More than 5,000 physicians from 46 countries have expressed their support for the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) by signing a petition calling for efforts to block attempts to suspend or exclude the IMA from the World Medical Association (WMA).
The initiative comes in response to a proposal published approximately two weeks ago in the British medical journal The Lancet, in which around 1,000 physicians called for Israel to be removed from the international organization.
In response, the IMA appealed to the WMA, urging it to prevent discrimination and to keep politics out of medicine. Attached to the appeal was a petition signed by more than 5,000 physicians from around the world, including doctors from Canada, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, and many other countries.
The signatories emphasized that "medical organizations must remain spaces for scientific collaboration and universality, rather than becoming instruments of political exclusion that may promote hostile actions such as ostracism and expulsion. Exclusion and boycotts are aggressive measures that run counter to our medical mission."
The petition further states that efforts to boycott the IMA do not uphold the values of medicine, but rather undermine them. According to the signatories, "the allegations made against the IMA are, at worst, falsehoods, and at best, disputed claims presented as facts, while completely ignoring Hamas's role in the destruction of Gaza's healthcare system and in violations of the Geneva Conventions."