A world-leading plastic and reconstructive surgeon re-posted antisemitic and pro-terrorism messages on social media, a medical tribunal heard.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, who has worked as a war surgeon in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria and is also Rector of Glasgow University, is also accused of expressing antisemitic views in a newspaper article and showing support for proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas.
The Kuwait-born surgeon appeared before a Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) misconduct hearing in Manchester yesterday and denies the allegations against him.
The tribunal heard how a complaint was received about the doctor from UK Lawyers For Israel (UKFLI) relating to two reposts on X, formerly Twitter.
One read: “We congratulate our brothers in Hamas and our comrades in the Popular Front on the anniversary of their inception. May you remain sincere, steadfast, and vigilant. May your strength endure and your enemies be humbled #Hamas _35 #Hamas #Our_inception_is_resistance.”
Another referred to the “Iranian Martyrs in the Popular Front of the Liberation of Palestine”, adding: “Their blood is Iranian. Their heart is Palestinian.”
The doctor also wrote an article for Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar in March 2018 in which he talked of the “martyrdom of resistance fighter Ahmad Nasr Jarrar, the hero of the Nablus operation”, saying the Palestinian people “have no weapon left but revolutionary violence”.
Ros Emsley Smith, for the GMC, said the doctor had “over-stepped the boundaries of legitimate political speech into the realms of misconduct”.
She said the re-posts were objectively supportive of violence, terrorism and antisemitic.
Giving evidence, Abu-Sittah said he had reposted the comments, which were in Arabic, because he found them “intellectually and culturally interesting”.
He said the reposts would be difficult for anyone unfamiliar with Arabic language and Arabic culture and he’d wanted to highlight “inherent contradictions” within them.
In relation to the repost about Hamas, he said: “It’s not an ironic repost, it’s a rebuttal to government propaganda for being historically inaccurate.”
He also accused the UKFLI of “dog-whistling” and racially profiling Palestinians as “inherently violent”.
He also claimed they wanted to “destroy my life” because he had met International Criminal Court (ICC) investigators.
In May 2025, an interim orders tribunal (IOT) rejected a previous application to suspend him after he argued that a complaint against him was political in nature and he was not the author of the posts complained of.