‘Complicit’: World Medical Association criticised for rejecting calls to suspend Israel

The World Medical Association (WMA) is facing mounting criticism for declining to suspend the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), despite overwhelming evidence of Israeli doctors' involvement in torture and other human rights abuses in Gaza. At the WMA General Assembly in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, a petition signed by 6,500 medical professionals from the IMA Out! coalition was presented, urging the international body to expel the IMA.

Hundreds of doctors demonstrated outside the assembly, holding a shroud with the names of 18,000 Palestinian children killed during Israel's Gaza genocide.

The WMA maintains the IMA's membership, despite allegations that Israeli doctors have participated in the torture of Palestinian detainees and the deaths of Palestinian healthcare workers in Israeli prisons. Human rights organizations, including the Hind Rajab Foundation, have filed complaints with the International Criminal Court, alleging that Israeli doctors, as well as the IMA and Israeli officials, may have been involved in these atrocities.

The WMA's refusal to investigate these claims and suspend the IMA has drawn comparisons to the US and British governments' complicity in Israel's actions.

Dr. Jonathan Fluxman, a retired British GP and leader of the IMA Out! campaign, stated that the WMA and IMA are failing to address multiple reports of torture and murder of healthcare workers. He emphasized that this issue has been ongoing for 30 years, and the WMA has been ignoring these reports. Fluxman also questioned the WMA's role as the international guardian of medical ethics, stating that it is complicit in the IMA's involvement in these violations.

The WMA was founded in 1947 to uphold medical ethics after World War II, and it has expelled countries before for complicity in torture, most recently in 1976 when South Africa was barred from attending two general assemblies due to apartheid-era torture. The IMA, which represents over 90 percent of Israeli doctors, has been criticized for failing to uphold core medical ethics standards and protecting Israeli doctors from accountability.