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News BMA Annual Representative Meeting 2024

Jewish doctor is heckled at BMA meeting while raising concerns about Palestinians

A Jewish doctor was heckled with shouts of “shame” as she spoke out in defence of Palestinians in Gaza at the BMA’s annual representative meeting (ARM) in Belfast this week.

Speaking at the conference on 24 June, Jo Sutton-Klein proposed an emergency motion that raised concern over the ARM agenda committee attempting to remove more than 30 motions from the agenda relating to Gaza “because they didn't agree with them.”

Sutton-Klein said, “In the initial letter from the agenda committee one of the justifications for the silencing of these motions was they might be perceived as antisemitic. So I want to stand up here today, as a practising Jew, to say there is nothing”—when she was interrupted by a few members of the audience shouting “shame.”

After the outburst, she continued, “There is nothing Jewish about the attempt to remove motions that you disagree with. And the idea that undemocratically removing motions from the agenda helps Jews is staggeringly offensive, as is shouting shame at a Jewish person talking about their practice.”

After the incident a BMA spokesperson said, “The BMA takes extremely seriously behaviour which is discriminatory, racist, or offensive in any way. In this instance, one or two members chose to disrupt the speech by a Jewish doctor who was speaking out in defence of the Palestinian community in Gaza. This action was called out immediately, and we are now investigating.”

The motion Sutton-Klein proposed had called for all agenda committees to publish “transparent public reports documenting the decision making process for selection or removal of motions” and for a process to escalate concerns regarding motion submission, selection, and prioritisation to be developed and implemented.

The motion was passed in all parts, with the exception of the first section, which had called for a declaration of no confidence in the ARM agenda committee. During the debate, junior doctor Brocha Goode said that the agenda committee had seen so many resignations over the motion selection situation that many members, including himself, were new to the committee.

Commenting on the pressure to remove motions in the agenda documents, BMA representative body chair Latifa Patel wrote that concerns over the “accuracy” of some motions had been raised, and this led to the union seeking legal advice. “Without waiving privilege, all the advice I received stated that no individual motion was discriminatory. However, when many of these motions are placed together, despite coming from different constituent bodies, they risk being perceived as discriminatory, more specifically, antisemitic,” Patel said.

She added that she was asked to remove these motions “by some members of your ARM agenda committee” but that removing motions was “not within the role or delegated authority of your elected ARM agenda committee.” Instead, the motions were included in the list of motions that had been initially rejected but could still be debated if they were chosen by voting representatives at the conference.

[RT]

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