British healthcare system rife with ‘malignant’ antisemitism, watchdog alleges

A documentary published on Monday by the Campaign Against Antisemitism watchdog group shares details of several incidents that it alleges amount to severe antisemitism plaguing the United Kingdom’s NHS healthcare system.

Among the incidents detailed in “Malignant: Anti-Semitism in the NHS” were a Jewish cancer patient who underwent antisemitic abuse from a surgeon during a procedure, a Jewish nurse who was subjected to a Nazi salute by a co-worker, and a Jewish patient being treated by a leader of a now-proscribed terror group.

Together with the 20-minute film, the organization published polling showing that a majority of British Jews felt concerned that they would not receive equal treatment from the NHS because of their religious identity.

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Speaking in the documentary, registered Cambridge hospital nurse Shelley Lipman said a fellow staff member asked about Hebrew calligraphy tattoos she has, and she told the colleague she was Jewish.

Lipman was “absolutely gobsmacked” when she returned from a lunch break to find the colleague performing a Nazi salute to her while standing by a patient’s bed.

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Lipman said she confronted the coworker, telling him, “Do you know that is the Nazi salute? That is Hitler,” to which the colleague simply replied, “Yeah.”

The staff member is still employed at the hospital, according to Lipman.

“I hate it, I absolutely hate it,” she said.

In another case described in the documentary, a surgeon told his Jewish cancer patient — while removing a cancerous growth from his forehead — that Jews killed Palestinian children “for fun.”

Another employee, whose identity was not revealed in the film, said she and other Jewish coworkers planned to buy donuts and hand them out to staff to celebrate Hanukkah.

However, their management told them it would be “inappropriate” at the time.

“The way I read it was, we’re now going to delete our Jews here,” the interviewee said.

Stephen Silverman, the director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, said in a statement that the film “exposes the antisemitic rot at the heart of our NHS.”

“The anecdotal evidence presented in our film, together with the empirical data provided by our polling, demonstrate the magnitude and severity of this institutional crisis,” he said.

In an op-ed by CAA chief executive Gideon Falter in The Telegraph, he said the film shows “not a tale of occasional lapses, but of a malignant hatred in the very NHS that should be a bastion of compassion.”

“We heard from Jewish patients terrified of their surgeons, and Jewish nurses and doctors pushed out of the hospitals they had devoted their lives to,” he said, calling antisemitism “malignant” in the system.

“We cannot accept politicians pointing to past reviews and recommendations – we need real and robust action now. That is why we are also presenting a detailed plan to address this national scandal. Practitioners, trusts, regulators and others must all act,” he wrote.

Between October 2023 and July 2025, 99 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the healthcare sector, according to a report published last year by the Antisemitism Policy Trust.

In June, the UK government proposed new rules for the health system to fight antisemitism, including a ban on staff wearing political badges, including pro-Palestinian symbols.

But the British Medical Association said it would oppose the rules and seek to freeze the introduction of the new guidelines over concerns of freedom of expression.

Zev Stub contributed to this report.

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