Israel Medical Association

The IMA describes itself as an independent, nonpartisan professional organization representing physicians across specialties, regions, and career stages, from medical students and interns to specialists, private-practice doctors, and retirees.[4] Its stated aims include advancing members' professional, scientific, and economic interests, maintaining professional and ethical standards, strengthening public healthcare, and attending to the status of physicians and medicine in Israel.[5]

As a representative labor organization, the IMA negotiates with employers and signs collective agreements covering physicians' working conditions, salaries, and employment benefits.[6] It also provides support on salary negotiations, legal and insurance matters, retirement planning, and reports of online shaming, sexual harassment, or violence in medical settings.[6] The vast majority of Israeli doctors are public employees, which gives the IMA's union role particular weight in the healthcare system.[1][2]

The IMA's president is elected every four years at the General Assembly.[5] Professor Zion Hagay has served as president since 2018, succeeding Professor Leonid Eidelman, who had served two terms totaling eight years; Adv. Leah Wapner serves as chief executive officer.[5][7] In March 2023, Professor Hagay described the IMA as "a-political and pluralistic," representing physicians from across Israel and the political spectrum, and affirmed its commitment to patients' and doctors' rights, medical quality, professional autonomy, and the ethical values of justice, equality, and mutual aid.[8]

The IMA traces its origins to January 11, 1912, when the Hebrew Medicinal Society for Jaffa and the Jaffa District was established.[3] At the time, there were 32 Jewish physicians in the Land of Israel, and the new society was open to physicians, veterinarians, and certified pharmacists.[3] A separate Hebrew-speaking physicians' society was established in Jerusalem in 1913.[3] The two societies agreed to collaborate in 1914 and merged after World War I as the Hebrew Medical Association in the Land of Israel (HMA), which described its planned role as combining professional education, protection of members' rights and interests, and an emphasis on the organization's Jewish-national character.[3]

An Encyclopedia.com account, however, dates the Israel Medical Association's founding to 1929.[9] A historical account also documents a Jewish Medical Society in Palestine active since 1912 that held conferences and issued its Transactions quarterly in Hebrew, though that source does not establish a direct institutional succession to the IMA.[10] Similarly, a Hebrew Medical Association organized during 1911–1913 by 12 physicians from Tel Aviv is noted in other historical records, though those sources do not explicitly identify it as the IMA's predecessor.[11]

With the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the HMA became the Israeli Medical Association.[3] In the state's early years, the organization focused on establishing physicians' status in the public sector and defining its relations with the Histadrut, while continuing scientific activity and supporting the establishment of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's medical school.[3]

HaRefuah is the IMA's Hebrew medical-scientific journal and has served as the organization's official organ since the pre-state period.[9] The Jewish Medical Association of Palestine published the journal's first issue on August 20, 1920, with Aryeh Feigenbaum as editor and publisher; the issue's stated aims included coordinating medical work in the country, collaborating with doctors outside Palestine, and supporting Jewish scientific work and the creation of the Hebrew University.[12] The first editorial board included Dr. Behem, Dr. Goldberg, Dr. Shimoni-Mekler, Dr. Sherman, and Dr. Feigenbaum.[3]

A separate encyclopedia entry gives 1913 as the journal's founding year, while the IMA's institutional history dates its first volume to 1920.[3][9] The first volume was published as a quarterly; the IMA now publishes HaRefuah monthly and distributes it free to its members.[3][12] The association's publications also include IMAJ (Israel Medical Association Journal), an English-language medical-scientific monthly published since 1999, and the Journal of Israeli Military Medicine (JIMM), published quarterly since 2004 by the Israeli Medical Corps and the IMA; all three periodicals are distributed to IMA member physicians and subscribers in Israel and abroad.[13]

A Central Scientific Committee was established in 1936 to organize lectures in smaller branches; it later developed into the IMA Scientific Council.[3] Legal committees were also established in branches beginning in 1939 to investigate disputes between physicians and complaints from patients.[3]

The Scientific Council is today a statutory arm of the association that operates under the Physicians Ordinance, planning and supervising Israel's physician-specialization system and continuing medical education.[14] Its responsibilities include oversight of approximately 5,000 residents, specialist certification in 56 fields, setting specialization policy, accrediting training programs and medical settings, conducting specialization examinations, and encouraging scientific and research activity.[14]

In 1980, following an initiative by Kuppat Holim ha-Kelalit and the Ben-Gurion University Medical School, the IMA started a family-medicine track in medical specialization; more than 800 family-physician specialists were working in Israeli primary care by 2000.[15] The IMA also contributed more broadly to the development of medical infrastructure, adapting Hebrew terminology to contemporary medicine and establishing libraries and information services.[9]

The IMA's Ethics Board formulates the physician's code of ethics and handles ethical issues and complaints, including complaints between colleagues and from the public.[6] Its Institute for Quality in Medicine coordinates work on quality assurance and risk management, including clinical guidelines and informed-consent forms; the association also offers continuing-education courses through the IMA Campus.[6]

