Pressure mounts to suspend Israeli medical association from global body
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Mon, 06/15/2026 - 12:34
Petition calls for World Medical Association to remove Israeli organisation over 'failure to uphold core medical ethical standards'
The damage at the entrance of a hospital near the site where an Israeli air strike struck a building the previous day in the southern port city of Tyre, 2 June 2026 (AFP)
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Calls for the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) to be suspended from the World Medical Association (WMA) are growing, after over a thousand people including prominent medics signed a petition calling for the Israeli body’s removal.
A petition organised by The People’s Health Movement, Dutch organisation Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza), as well as the health wing of Jewish Voice for Peace said that the IMA was failing “to uphold core medical ethical standards, including the WMA Declarations of Geneva and Tokyo”.
It alleged that the IMA was also complicit in “serious violations of medical neutrality and human rights” committed by Israel’s government and military.
It called on the global body to suspend Israel ahead of the General Assembly in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, in early October.
The petition has more than 1,300 signatories, including a number of well known health professionals, as well as organisations such as Health Workers for Palestine in Spain, Doctors Against Genocide based in the US, as well as Health Alliance for Democracy in the Phillipines.
It notes that Israeli forces have attacked healthcare in Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, and have killed, detained and obstructed healthcare professionals.
It states that Israeli medical professionals were complicit in the inhumane treatment of Palestinians within Israeli prisons, by failing to document and investigate violations of medical ethics over the past three decades.
It added that Palestinians have worse health services than Israelis due to occupation and apartheid policies.
“The IMA has done nothing to oppose the killing and injuring of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza or the destruction of the health service there,” they wrote.
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“On the contrary, by endorsing the call by 80 Israeli doctors who publicly called for the bombing of Gaza’s hospitals in November 2023, the IMA effectively gave the green light for the genocide.”
The signatories called on the WMA to cut institutional ties with the IMA, following the lead of the South African Medical Association and the British Medical Association.
An article about the petition was published by The Lancet in recent days, which had identified that the IMA had not published any statements that "publicly condemned Israeli attacks on Gaza's health system, criticised Israeli conduct in the war, called for a ceasefire, or responded to UN reports of genocide against Palestinians”.
The IMA responded to the Lancet by stating that its members did uphold medical ethics.
“The accusations against the IMA are, at worst, lies and at best, highly contested allegations presented as fact. More egregiously, the signatories' calls to expel the IMA from the WMA seem to confuse a country's government with its medical association, an extremely dangerous precedent,” it said.
The WMA told the Lancet that suspending the IMA would “not promote peace, healthcare, or human rights”.
“Instead, it would damage scientific collaboration, weaken international medical dialogue and establish a precedent whereby political pressure campaigns may be used to isolate healthcare professionals on the basis of nationality,” it said.
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