The Israeli Medical Association defended Israel over the Gaza genocide - it must be sanctioned
Submitted by
Ghada Majadli
on
Tue, 07/07/2026 - 11:48
Amid growing calls for its suspension from the World Medical Association, the professional body claimed political neutrality even as it worked to block accountability for Israel's crimes
Medical staff treat a patient in the underground ward of Rambam hospital in Haifa, Israel, 22 September 2024 (Sipa USA/Reuters Connect)
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As calls grow to suspend the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) from the World Medical Association (WMA), much of the debate has focused on the association's failure to condemn the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system and attacks on health in Lebanon and Iran.
But the problem runs deeper.
In response to the recent petition published in The Lancet calling on the WMA to suspend the IMA, the IMA argued: "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."
The IMA has not simply failed to uphold its ethical and medical obligations by remaining silent in the face of these attacks. It has actively challenged and opposed efforts by international medical and academic associations, professional bodies and medical journals abroad to condemn Israel's actions in Gaza.
It has mobilised its professional authority to contest allegations of war crimes and genocide, and to push back against calls to end the war and hold Israel accountable.
This conduct, since 7 October, both domestically and internationally, tells a story of complicity that has been largely absent from the current debate.
Beyond silence
While the association presents itself as institutionally separate from the state of Israel when confronted with demands for accountability, its conduct reveals a far more entangled relationship.
The IMA has long understood its role as extending beyond that of an independent professional body, aligning itself with Israeli policies affecting the health of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, and positioning itself as a defender of state policies and practices towards Palestinians more broadly.
This role has become particularly pronounced since 7 October, but it long predates it.
Long before the current genocide, the association, for example, defended and normalised the establishment of a medical school in the illegal settlement of Ariel, framing a project embedded in territorial expansion and dispossession as a purely professional and humanitarian endeavour.
It has been complicit in the torture of Palestinian prisoners, and has aligned itself with, rather than critically challenged, Israel's siege on Gaza, including the restrictions it imposes on the movement of Palestinian patients.
But since 7 October, the IMA has actively defended Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
It sought to thwart calls by medical and academic associations, professional bodies and medical journals for a ceasefire, accountability and boycotts, contesting both the criticisms of Israel's war crimes in Gaza and the measures proposed in response.
The association portrayed such initiatives as politically motivated, arguing that they improperly instrumentalised medicine and academia, while calling for the continuation of academic and professional cooperation with Israeli institutions.
In doing so, it worked to shape global public opinion in support of Israel's war effort and circulated official Israeli justifications for the large-scale destruction in Gaza.
These included claims that hospitals had been used for military purposes, that humanitarian aid was being diverted by Hamas and that civilians were being used as human shields.
Medicine and hasbara
The IMA understood itself as part of a broader national effort in support of the war. In its communication with members, the association described itself as operating on a further "front" of hasbara, and encouraged Israeli physicians to participate in international advocacy efforts.
It presented academic and medical forums abroad as spaces in which to defend Israel's position, rebut criticism and mobilise support for Israel among professional colleagues worldwide.
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Alongside these efforts, the IMA reorganised healthcare resources to support reservists and their families, and allowed periods of military service to count towards the completion of physicians' medical internships.
Drawing on the IMA's public statements, correspondence with Israeli authorities, communications with physicians and responses to international criticism, the association has functioned as a political actor rather than an independent professional body through what may be termed "medical diplomacy": the mobilisation of medical authority, professional networks and claims to scientific and medical neutrality in the service of defending Israel and countering international criticism.
In practice, this has meant intervening when Israel's conduct came under scrutiny, not by investigating or condemning attacks on healthcare, but by contesting calls for a ceasefire and accountability, and defending the political and military objectives of the war.
Pressure mounts to suspend Israeli medical association from global body
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The IMA's eventual appeals and inquiries to the Israeli military regarding the humanitarian conditions in Gaza and the attacks on healthcare also occurred in the context of mounting international pressure on the association.
Facing growing criticism over its silence, as well as increasing calls for professional sanctions and boycotts, the IMA began publishing inquiries addressed to Israeli military authorities, although some of these were later removed from its website.
In one letter written following requests from what the association described as "international actors" concerning the death of a physician in Gaza, the IMA asked the military to clarify the circumstances of his killing, including whether Israeli forces were responsible.
The letter concluded by noting that such information would assist the association in protecting "the good name of Israel".
Israeli media likewise linked these interventions to concerns within the Israeli medical establishment about growing international pressure and the possibility of wider boycott campaigns.
These developments suggest that the IMA's decision to speak publicly about humanitarian conditions in Gaza was shaped, at least in part, by external and internal pressures from its physician members that the association could no longer ignore.
Selective protection
Significantly, the IMA's correspondence with the WMA following an Iranian strike on Soroka hospital in Beersheba, Israel, in June 2025 came almost immediately. It called on the international medical community to unequivocally condemn the attack, which it described as a war crime.
Yet, in the same correspondence, the association continued to reproduce Israeli military narratives regarding Gaza's hospitals, distinguishing Soroka from healthcare facilities that it claimed had been used by Hamas for military purposes.
That distinction effectively denied Palestinian hospitals the same unconditional protection it demanded for Soroka, reiterating arguments that have been invoked throughout the war to undermine the protected status of healthcare institutions in Gaza and to legitimise military operations against them.
The significance of this episode lies not in the fact that the IMA demanded condemnation - this is precisely the kind of moral and professional response one would expect from a medical association in the face of attacks on healthcare.
Rather, it reveals the selective manner in which the IMA deploys such principles.
While denouncing calls for a ceasefire, accountability and boycotts as the illegitimate politicisation of medicine, the IMA had no hesitation in appealing to its international peers to condemn the strike on Soroka and to mobilise in defence of Israeli healthcare institutions.
Bombing hospitals is a red line - unless Israel is doing it
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While the WMA has expressed concern over the humanitarian and health crisis in Gaza and called on Israel to comply with the Geneva Conventions, its early statements were largely framed through a language of symmetry.
They called on all parties to respect international humanitarian law, protect healthcare facilities and facilitate humanitarian assistance, even in the face of the systematic destruction of Gaza's health system and the targeting of healthcare workers.
By contrast, it responded swiftly and unequivocally to the missile strike on Soroka hospital in June 2025, condemning the attack, reaffirming the protected status of healthcare facilities under international humanitarian law, and describing attacks on hospitals as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
Whereas the destruction of Gaza's hospitals was addressed through a framework of shared obligations and mutual restraint, the attack on Soroka was met with a clear and direct condemnation that left little ambiguity as to responsibility.
The question, then, is not whether the IMA failed to speak out loudly enough against the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system, but whether an association that has repeatedly mobilised its professional authority to defend state violence, contest calls for accountability and undermine international criticism can still plausibly present itself as an independent professional body, separate from the state whose policies it has repeatedly defended.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
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