There is slightly more to the Hippocratic Oath than many non-medical professionals realise. The full text contains all the well-known bits – do no harm, don’t administer poison, maintain the confidentiality of your patients – but over the course of more than 300 words, there are also pledges about pessaries, kidney stones and dietary regimes.

It is a broad, ancient expression of ethics for an industry that has to adapt and modernise all the time. The role of a medical professional, of course, touches on almost all aspects of life, so recent renderings of the oath might tinker with the translation a bit. Yet, what no version touches on, so far as we can tell, is anything to do with solving the conflict in the Middle East, a call to political activism, or prolonged discussions about Zionism.

Attendees at the annual conference of the British Medical Association (BMA), the doctors’ trade union, could have been forgiven for thinking otherwise this week. Meeting in Liverpool for three days to establish policies and priorities for the industry in the coming year – of which, given the state of the NHS, there would have been lots to discuss – members instead found that 43 motions, around 10 per cent of the total, related to Israel, Gaza, Palestine, anti-Semitism or Zionism.

One claimed that Israel is establishing a “system of apartheid”, another called for a boycott of Israeli medical institutions and universities. A third called on the BMA to support doctors who refuse to pay taxes because the UK is “complicit in genocide”.

The slew of motions prompted the Jewish Medical Association (JMA) to warn that Jewish members attending the conference felt “intimidated, unsafe and excluded”. Speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals, several other BMA members The Telegraph has spoken to were, at best, perplexed and exasperated so much attention was being paid to global politics ahead of matters relating to British medicine. Others saw it as typical of a union they view as “institutionally anti-Semitic”, and now “overtaken by Left-wing entryists”.

“It was a disappointing conference in lots of ways, especially in relation to how much time was given to talking about Gaza,” says one doctor and longstanding BMA member, after returning from Liverpool. “There are so many other conflicts around the world where doctors and healthcare professionals are involved, so it seems a shame we didn’t think about them as well.

“Also, because it was spoken about at such length, it stopped us getting on with some of the work I hoped we might have done as a trade union. And then there’s the question of how welcome our Jewish colleagues might have felt, when there’s so much emphasis given to a subject like that.”