World Medical Association condemns attempt to suspend Israeli Medical Association

New initiative from group of anti-Israel individuals and organisations to eject the IMA is robustly rejected by the WMA itself

The Israeli Medical Association has described attempts to have it suspended from the World Medical Association as “setting an extremely dangerous precedent”, with the WMA itself making it clear that it opposes the initiative.

As reported by The Lancet, various organisations, including the “People’s Health Movement” and “Doctors for Gaza” have called for the IMA to be ejected from the WMA, accusing it of having “colluded in the unspeakable treatment of Palestinians during this war” and saying that it has “never acknowledged the evidence for the deliberate targeting of health facilities and health workers in Gaza”. The British Medical Association, which effectively serves as a trade union for doctors and medical personnel in the UK, suspended its ties with the IMA last summer.

The IMA told The Lancet: “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. Finally, the petition ignores any role of Hamas in the destruction of Gaza’s health-care system, such as their deliberate strategy of hiding beneath and within hospitals and using hospitals for military command centres and ammunition storage, in violation of Article 19 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

While the petition organisers wish the question of the IMA’s suspension to be discussed at the WMA’s general assembly in October, the global body told The Lancet that it opposed the initiative, saying that it “deeply values inclusion and believes engagement with its 117 constituent national medical association members is vital to advancing health and medical ethics globally. Preserving dialogue and cooperation among physicians internationally is essential in a world fractured by escalating conflicts and humanitarian crises”. It also made clear that “the IMA, one of our founding members and a strong advocate for WMA ethics and policies, has engaged in the development of our statements on Gaza, and has itself approached the Israeli Government with shared concerns from the medical profession on many occasions.

“The WMA stands against exclusion of any of its members for the actions of their governments—doing so diminishes our ability to call out injustices, and threatens shrinking the dialogue among physicians at this critical time when consensus in support of our medical ethics is so needed”.