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IMA OUT argues that membership of an international medical body should come with responsibilities: to uphold medical ethics, defend medical neutrality and act when healthcare professionals are implicated in serious violations of those principles.
The campaign raises concerns about the Israeli Medical Association's response to attacks on Gaza's healthcare system, the killing and detention of Palestinian healthcare workers, allegations of torture and medical neglect in Israeli detention, discrimination against Palestinian healthcare professionals, and cases in which Israeli medical professionals have supported or been implicated in violations of medical ethics.
These concerns also extend to the IMA's political and institutional role. Its president, Prof. Zion Hagay, has publicly described the IMA's international activities in terms of representing and defending Israel and its medical institutions abroad. He has emphasised the strength of Israeli medicine's international organisation and influence, while using his position within the World Medical Association to oppose attempts to place Israel and Gaza on the WMA's agenda. Hagay has spoken positively about having prevented such discussion within the WMA.
IMA OUT therefore calls on the World Medical Association and its member organisations to investigate these issues and suspend the IMA.
Want to learn more about the complicity of Israel’s medical institutions? See Neve Gordon, Guy Shalev and Osama Tanous, “The Shame of Israeli Medicine”, published in The New York Review of Books on 31 May 2025.
The World Medical Association was founded in 1947, in the aftermath of the Second World War and against the backdrop of the Nazi doctors' trials. The atrocities committed with the involvement of medical professionals demonstrated why medicine needed international ethical standards that could not be set aside in times of war, political pressure or state violence.
One of the WMA's first acts was therefore to adopt the Declaration of Geneva in 1948: a modern physicians' pledge committing doctors to the service of humanity, to put their patients first, to reject discrimination, and never to use medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties even under threat.
That history matters today. Medical ethics do not cease to apply during war, occupation or detention. The WMA itself affirms that healthcare professionals have the same ethical responsibilities in armed conflict as in peacetime, while international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions, provides specific protections for the wounded and sick, medical personnel and healthcare facilities.
National medical associations therefore have a responsibility that goes beyond representing the professional interests of their members. They are also responsible for defending the ethical principles of medicine. When a WMA member association is accused of failing to uphold those principles, the WMA has a responsibility to take those allegations seriously and ensure that the standards it was created to defend are upheld.
No. IMA OUT follows the principles of the Palestinian BDS movement and the guidelines developed by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI): the boycott targets institutions and institutional complicity, not individuals because of their identity.
This means that Israeli healthcare professionals are not targets of the campaign simply because they are Israeli, Jewish, work at an Israeli institution, or hold particular personal views. The BDS movement explicitly rejects boycotts of individuals based on identity, including citizenship, race, gender or religion.
The distinction is between individual affiliation and institutional representation. When someone acts in an official capacity on behalf of a boycotted institution or the Israeli state, their participation may fall within an institutional boycott. Mere employment or affiliation does not.
Our campaign is directed at the Israeli Medical Association as an institution, its conduct and its institutional responsibilities within the World Medical Association — not at Israeli or Jewish healthcare professionals as individuals.
BDS stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is a Palestinian-led, nonviolent movement launched following a 2005 call from Palestinian civil-society organisations.
The movement calls for international pressure until Palestinian rights under international law are respected. Its three stated demands concern ending occupation and colonisation, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the rights of Palestinian refugees.
Boycott means withdrawing cooperation or support; divestment means institutions withdrawing investments; sanctions concern measures taken by governments and international bodies.
Because many of the questions raised by this campaign are institutional.
If a doctor violates medical ethics, professional institutions have mechanisms to investigate and respond. When violations become widespread or systematic, the question therefore becomes not only what individual practitioners did, but also how the institutions responsible for maintaining professional standards responded.
IMA OUT has documented how the Israeli Medical Association has repeatedly failed to adequately investigate, condemn or act against serious violations of medical ethics. On this basis, we argue that its continued membership of the WMA is incompatible with the ethical principles the WMA exists to uphold.
The World Medical Association (WMA) is an international organisation of national medical associations. It develops influential standards of medical ethics, including the Declaration of Geneva and the Declaration of Tokyo.
These standards concern physicians' duties towards patients and humanity, including ethical obligations in situations involving detention, torture and other forms of abuse.
IMA OUT maintains that the WMA has a responsibility to enforce the ethical principles it was created to defend. When a member association repeatedly fails to uphold those principles, inaction is not a neutral position. The WMA must hold its members accountable and take meaningful action, including suspension where necessary. Failure to do so undermines both the credibility of the WMA and the universal standards of medical ethics it claims to uphold.
Suspension is an institutional measure. The purpose of the demand is not to punish individual Israeli doctors, but to insist that membership of an international medical association carries meaningful ethical responsibilities.
IMA OUT calls on the WMA and its member organisations to address the evidence, establish accountability and apply their ethical standards consistently.
Healthcare professionals can play an important role in putting medical ethics into practice. There are several ways to support the campaign, like signing our petition, joining our events — a conference on October 8 and an action on October 10 around the General Assembly of the World Medical Association in Rotterdam (7–10 October 2026) — or speaking out in other ways. Or contact us on suspend_ima@proton.me for questions and ideas