Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2025 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Apartheid
71 UK doctors call on World Medical Association to Expel Israel over Torture

71 UK doctors call on World Medical Association to Expel Israel over Torture

contributors 01/24/2016

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email

Ma’an News Agency | – –

‘BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A group of British doctors is pushing for the World Medical Association (WMA) to expel the Israeli Medical Association (IMA), the IMA’s chairman said on Wednesday during a meeting of the Knesset Science and Technology committee.

In a discussion dealing with the academic boycott of Israel, Zeev Feldman said that 71 British doctors recently called on the WMA to remove the Israeli medical group from its ranks due to allegations of torture by Israeli doctors on Palestinians.

Israeli doctors in prison facilities have long been accused of standing by or abetting the torture of Palestinian detainees.

“The sword of the boycott is being raised on the Israeli scientific-medical community’” Feldman said.

During the meeting, Likud MK Anat Berko called the academic boycott a “sort of jihad in a suit.”

However, Basel Ghattas, an MK from the Joint List, argued that “you can think differently from the entire world, it is your right, but it is also the world’s right to take measures in order to force you to establish two states.”

Speaking to the academics in attendance, Ghattas added: “As academic intuitions, you have not taken any moral measures to prevent the occupation. There are Jewish professors who believe in calling for a boycott [on Israel] because it is the best price without paying in blood.”

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post following the meeting, Feldman said he feared that a medical boycott of Israel would have a “domino effect and radiate to all other scientific associations.”

Israel has been struggling to tackle a growing Palestinian-led boycott campaign which has had a number of high-profile successes abroad in both academic and artistic fields.

Known as the BDS movement — boycott, divestment and sanctions — it aims to exert political and economic pressure over Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories in a bid to repeat the success of the campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa.

In October, a group of 343 professor and lecturers bought a full page advertisement in the UK’s Guardian newspaper to publicize the launch of the group’s academic boycott of Israeli institutions, launched on the grounds that Israeli universities are “deeply complicit” in “Israeli violations of international law.”

In June, Britain’s National Union of Students voted to affiliate itself with the BDS movement, in a move which drew a sharp rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In February 2015, more than 1,000 British artists — including Ken Loach, Miriam Margolyes, and Brian Eno — signed a pledge vowing not to perform in Israel in protest of its violations of human rights and international law.

Via Ma’an News Agency

——

Related video added by Juan Cole:

RT from last summer: “Palestinian prisoner likely to die if force-fed by Israelis – physician”

Filed Under: Apartheid, BDS Occupied Territories, Displaced and Refugees, Israel, Israel/ Palestine, Torture, War Crimes

Primary Sidebar

Support Independent Journalism

Click here to donate via PayPal.

Personal checks should be made out to Juan Cole and sent to me at:

Juan Cole
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
USA
(Remember, make the checks out to “Juan Cole” or they can’t be cashed)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter to have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.
Warning! Social media will not reliably deliver Informed Comment to you. They are shadowbanning news sites, especially if "controversial."
To see new IC posts, please sign up for our email Newsletter.

Social Media

Bluesky | Instagram

Popular

  • Albanese Sanctions: Marco Rubio now Acting just Like Putin, Charging Human Rights Officials
  • War Criminal Netanyahu nominates Felon Trump for the Nobel Prize
  • Why Faith Leaders are standing up to the Largest pro-Israel Christian Lobby
  • Plans to Concentrate Gaza Palestinians in Rafah Camp a Crime against Humanity
  • Solar Power outstripped all others in Europe last Month for First Time

Gaza Yet Stands


Juan Cole's New Ebook at Amazon. Click Here to Buy
__________________________

Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires



Click here to Buy Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam


Click here to Buy The Rubaiyat.
Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2025 All Rights Reserved