Dr. Rahmeh Aladwan, who has previously gone viral and faced a medical tribunal for her tirades on “Jewish supremacy,” was arrested in the UK, according to British media reports on Wednesday.
The arrest came before the self-described British-Palestinian woman was due to face another medical tribunal.
In video footage, shared by Aladwan, a female Metropolitan Police officer said, “You’re under arrest for four offences: malicious communications times three, and for inciting racial hatred”, referring to “section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act and section 127 of the Misuse of Public Communications Network.”
The officer referred to a speech delivered by Aladwan on July 21, where she called for the elimination of the Jewish state outside the Foreign and Commonwealth office, "and implied support for all those involved in armed resistance against Israel, including organisations such as Hamas.”
The officer also mentioned “comments that can be interpreted as antisemitic, including antisemitic tropes which could be considered grossly offensive in character. On 7 October, you posted a variety of communication which demonstrated support for Hamas’s attack on Israel, an attack which involved murder, rape, and kidnap of Israeli citizens, all of which may be considered grossly offensive in character.”
“This is what the UK does to their doctors that are Palestinian, who have had family and friends murdered and who are anti-genocide. That’s it, that’s all we advocate for”, Aladwan claimed. “You know you’re doing this for the Israeli Jewish lobby, so you can get an arrest on me before my tribunal on Thursday.”
“Sigh, today's arrest confirms what they're persecuting us for saying: Britain is not sovereign," she later wrote on X/Twitter. “We are occupied and being made into a joke for the 'israeli' jewish lobby. Thank you all for your support. More details soon. They tried to intimidate us—do we look intimidated?”
Antisemitism and Hamas support
Aladwan has previously stated that “I don’t condemn Hamas. I don’t condemn October 7. I don’t condemn armed resistance to Occupation. I condemn ‘Israel’.”
On the second anniversary of the massacre, she posted, “7 October – the day Israel was humiliated. Their supremacy shattered at the hands of the children they forced out of their homes. The children who watched foreign jews execute their loved ones, rape their land, and live on their stolen soil.”
With photos of Hamas’s bulldozers on October 7, she published “Glory to the breaking of the 17 year long illegal siege. Glory to the Palestinian resistance. Glory to our martyrs. Al-Aqsa flood. Palestine.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism, which recently announced it would launch a private prosecution against Aladwan, said:
“We have submitted numerous complaints to the General Medical Council (GMC) regarding this doctor, who is a prolific poster of the most deranged material and claims about Jewish people, and is self-evidently unfit to serve as a regulated professional. The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) inexplicably disagreed, allowing her to continue to practice as a trainee pending further investigation, and we have threatened legal action.
“But now even the Met Police — hardly the most proactive institution in the fight against antisemitism — believes that her conduct is so incendiary as to have potentially crossed the criminal threshold.
“What an absolute embarrassment to our medical regulator, and what a disgrace that it cannot see what ordinary people and even the Met Police can. Clearly, the GMC and the MPTS are unfit for purpose.”