Doctors and healthcare workers gathered in parallel to the World Medical Association (WMA) General Assembly in Rotterdam on October 8-10, demanding the suspension of the Israeli Medical Association (IMA) over its breaches of medical ethics throughout the Gaza genocide. 

Activists held mobilizations warning against the IMA’s attempts to obscure attacks on Palestinian health workers and infrastructure. These actions included a petition demanding the organization’s suspension from the WMA signed by nearly 6,850 health professionals.

Read more: On Nakba anniversary, health workers call for boycott of Israeli Medical Association

“The petition demands that the IMA is suspended by the WMA for its gross violations of medical ethics over decades, concerning Palestinian patients and healthcare services and the complicity of Israeli doctors in the starvation, torture and medical neglect of Palestinian prisoners,” the IMA Out! coalition stated.

The coalition also called upon medical associations to follow the example of the South African Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and the Turkish Medical Association in severing ties with the IMA.

81 empty scrubs at the WMA assembly

On Saturday, October 10, 81 health workers simultaneously removed their scrubs and hung them in a line facing the WMA assembly. Each was marked with the name of a Palestinian healthcare worker currently held in illegal Israeli detention.

“These scrubs should not be empty,” said general practitioner Mejrem Ahmetaj from Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza) in the Netherlands. “Our colleagues belong with their patients, not in Israeli prisons.”

The campaign to suspend the IMA over its breaches of medical ethics has been developing for months. In June this year, a report in The Lancet reported that a petition launched by the People’s Health Movement (PHM) to hold the IMA accountable collected over 1,100 signatures. Working together with other organizations and networks, including chapters of Healthcare Workers For Palestine and Teva boycott groups, the initiative was able to expand.

The IMA: more than a bystander

Since October 2023, at least 1,700 Palestinian health workers have been killed, and many more remain imprisoned in horrifying conditions in Israeli detention centers. Among them is Kamal Adwan Hospital Director Hussam Abu Safiya, whose mistreatment and imprisonment have caused international outcry.

These crimes have been extensively documented by UN experts and human rights associations, yet the IMA – which represents over 90% of Israeli physicians – took no action. Instead, some of its leading figures backed unfounded claims that Gaza’s hospitals are used for military purposes.

Read more: New PHM global coordinator: “Palestine is a symbol of resistance for a new world”

“The IMA has said and done nothing about these war crimes against health workers, patients and hospitals,” said Jonathan Fluxman from IMA Out!. 

Ahmetaj added that the IMA is not a bystander. “It defends these attacks and blocks international condemnation while Palestinian healthcare is being destroyed,” the physician said. “That is not medical neutrality. That is complicity.”

Hind Rajab Foundation: IMA involved “in the death, torture, and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees”

The protest coincided with a legal action initiated by the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF). On October 7, the foundation announced it had called upon the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the involvement of the IMA, the Israeli Ministry of Health, Ministry of Defense, and medical professionals “in the death, torture, and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees held at the Sde Teiman detention facility since October 7, 2023.”

The legal submission addressed the participation of Israeli medics in crimes perpetrated at Sde Teiman’s field hospital. There, health workers and detainees documented abuses spurring from directives issued by the Israeli Ministry of Health in December 2023.

According to the Hind Rajab Foundation, the Ministry of Health guidance instructed medical staff to treat prisoners while blindfolded and handcuffed and required them to sign medical documentation using only their professional titles. It also directed them to restrict transfers to civilian hospitals and authorized forced medical treatment without protections.

“By November 2025, at least 29 detainees had died at Sde Teiman as a result of physical violence, medical neglect, or both,” the organization wrote. The IMA did not initiate any disciplinary proceedings against members involved in these practices – and even used international journals as platforms to obscure them.

“The evidence shows that medical participation in torture and abuse at Sde Teiman was structural,” Natacha Bracq of the Hind Rajab Foundation said. “The Israeli Ministry of Health built the field hospital, dictated the terms of medical treatment; doctors served under Military Police authority rather than the Medical Corps; and a professional association provided ethical cover.”

