Open letter to the Executive of the World Medical Association

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The World Medical Association (WMA) is an international organisation representing physicians. It was founded on 17 September 1947, when physicians from 27 different countries met at the First General Assembly of the WMA in Paris. The organisation was created to ensure the independence of physicians, and to work for the highest possible standards of ethical behaviour and care by physicians, at all times. This was particularly important to physicians after the Second World War, and therefore the WMA has always been an independent confederation of free professional associations. Unfortunately the WMA has fallen short of its own standards, particularly with regards to the conduct of Israel's actions in the Occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and the role of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA).

The IMA has long been held complicit in practices of torture of Palestinians, with evidence of collusion going back decades [1]. More recently, since October 2023, the Israeli state has launched more than 1650 attacks on health facilities in Gaza and the West Bank [2], killing more than 1722 health-care workers [3], as of September 5th 2025 and damaging or destroying at least 94% of Gaza's hospitals [3]. There is evidence that Israeli doctors have participated in torture and are guilty of severe medical neglect of prisoners [4]. Despite this, the Israeli Medical Association has neither condemned the Israeli state's actions nor adequately addressed Israeli physicians' violations of medical ethics [4, 5, 6].

The WMA's statements have been utterly inadequate [7]. It has repeatedly either ignored or failed to condemn the Israeli state's repeated attacks on Gaza's health system, including the targeted destruction of infrastructure [2, 3] the killing, unlawful abduction and torture of Palestinian healthcare workers [4, 8], and the blockade of food, water, medicine, and other essential supplies [9]. By contrast, the WMA has taken strong positions on the Ukraine war, including naming Russia's leadership as directly responsible and establishing a medical aid fund [10]. This clear double standard reveals the WMA's selective ethics for some groups of people or ethnicities over others, which amounts to a clear case of systemic racism, the root cause of this differential behaviour.

A large number of organisations, most prominently the Independent International Commission of Inquiry as part of the Human Rights Council of the UN have found that Israel has or is continuing to commit 4 of the 5 acts of genocide as laid out in the 1948 Genocide Convention [11]. Whilst the WMA is a non-stage actor it has an obligation to cease any activity and cut all financial ties that could (directly or indirectly) contribute to ongoing crimes committed by Israeli authorities. This includes its relationship with the IMA. The IMA through failing to take action over numerous credible reports of Israeli doctors torturing Palestinians and failing to condemn the Israeli state's evisceration of the Gazan medical system are complicit in the genocide [8, 12]. Continuing to partner with the IMA risks facilitating the commission of genocide and other violations of international humanitarian law and can lead to legal liability [13].

Selective accountability weakens not only the right to health in Gaza, but the credibility of international medical ethics. The WMA has failed to uphold its independence and failed to uphold any standard of ethical behaviour.

The WMA has long been aware of the deplorable conduct of the IMA. The WMA has been alerted about this numerous times over at least the past three decades but has taken no action against the IMA whatsoever [1]. More recently a letter initiated by HealthWorkers4Palestine to the WMA demanding that it investigates the actions of the Israeli state received thousands of physician signatures, but remains unanswered [14]. Therefore, given the WMA’s silence during Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza we, the undersigned have no faith in the WMA and no confidence in the current WMA leadership to represent us.

We call: