The General Medical Council (GMC) has banned a Welsh GP from posting about the Israel and Palestine on social media after an Interim Orders Tribunal imposed formal restrictions on her medical registration. This followed a complaint from UK Lawyers for Israel.
Dr Sian Arfon, a partner of a GP practise in Bangor, Wales, is now subject to interim conditions on her licence to practise while a full fitness-to-practise investigation is ongoing. Among those conditions is an explicit prohibition on her tweeting, retweeting, posting or reposting anything relating to Gaza, Palestine, Hamas or Israel
Why the GMC intervened
The GMC restrictions follow a formal complaint submitted by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) in September 2024, which provided extensive evidence that Dr Arfon had used her public social-media accounts to:
- Express support for Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK
- Justify and praise the 7 October 2023 attacks on Israeli civilians
- Compare Israel to Nazi Germany and Hitler
- Post material that minimised or inverted the Holocaust
- Deny the Jewish people’s right to self-determination
- Publish antisemitic and inflammatory content likely to distress Jewish and Israeli patients
UKLFI’s evidence included reposts and comments by Dr Arfon endorsing Hamas and describing its actions as legitimate resistance, as well as multiple posts portraying Israel as genocidal and Nazi-like
In addition to the social-media ban, the GMC has ordered that Dr Arfon must:
- Notify the GMC of all her employers, contracting bodies and places of work
- Inform all employers, responsible officers and agencies of the restrictions
- Allow the GMC to exchange information with those organisations
- Report disciplinary proceedings or loss of roles to the GMC
These measures are designed to protect patients and maintain confidence in the medical profession while the investigation continues
A spokesperson for UK Lawyers for Israel, said:
“The GMC’s decision to ban Dr Arfon from posting about Gaza and related matters reflects the seriousness of what she had been publishing. A doctor who publicly endorses a terrorist organisation, spreads Holocaust-inverting material and attacks Israel in antisemitic terms cannot expect to be allowed to continue using social media in that way while under investigation.
Jewish and Israeli patients were entitled to feel alarmed and distressed by what she posted. These interim restrictions are an important step in protecting public trust while the GMC completes its inquiry.”
Dr Arfon remains under a live GMC fitness-to-practise investigation, and the interim conditions will remain in force unless varied or lifted by a future tribunal
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