5,000 Doctors Worldwide Oppose Boycott of Israeli Medical Association

Approximately 5,000 doctors from 46 countries have expressed opposition to the call for boycotting the Israeli Medical Association from the World Medical Association. This follows a recent initiative published in the British medical journal The Lancet, where around 1,000 doctors advocated for excluding the Israeli Medical Association due to political reasons. In response, the Israeli Medical Association appealed to the global body to separate politics from medicine and included a counter-petition signed by thousands of international doctors.

The petition, signed by physicians from countries including Canada, Brazil, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy, emphasizes that medical organizations should remain spaces for universal scientific collaboration rather than tools for political exclusion. The signatories described boycotts and exclusions as aggressive actions contrary to the medical mission. They also challenged the accusations against the Israeli Medical Association as either false or disputed, highlighting that these claims ignore Hamas's role in damaging Gaza's healthcare system and violating the Geneva Convention.

This development comes amid broader concerns about healthcare challenges, including severe rehabilitation system failures and a 2.5-fold increase in workload for oncologists, as reported by the Israeli Ministry of Health.