In a video posted to Instagram, the television presenter Nadia Sawalha addressed her followers with a confession of defeat. “I want to say how sad I am that it’s got to this,” she said, her voice steady but laden with frustration. “Believe me, I have appealed to ITV’s hearts and minds, but to no avail.” The 61-year-old, a fixture on the daytime panel show Loose Women since 2013, was speaking after what she describes as months of being quietly sidelined.

Sawalha has now instructed lawyers to send a pre-action letter to ITV, alleging direct discrimination, indirect discrimination and harassment because of her “protected philosophical beliefs”. The European Legal Support Center, which is representing her, argues that her anti-Zionist views fall under the Equality Act 2010. The dispute centres on her public support for Palestinian rights, which she began voicing in December 2023, two months after the Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. She insists she has never raised the subject on Loose Women itself, but says she became the target of an escalating campaign of complaints, hostile media coverage and calls for her removal.

Loose Women, a lunchtime institution that thrives on the unscripted opinions of its four female panellists, has long marketed itself as a space for frank conversation. Sawalha, hired precisely because she is “an opinionated woman on a discussion show”, found that her off-screen activism collided with the programme’s corporate calculus. She claims ITV repeatedly took her on and off the roster, telling her, “It’s all a bit noisy out there for us,” and that they could not guarantee she would not be removed again because it would “depend on what was said”.

The case has drawn in a wider public. A petition demanding her reinstatement and a public apology from ITV has gathered more than 20,000 signatures. Fellow panellist Dame Kelly Holmes expressed shock, writing on social media, “This is just not right or just. I had no idea.” At the same time, a group of Jewish entertainment executives sent a dossier to ITV urging the channel not to bring her back, accusing her of “conspiratorial rhetoric, inflammatory commentary, disinformation, and antisemitic discourse” – allegations Sawalha denies, noting that two newspapers that previously levelled similar accusations have since apologised and paid damages.

In her video, Sawalha framed her fight as part of a broader pattern. “There are the teachers, doctors, nurses, charity and supermarket workers, and students who have also spoken according to their conscience and have suffered a similar fate as me,” she said. “Enough is enough.” She ended with a call to action: “We need to send a clear message to ITV and other groups and corporations that we won’t be scared into silence.”