In November 2004, representatives of the IMA and the pharmaceutical industry signed a binding ethical code at a ceremony at the Ministry of Health, setting rules for relations between doctors and pharmaceutical companies, including conditions under which doctors could accept gifts or benefits.[16] The Ministry of Health did not sign the code, with the health minister stating that the ministry was a regulator rather than an equal partner. Critics argued that the code lacked meaningful sanctions, while the head of the IMA Ethics Bureau acknowledged that it lacked the coercive authority of law.[16]

In 2015, the IMA's Ethics Bureau issued guidance that medics at terror-attack scenes should triage and treat wounded people according to the severity of their injuries, even if that meant treating an attacker before victims.[17] The directive replaced a 2008 rule that could give victims priority. Ethics-panel head Tammy Karni explained that the earlier rule required doctors to establish who was responsible, which could be impossible at a chaotic scene, stating: "Doctors are not judges."[17] The Bureau's rulings apply to doctors, paramedics, emergency services, and nurses.[17]

IMA-led strikes lasted 58 days in 1976, 117 days in 1983, one day in 1994, and 217 days in 2000.[18] In 1983, physicians left hospitals, submitted resignation letters, and — in a local initiative — began a hunger strike; a medical organization also established SHARET, a private company that organized independent medical centers during the dispute.[18] The IMA launched the 1983 strike on March 2, after nearly 11 months of negotiations over doctors' pay, and it was described as one of Israel's largest and longest labor actions at the time.[19]

The 2000 strike followed unsuccessful negotiations with the Ministry of Finance and ended with agreement to arbitration.[20] Outcomes included a 13.2% salary increase, a rise in the fixed portion of physicians' total earnings from 35% to approximately 50%, expanded pension coverage, study leave before examinations, and the establishment of a public commission on public medicine and physicians' status.[20]

A further strike in 2011 lasted 158 days, after which the IMA and the Finance Ministry reached a labor agreement.[21] The agreement provided all doctors with a uniform 24% pay increase over nine years, with an additional 20% over three years for doctors in peripheral areas and shortage specialties; the IMA pledged labor quiet for the agreement's term.[21] It also introduced time-clock reporting and required some specialists, beyond emergency-care and gynecology specialists, to take duty shifts. Doctors moving to peripheral areas could receive grants of up to NIS 500,000 if they agreed to remain there for four to six years.[21] The agreement faced opposition from doctors in central Israel and residents, with hundreds of residents submitting resignations in protest.[21]

The IMA is a founding member of the World Medical Association (WMA) and participates actively in its committees and working groups.[1][22] In 2026, the IMA was leading a WMA workgroup revising the Declaration of Taipei, concerning ethical principles for health databases and biobanks, and it hosted WMA representatives to learn about artificial intelligence in medicine.[1] The IMA joined the European Union of Medical Specialists as an observer in 2003, became an associate member in 2007, and officially joined CONFEMEL as a full member in 2025.[22] Its Non-Resident Fellow Project has helped build links with Jewish doctors in the Diaspora, and the association has pursued academic exchanges and collaboration between Israeli and international institutes.[9]

Several significant disputes have surrounded the IMA over the decades, touching on medical ethics, political neutrality, and internal governance.

Force-Feeding of Hunger-Striking Prisoners. In 2005, the IMA aligned itself with the World Medical Association's opposition to force-feeding hunger-striking prisoners, and some IMA leaders reportedly threatened disciplinary action against physicians who force-fed prisoners.[23] Following a large hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners that began in 2012, the Knesset adopted the Prisons Ordinance (Amendment No. 48) Law in July 2015, which established a court-supervised process authorizing treatment of hunger strikers under specified conditions.[24] The IMA declared the law unethical and urged doctors to refuse to implement it.[25] Then-chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman described the force-feeding law as tantamount to torture and said the association would refuse to enforce it.[26] The IMA, along with various human-rights organizations, petitioned Israel's Supreme Court to void the law on constitutional grounds; on September 11, 2016, the Supreme Court rejected the petition, concluding that the law met constitutional requirements while noting that forced treatment harms a prisoner's autonomy.[24]

Attempts to Suspend from the World Medical Association. There were several unsuccessful attempts to have the IMA banned from the WMA, with campaigns arising from the First Intifada and involving allegations that Israeli physicians were complicit in torture of Palestinian prisoners.[27] A 2026 proposal to suspend the IMA from the WMA cited allegations about the IMA's response to events in Gaza; the IMA rejected the campaign as an attempt to politicize medicine and issued a counter-petition.[1] These characterizations and allegations are competing positions in a contested campaign, not independently established findings.

Internal Governance. In 2026, 12 senior Arab Israeli physicians accused the IMA of opposing a change to its representative electoral system in order to prevent an Arab physician from becoming chair. The IMA denied the allegation, stated it had examined the claims and found the attributed remarks untrue, and affirmed that it does not discriminate on the basis of religion, race, gender, or nationality.[28] The accusation and denial remain contested.

Judicial Overhaul and Political Role. In March 2023, IMA chair Professor Zion Hagay — while describing the association as apolitical — publicly urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to halt the judicial overhaul legislation and warned that the IMA would consider organizational action if patients' or doctors' fundamental rights were harmed.[8] The IMA's entry into that political debate drew attention to the tension between its stated nonpartisan identity and its public advocacy role.