Hundreds of doctors demand World Medical Association suspend Israel

Hundreds of doctors have gathered outside the World Medical Association (WMA) summit in the Netherlands, calling for the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) from the grouping of physicians.

On Saturday, 81 healthcare workers removed their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the WMA assembly in Rotterdam, each bearing the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker currently held in illegal Israeli detention.

It was part of a protest against the continued membership of the Israeli association in the WMA, “despite them breaching almost every ethical principle in the WMA’s Code of Medical Ethics”, the IMA Out! coalition that organised the demonstration said in a statement.

“These scrubs should not be empty. Our colleagues belong with their patients, not in Israeli prisons. Today, we literally placed their names at the WMA’s doorstep,” said Mejrem Ahmetaj, a general practitioner and member of IMA Out!.

Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers and destroyed nearly all the hospitals and healthcare facilities in the enclave.

The campaign accused the Israeli medical association of remaining silent as Palestinian healthcare has been systematically destroyed.

“The IMA is not a bystander. It defends these attacks and blocks international condemnation while Palestinian healthcare is being destroyed. That is not medical neutrality. That is complicity,” added Ahmetaj.

At a meeting of international doctors, medical leaders and human rights activists during the WMA summit on Thursday, the destruction of Palestinian healthcare and the responsibility of the international medical community were discussed, the campaign said.

“Our Palestinian colleagues are being killed and imprisoned, where they are starved and tortured. Their hospitals have been destroyed and patients driven out or murdered. The IMA has said and done nothing about these war crimes against health workers, patients and hospitals,” said a statement by Jonathan Fluxman on behalf of IMA OUT!.

“Thirty years of WMA dialogue with the IMA has done nothing but give the IMA a sense of impunity … It is time for national medical associations and the WMA to speak out and take action. Break your ties with the IMA and suspend the IMA from the WMA now,” he added.

The IMA OUT! campaign said it delivered a petition calling for the IMA’s suspension, signed by more than 6,500 health workers from around the world.

They also demanded accountability for the complicity of Israeli doctors in the starvation, torture and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners.

Among those held by Israel is Dr Hussam Abu Safia, head of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, whose unlawful detention has prompted an international outcry.

He was briefly held at the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp and has been subject to torture and medical neglect. Doctors protesting in Rotterdam held up placards demanding his release.

Abu Safia’s son Elyas, addressing a meeting organised by the campaign, said, “My father and all Palestinian detainees must be treated in accordance with medical ethics, and doctors must abide by the Hippocratic oath they have taken. Care cannot be given based on whose life is deemed worthy.”