NHS staff have been reported for allegedly “intimidating” Jewish patients by wearing pro-Palestine badges and shirts while treating them. The Telegraph has more.
Barts Health NHS Trust, which runs five hospitals in central and east London, is reviewing its workplace dress code following complaints of staff wearing political symbols and Palestine football shirts.
Lawyers claimed that NHS staff have created an “intimidating, hostile and offensive environment for Israeli or Jewish patients and staff”.
Allowing staff to wear such items could breach of the Equality Act, the lawyers warned, adding it was “not appropriate for staff members at a hospital to display their political views”.
At Whipps Cross Hospital, an intern was pictured wearing a Palestine football shirt with two maps of Israel on the back.
According to U.K. Lawyers for Israel, the nurses carrying out dialysis on the patient who had complained, threatened to stop treating him if he did not delete the photograph.
This response was said to breach a “multitude of regulations for nurses” by “threatening to risk the patient’s health”, the lawyers claimed.
The legal group said that over the past year, they had received complaints about “many of the staff at Newham Hospital wearing large badges, attached to their hospital lanyards, with the slogan ‘Free Palestine’”.
They said the badges had been supplied to staff by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
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