Read more: Israeli destruction of Gaza’s healthcare is a blueprint for future imperialist wars

“Israeli physicians abandoned their neutrality when they agreed to treat patients in chains and erase what was done to them,” Dyab Abou Jahjah from the same organization added. “The WMA must answer why an association that provided institutional cover for torture is still welcome at its table.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.

On Thursday, October 1, health workers, patients, and activists protested Palantir’s role in the National Health Service (NHS) at more than 40 locations across England. Their demonstrations were part of a global week of action demanding that governments cut ties with the spy-tech firm over human rights and privacy concerns.

Rallies took place in front of Palantir’s London headquarters, as well as in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and many more cities.

“Palantir’s tools are used by the Israeli military in Gaza and by ICE to track and surveil migrants in the US,” campaign groups – including Just Treatment, Health Workers for a Free Palestine, Medact, and Global Justice Now – stated. “A company profiting from human rights violations has no place in the NHS or in any of our public services.”

Palantir’s track record opposes core health values

Palantir currently holds a £330 million (approximately USD 436 million) NHS contract and has rolled out the service’s Federated Data Platform (FDP), managing sensitive patient data. The project has drawn criticism from virtually every group involved in the NHS: data workers say it lags behind local systems; patients share privacy and data ownership fears; and health workers insist Palantir’s record opposes the very values their profession embodies.

“I cannot stay true to that [Hippocratic] oath and tolerate Palantir continuing to profit from, and grow its malign business model through an NHS contract,” said physician Rhiannon Osborne from Medact at Thursday’s rally. “Every pound we give them helps to legitimize and sustain human rights abuses and erosion of democratic rule of law across the world.”

Read more: The global economic benefit from the genocide of Palestinians

A central concern is the company’s support for Israel throughout the genocide in Gaza. “When we strive to save every possible life, they champion their ability to kill and celebrate their role in the repeated war crimes committed by Israel – including unprecedented deliberate attacks on the doctors, nurses, and paramedics I worked with,” pediatric neurologist Omar Abdel-Mannan stated. “No moral government should tolerate their involvement in our NHS or indeed any of our public services.”

Campaigners repeated calls for Prime Minister Andy Burnham to end the contract as soon as possible. Under an exit clause in the original agreement, that moment could arrive as early as February 2027. Campaigners and several commissions are pressing the government to notify Palantir of its intention to withdraw ahead of this date.

“The government only has two months to say no to Palantir and the momentum is all with us,” Good Law Project activists said at the rally in London. “All the energy is to say no to Palantir, say no to their global human rights abuses, say no to their crap technology that doesn’t work and get Palantir out of the NHS.”

Unions back appeal to bar Palantir from public sector contracts

Calls to break Palantir’s grip on public services resonate beyond Britain. On September 28, more than 120 groups and unions called upon European governments and the European Commission to “scrap all existing public sector contracts with the US tech company Palantir.” As reported by the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU), the appeal seeks to end current agreements and bar the firm from future public contracts. It also urges governments to develop “alternative data solutions compatible with public service,” echoing NHS data workers’ recommendations.

Read more: Palantir profits from European public services but avoids millions in taxes that fund them, new report shows

“Palantir’s ramping up of ‘war-related’ support for Israel during the genocide in Gaza and the apparent disdain of its leadership for democracy are just two clear signs that this company serves the interests of the rich and powerful, not the general public,” said Tim Bierley of Global Justice Now. “Yet it has been allowed to embed dubious technologies across our public services, giving it access to sensitive data and creating worrying new technical dependencies.” 

“The UK must work with other countries to end dependence on companies involved in human rights abuses, and end the outsourcing of the public sphere to a dangerous class of big tech oligarchs.”

People’s Health Dispatch is a monthly bulletin published by the People’s Health Movement and Peoples Dispatch. For more articles and subscription to People’s Health Dispatch, click here.