"Even if you don't agree with all Israel's government's policies, that has nothing to do with the Medical Association," Malke Borow, Director of the Division of Law and Policy at the Israel Medical Association (IMA) told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
On Saturday, renowned medical journal The Lancet published a petition calling for the suspension of the IMA from the World Medical Association (WMA).
The petition was coordinated by health organizations such as the People’s Health Movement (PHM), Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza), and the Health Advisory Council of the Jewish Voice for Peace which called for the IMA to be suspended from the WMA over “its failure to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, the destruction of health-care infrastructure, and the torture and killing of health-care workers in Gaza.”
Borow told the Post that this is not the first time that there's been a petition to expel the IMA from the WMA.
"I've been working in the IMA for almost 30 years already, and about 20 years ago, give or take, there was a similar petition, a similar attempt."
In fact, the British Medical Association suspended ties with the IMA in July 2025.
IMA has 'many friends' within the WMA
"It's more their loss than ours," said Borow. "It's just really childish. They won't even, like, speak to us when we're at the same meetings. And they won't work with us. We asked to speak to them, to meet with them, but they were just not interested."
Borow noted that one of the proponents of the new petition, a British psychiatrist named Derek Summerfield, "has really been hounding us for 20 years."
"I can't say I'm terribly concerned," Borow continued. "We have a very strong position within the World Medical Association. We have many friends and supporters there. We're very active and I'm not really concerned that they're going to throw us out."
In fact, the WMA told The Lancet already that it stands against the exclusion of any of its members for the actions of their governments, as “doing so diminishes our ability to call out injustices and threatens shrinking the dialogue among physicians at this critical time when consensus in support of our medical ethics is so needed.”
Borow said she is more concerned about the negative publicity and the "lies and everything that are being spread about Israel and the IMA."
The IMA has already prepared a counter petition - put out on Sunday - which argues that medicine is not the place to play politics.
"The IMA continues to feel that everybody should be treated with all the principles of medical ethics. Even if you don't agree with all the government's policies, that has nothing to do with the Medical Association."
The anti-IMA petitioners are aiming to have a motion to suspend the IMA from the WMA put on the agenda for the WMA General Assembly in Rotterdam in October.
The agenda is not finalized yet, and Borow said she thinks an actual suspension is unlikely.
Protests expected at WMA assembly
Nevertheless, the IMA has been warned already that there are going to be demonstrations in Rotterdam where the WMA assembly is going to take place.
If the IMA were to be suspended, it would have a tangible impact on partnerships, both with the WMA as an organization and with all the IMA's parallel national medical associations.
Right now, the IMA is leading a workgroup in the WMA to revise the Declaration of Taipei, which is a statement of ethical principles on health databases and biobanks.
"We really have a very prominent position within the WMA, and we've had them here to learn about AI, and we go there. And so definitely there would be a lot of knowledge and cooperation lost on both sides," said Borow.
She said in terms of technology and academic collaboration, boycotts have already had a tangible impact.
"On an individual level, many physicians and researchers have been told that they're not allowed to work with Israeli universities," she told the Post.
IMA was founding member of WMA.
The IMA is the representative organization of Israel's doctors, with approximately 30,000 members.
Borow said the IMA has three main roles. One is that it serves as a trade union, meaning it is able to negotiate physicians' salaries and working conditions for public employees, which is the vast majority of doctors in Israel. The second is that it is very involved in health policy - national, and international. And the third is that within the IMA is what is called the Scientific Council, which is a statutory arm that oversees physician residency and recommends to the Ministry of Health awards specialty certifications.
The IMA actually preceded the WMA. The IMA was established in 1912 (before the state of Israel), whereas the WMA was established right after World War Two as a response to the Nuremberg Trials and the revelations of all the ethical violations that happened during the Holocaust.
The IMA was actually one of the founding members of the WMA.
Iranian-Jewish cardiologist Dr. Afshine Emrani noted the irony of this. In an open letter to The Lancet, he said "“The moment we expel medical bodies based on political litmus tests is the moment we destroy the neutrality that makes global medicine possible."
Borow concurred. "We're constantly responding to articles and letters in medical journals, which have no business going into politics to begin with.
"But all I can say is that we are an apolitical organization. We have Jews, we have Arabs, we have Druze, we have right-wing people, left-wing people, and they're all united, really, just in the desire to treat everybody and to abide by the highest standards of ethics."
"And that's what we're proud of."