Introduction and summary

This article sets out to rectify a long-standing wrong done to a co-founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians, Dr Swee Ang and to call out the cynical and malicious abuse of accusations of antisemitism, and the moral panic they can engender, to defame and above all cancel advocates of the Palestinians.

In 2014 the Daily Telegraph published an article accusing her of antisemitism for forwarding to a small group of friends and colleagues a troubling video which unbeknownst to her was published by a notorious antisemite. As soon as she discovered her mistake, she withdrew the post and apologised, though her apology was not included in the Telegraph article.

​Nevertheless, the accusation stuck and has dogged her over the years, resulting in the last-minute can- cellation, in April 2025, of a prestigious invitation from the British Medical Association to speak about her work for Palestinians. This article documents the sequence of events leading up to the cancellation of the BMA invitation. We go on to question the use of allegations of this kind, and the role of organisations like UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) in creating a climate of impunity for the state of Israel, and in triggering unpleasant reprisals against British citizens who support the Palestinians.

Swee’s de-platforming

In April 2025, Dr Swee Ang, co-founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, was due to give a keynote lecture to 300 medical student leaders, drawn from all the medical schools in UK under the auspices of the British Medical Association, the BMA. Two days before the date of the lecture, she received a letter from the BMA announcing that they had withdrawn the invitation. No explanation was made public, but CAMPAIN learned, through conversations with the BMA, that the cancellation was due to an item mentioned on her Wikipedia page, that eleven years earlier she had forwarded a link to a video by the US white supremacist and antisemite David Duke. CAMPAIN wrote the BMA an open letter, pointing out that at the time Swee did not know who Duke was and that there has never been a pattern of antisemitic statements or behaviour on her part. From the open letter:

The question the BMA must answer is whether it believes it is reasonable, in the light of these facts, to conclude that Dr Ang’s decades-long humanitarian work is merely a cover for a sinister antisemitic agenda. This is what those calling for Dr Swee’s cancellation are suggesting and your decision to disinvite her implies that you consider this a legitimate point of view. And yet it is absurd for any thinking and rational person to believe that her compassionate concern for Palestinians is not genuine, but rather a proxy for hatred of Jews.​

The letter urged the BMA to recognise its mistake, and to commit to treating Swee with respect and fairness in the future. It garnered 3,600 signatures, among them many distinguished names.

AOHR UK to EU and UK Gov’t: Hold  Israel accountable for its maritime piracy

On 2nd October 2025 Swee, together with CAMPAIN Secretary Jonathan Coulter and Chair Adam Waterhouse, delivered the letter to the BMA, and spoke with the BMA’s Director of Policy and Communications Greg Beales. Mr Beales made it clear that this decision was made by the temporary committee organis- ing the Medical Students Conference for 2025, and that the BMA had not banned Swee from speaking at BMA events. He said that the decision was likely made in order to not to distract attention from the wider issue of what was happening in Gaza, and the BMA’s own response to it.

The issue wasn’t simply the fact that forwarding Duke’s video was mentioned on her Wikipedia page but also that there didn’t appear to be any publicly published explanation or apology from Swee. He emphasised the importance of having a response on the public record. Unfortunately the lack of an apology in the public record has created a space within which smears and innuendos can continue to damage her reputation and hinder the work of MAP.

In fact this particular smear campaign had already resulted in withdrawal of dozens of invitations as speaker and participation in mainstream media interviews. The cancellation by BMA was preceded a month earlier by the cancellation of an invitation to speak at Harvard University. But the BMA cancellation was unique as Swee has been a member of the BMA for 49 years and some of the medical students were from her own NHS hospital, Barts (Saint Bartholomew’s). This article, based upon interviews with Swee, has been written to redress this, and to recount the background to the case and the ongoing consequences of Swee Ang’s 2014 misstep.

Swee’s background, from Singapore to the UK and the Middle East

Swee Ang is ethnically Chinese, but grew up in Singapore in the 1950s and 60s, and came to England in 1977 with her husband, the human rights lawyer Francis Khoo, when the political climate in Singapore became too threatening. She had trained as a doctor in Singapore; in London she completed her training as an orthopaedic surgeon, and in 1996 became the first woman consultant orthopedic surgeon at Barts Hospital in London.

Singapore, a tiny island state only twice the area of Greater London, is mainly ethnically Chinese, and its location in the midst of much larger Muslim states is something of an anomaly. Swee says this naturally inclined her towards sympathy for Israel, which she saw as David to the Arab Goliath. Her adoption of radical Christian belief in her teens accentuated her support for Israel. However this........

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