This summer, at the British Medical Association’s Annual Representative Meeting — the yearly opportunity for BMA members to make their opinions policy — a motion passed calling for the protection of doctors and medical students involved in activism. With one doctor being persecuted for climate activism and in the wake of the Tory government threatening NHS staff wearing pro-Palestinian symbols, this motion was a huge victory in the debate surrounding the separation of personal and professional life, and of medicine and politics.

It is not news that the abstract idea of ‘professionalism’ is already being weaponised against doctors by the public, the media, and even our own colleagues. We saw doctors fighting back against violations — sometimes with a misogynistic bent — of their privacy in 2020: when a journal article labelled female doctors posting on their social media ‘unprofessional’, the #Medbikini Twitter trend sought to humanise medical professionals, especially women, by introducing the groundbreaking idea that they can, in fact, wear bikinis, and partake in all sorts of other activities enjoyed by other members of the public, too.

2023’s strikes by junior doctors (now called resident doctors) were handled in a similar way. Arguments rich with unrealistic standards and exceptionalism were used to try to shut down industrial action. The way these arguments manifested ranged from the public asking doctors to not ‘stoop down to the government’s level’ — and therefore continue running a national health service on goodwill, rather than calling on that government for full pay restoration — all the way unsubstantiated threats that striking doctors wouldn’t be signed off or would be reported to the General Medical Council for ‘unprofessionalism’. As a result, much of the pay campaign was also a fight to characterise doctors as working people deserving of workers’ rights obtained through workers’ means, the same as any other.

This brings us to the latest front in recognising doctors as people: the right to have and express a political opinion. We have all witnessed massacre after massacre taking place in Palestine. We have seen apparent war crimes taking place every day. Verbal anger is the least to which one should be entitled in the face of genocide. However, we have once again hit the roadblock that is ‘unprofessionalism’. Doctors speaking out against the crimes committed against Palestinian medical institutions and staff are being silenced by calls for medical neutrality.

‘Palatable’ political interventions by doctors have always been acceptable: think public health laws such as those that improve road safety and, in turn, help patient outcomes. Many, however, do not feel comfortable deviating from the white-collar stoicism that plagues the profession, preferring to maintain an image of superiority above the dirty squabbles of politics. In this configuration, pride is placed above conscience, and the urgency of speaking up is hidden behind the cause of ‘professionalism’, even when it is our own colleagues in danger. This cowardice is an excuse. It has no roots in the history of real medical neutrality.

Writing in The Baffler last December, physician and author Mary Turfah eloquently explained the historical basis for and purpose of medical neutrality. She tells us that neutrality is a political contract between medical professionals and combatants in warzones that exchanges the immunity and safety of the former for the medical treatment of all the latter, enemy or ally. While this principle was initially adopted by non-partisan NGOs, we expect the same from doctors serving their militaries as per the first Geneva Convention. To ask British doctors to stay silent about a genocide in the name of medical neutrality is particularly hypocritical when we don’t even expect doctors serving in militaries to deny the suffering of the other side. It is yet more ignorant to view medicine as apolitical when the profession’s history of engaging in politics for the sake of its patients brought us the essential rules of just warfare today.

The inherently political nature of medicine is especially important today. The image of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah giving a press release surrounded by the bodies of his colleagues and patients following the bombing of Gaza’s Al-Ahli Hospital has been ingrained in the minds of medics and non-medics alike since 17 October of last year. Further reports of medical personnel and facilities being targeted have proliferated since. It is through these images and the experiences they communicate that our profession must once again be politicised. Doctors cannot depend on the charitable protection of bureaucratic institutions: if we are willing to band together over pay, we must absolutely take action to guarantee our colleagues’ safety.

The group ‘BMA For a Free Palestine’, made up of doctors and medical students in the UK, has been working on organising the profession to stand in solidarity with Palestinians. During the same meeting mentioned at the start of this article, this group managed to pass a range of other motions, including one demanding an investigation into the destruction of Palestinian hospitals. Combined, these motions attempt to stand with Palestinians in every way the medical profession can. The BMA can play only a small part in persuading the international community to investigate the war crimes committed in Palestine, but every gesture is necessary to make it clear we are not looking away. There is more concrete action still to come: Israel’s attacks on education and medical facilities mean that it is a struggle for Palestinians in Gaza to complete their medical training. Providing clinical placements will allow students to continue to learn.

The motion for protecting doctors and students involved in activism guarantees that joining this movement no longer means medical staff who care about Palestine have to fend for themselves. BMA members will stand behind doctors if their voices are suppressed — and BMA For a Free Palestine will fight to replace bad-faith paeans to ‘professionalism’ with a medical ethic committed to acknowledging and alleviating the suffering of all.