed offensive or even unlawful.
Later on in March, UKLFI published an article announcing Barts’ new policy eight days before it was officially implemented and communicated to staff. Aarash and his co-claimants say this shows the trust “inappropriately consulted with an external body while sidelining internal staff voices”.
In their article, UKLFI highlighted the case of a Jewish woman who felt “extremely vulnerable” after seeing three Whipps Cross staff with “Free Palestine” badges, while she was giving birth.
Documented successes of the group include getting Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to remove artwork produced by Palestinian children, and forcing out the director of a Manchester art gallery over a 2022 statement where he showed support for the Palestinian liberation cause.
UKLFI received headlines in May after its head Jonathan Turner suggested a reduction in obesity due to the Gaza aid blockade “may increase life expectancy” there.
Barts Health said: “We recognise the distress that global conflict has for our diverse workforce and continue to support their wellbeing as they serve our patients. However, as an NHS organisation our primary responsibility is care for patients.
“Around the time the policy was approved and prior to it being published on our staff intranet, we were contacted by UKLFI to ask for an update on the policy review.
“In response to this letter we confirmed that we had completed the review of the policy and that it would contain a statement on political neutrality. UKLFI then published the letter on their website ahead of us publishing the policy to our workforce.”
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