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June 10, 2025
Bruce A. Scott, MD
President
The American Medical Association
AMA Plaza
330 N. Wabash Ave., Suite 39300
Chicago, IL 60611-5885
Beth H. Sutton, MD, FACS
President
The American College of Surgeons
20 F Street NW Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20001
Susan J. Kressly, MD, FAAP
President
The American Academy of Pediatrics
345 Park Boulevard
Itasca, IL 60143
Jen Brull, MD, FAAFP
President
The American Academy of Family Physicians
11400 Tomahawk Creek Parkway
Leawood, KS 66211-2680
Patrick Reilly, MD
President
The American Association for the Surgery of Trauma
633 N Saint Clair St, Suite 2600
Chicago, IL 60611
Re: Israeli medicine aiding and abetting war crimes in Gaza
Dear Presidents,
The chapter and verse indictment of Israeli medicine for participating in brutalizing Palestinians
in Gaza or taken to Israel for torture or similar abuses elaborated in The New York Review of
Books, "The Shame of Israeli Medicine," May 5, 2025, by Neve Gordon, Guy Shalev, and
Osama Tanous, shocks the conscience. You have a professional duty to speak up. As Edmund
Burke reportedly admonished, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."
The authors narrate chilling accounts of Israeli doctors participating in or condoning the
brutalization of Palestinians in Gaza:
"Over the past year and a half…[s]ome hospitals initially refused to treat wounded
Palestinian detainees. Later some doctors continued to refuse on an individual level;
many who did treat detainees failed to demand that their blindfolds and shackles be taken
off. When Palestinian doctors working in Israeli hospitals were persecuted, the medical
establishment refused to support them. The overwhelming majority of doctors--not to
mention every Israeli hospital and the Israeli Medical Association--refused to condemn
the destruction of Gaza's health care system; some openly praised it and even called for
the demolition of hospitals in Gaza. As these offenses accumulated, in most cases the
country's major medical-ethics institutions refused to speak out."
Take the American Psychological Association as a model. After discovering psychologists were
assisting the CIA's torture program in the aftermath of 9/11, the APA on August 3, 2016,
provided in Ethical Standard 3.04 (b): "Psychologists do not participate in, facilitate, assist, or
otherwise engage in torture, defined as any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether
physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person, or in any other cruel, inhuman, or
degrading behavior that violates 3.04(a)."
Your organization should adopt a first-cousin resolution that condemns the systematic cruel
maltreatment of Palestinian patients and doctors by Israel in Gaza and the deafening silence of
the Israeli medical establishment. As Hippocrates reportedly instructed, "First do no harm."
Sincerely,
Bruce Fein, Esq.
Ralph Nader, Esq.
CC: Interested parties |