Doctors [Illustrative]. Photo: Wikipedia

The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) sent a letter to WMA President Sir Michael Marmot to protest.

SWC Director for International Relations Dr. Shimon Samuels warned that “the very mission of the World Medical Association (WMA) ethics programme is about to be impugned by a group of 71 British physicians intent on expelling the Israel Medical Association from your membership.”

Samuels noted that the WMA was established shortly after World War II, when “Nazi doctors and nurses committed inhuman experiments on children, exterminated the handicapped and murdered over six million Jews and countless others,” adding that it is “inconceivable to discriminate against the state of the Jewish victims and survivors.”

Samuels went on to mention that Israeli hospitals regularly employ Arab doctors, and that Jewish medical teams have administered treatment to Arab patients from across the Middle East, “even from countries intent upon their destruction.” These include fighters in Syria coming across the border for Israeli treatment, and, as one Israeli Foreign Ministry official told The Algemeiner, “many people from Gulf countries come to Israel for medical treatment” as well.

The SWC urged the WMA “to resist attempts to distort the WMA purpose,” and cautioned that such moves would also negatively affect “Palestinian colleagues and patients.”

A WMA spokesperson, meanwhile, confirmed for The Algemeiner that the association had received the request from 71 British doctors to revoke Israel’s membership.