Doctors Hang 81 Empty Scrubs Outside World Medical Association Assembly, Demand Israeli Medical Association Be Suspended

Hundreds of healthcare workers stood outside the World Medical Association's General Assembly in Rotterdam today, Saturday, Oct. 10, and made a visual argument. Eighty-one of them took off their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the venue. Each garment carried the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker the organizers say is held in Israeli detention.

The demonstration was organized by IMA Out!, a coalition demanding that the WMA suspend the Israeli Medical Association (IMA). The coalition says it delivered a petition to the WMA signed by more than 6,500 health workers from around the world.

What the coalition is demanding

IMA Out! says the Israeli association is in breach of "almost every ethical principle in the WMA's Code of Medical Ethics." It wants the IMA suspended until it publicly upholds medical ethics and humanitarian law, condemns the killing and torture of Palestinian health workers, and acts against violations by its own members.

The petition also asks individual national medical associations to follow the South African Medical Association, the British Medical Association and the Turkish Medical Association, which the campaign says have cut institutional ties with the IMA.

"These scrubs should not be empty," said Mejrem Ahmetaj, a general practitioner and IMA Out! member. "Our colleagues belong with their patients, not in Israeli prisons."

Ahmetaj also described the IMA's role in sharper terms. "The IMA is not a bystander. It defends these attacks and blocks international condemnation while Palestinian healthcare is being destroyed. That is not medical neutrality. That is complicity."

Jonathan Fluxman, speaking for the coalition, said 30 years of WMA dialogue with the IMA "has done nothing but give the IMA a sense of impunity." He called on the WMA and national associations to "break your ties with the IMA and suspend the IMA from the WMA now."

The petition invokes precedent: it cites the international medical community's action during apartheid in South Africa.

The numbers behind the campaign

The coalition says the war in Gaza since October 2023 has killed more than 1,700 Palestinian healthcare workers and destroyed nearly all of the enclave's hospitals and health facilities. Supporters of the petition also say hundreds of medical workers have been detained without charge. Those figures come from the campaign and its supporters, and the coalition's language, including its description of the war as genocide, is its own characterization.

The detainee the campaign names most prominently is Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza. According to the campaign, he is in Israeli custody, was briefly held at the Sde Teiman detention camp, and has suffered torture and medical neglect. US lawmakers have publicly called on Israel to release him.

Abu Safiya's son, Elias, spoke at a meeting organized by IMA Out! this week. He said his father and all Palestinian detainees must be treated in line with medical ethics, and that care should not depend on whose life is considered worthy of saving.

The coalition also wants accountability for Israeli doctors it accuses of complicity in the starvation, torture and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners. Those are accusations. The campaign has not tied them to named individuals in its public statements.

Last year's vote

This is not the first attempt. Last year the IMA defeated a similar effort to suspend its WMA membership. The General Assembly instead adopted a resolution calling on the Israeli government to halt attacks on healthcare personnel, patients and facilities. Campaign supporters have dismissed that resolution as toothless.

That result is the clearest record of where the WMA's membership stood a year ago. National associations vote, and a petition from individual doctors does not carry a vote.

The WMA's stated role is to set ethical standards for physicians worldwide, and its Code of Medical Ethics is the document the coalition is citing. Suspending a national member is a rare step. It would require the assembly to find that the IMA itself, not the Israeli government or military, has violated that code. The coalition says it has. The IMA is the party those charges target.

The Gaza health crisis is also part of the backdrop. A year after the ceasefire, Gaza's healthcare system is still described as collapsing. Medical aid groups including Médecins Sans Frontières have used the WMA gathering to urge the release of detained Palestinian medics.

What comes next

The assembly's annual meeting is scheduled to wrap up this weekend. Whether the membership body takes up suspension in any form this year is the open question. Last year the answer was no.

The coalition has said it will keep pressing national associations to cut ties individually, whatever the WMA does.