The role of the Israel and World Medical Associations

Abstract

Derek Summerfield's Health and Human Rights piece1Summerfield D What is the WMA for? The case of the Israeli Medical Association.Lancet. 2003; 361: 424Summary Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (6) Google Scholar and the responses following it2Blachar Y Israel Medical Association: response to Derek Summerfield.Lancet. 2003; 361: 425Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (3) Google Scholar, 3Human D World Medical Association: response to Derek Summerfield.Lancet. 2003; 361: 425-426Summary Full Text Full Text PDF Scopus (1) Google Scholar failed to present the point of view of PHR-Israel, an independent non-governmental organisation that uses its unique place to struggle against torture and the violation of human rights in the Occupied Territories from within Israeli society. They therefore miss the opportunity to support and indeed encourage fellow Israeli doctors in their struggle against violations of human rights. Many of these doctors pay a personal price for their opposition to official Israeli policies. PHR-Israel approached IMA in 1992, requesting it to join its opposition to interrogations involving torture, and to protest the participation of Israeli doctors in its mechanism. Since then, PHR-Israel has led a wide-ranging public campaign against the participation of Israeli physicians in torture. Our efforts to recruit IMA into this struggle were in vain. I recount IMA's support of “moderate physical pressure”, only to stress its long tradition of siding with “national Israeli considerations” rather than with universal medical ethics. This position governs IMA's current reaction since the outbreak of violence in our region in September, 2000. PHR-Israel believed that IMA, as the representative of the medical establishment in Israel, might be able to curb the appalling deterioraton in the attitude of the Israeli military forces toward Palestinian health and rescue services. We sent dozens of complaints to IMA, protesting the army's conduct and the Israeli policy of siege, which makes it impossible for the Palestinian health system to function. However, IMA has chosen to remain silent. Only just before the WMA convention in 2002 did they publish a position paper; but even that failed to condemn Israel's shooting on ambulances. On its return from the WMA conference, IMA presented its performance as an Israeli propaganda victory over those who had wished to condemn or even suspend IMA from the WMA. This presentation, together with the failure—up to this day—to answer even one of our detailed complaints, prompts one to ask whether the IMA is merely an executive arm of the Israeli establishment—one that works very hard to present the face of the “enlightened occupier” rather than striving for universal medical ethics. And indeed with such a view, why should they expect Palestinian doctors, detained and humiliated at every checkpoint in the Occupied Territories, to cooperate gladly with IMA, when IMA does nothing to protect them? The ongoing joint work of PHR-Israel with our colleagues in the Palestinian medical and human rights community has engendered an alternative to the discourse of occupation, dispossession, and violence; one that is based on human rights. We believe that this different voice, which does exist locally, should be heard and used in international fora today. We urge the WMA to make its stand clear on the issue of occupation and human rights violations in our region.