Stop boycotts of Israelis at international medical conferences, IMA demands

[shira]

The Israel Medical Association on Tuesday denounced all boycotts of Israelis at international medical conferences such as the one held in Cairo last week on coping with breast cancer.

IMA chairman Dr. Leonid Eidelman said that Israeli doctors and scientists are often confronted by hostility when attending professional conferences abroad.

Eidelman said that medicine and science are not political. Even those who oppose policies of the government of Israel should never inject politics into these fields, which aim to save lives and to which Israelis contribute a great deal, he said. He called on the government to launch a serious campaign against such boycotts and have "zero tolerance" for them. The IMA, he said, would be happy to participate in such efforts.

Eidelman added that conferences that keep Israelis out would constitute a "black day for science in Israel and around the world."

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more...
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=125655797820...

[still_one]

1. It is common sense /nt

[LeftishBrit]

2. Disease is the ultimate enemy. We all need to fight it together.

[shira]

7. Agreed.....and this type of boycott from Egypt just reeks of antisemitism

[IndianaGreen]

3. Dear IMA: Take your anger on your apartheid government

They are the ones whose policies have turned Israel into one of the world's pariah states.

[Arctic Dave]

4. They can give a clinic on organ harvesting and transplants.

[IndianaGreen]

5. LMAO

[LeftishBrit]

9. You really need to read fewer sensational tabloids.

[IndianaGreen]

10. It was funny!

Everything to be said about I/P conflict was discussed ad nauseum years ago in this forum, by people far more interesting and well versed than what we got today (from both sides of the issue!). This forum has been reduced to a bulletin board where people post old slogans or rehash old arguments. The only thing this forum has succeeded in accomplishing is in increasing the vitriol and the venom between the two sides. It has gotten to the point that I see all pro-Israel posters as evil rightwingers, just as many of them see us as raging anti-Semites or self-hating Jews, or both.

Barring a general amnesty that will bring back the majority of the banned DUers from both sides of I/P conflict, this forum should be shutdown altogether! Not you, Gabbys Poppy, you breached a trust as a moderator when you disclosed personal information about DUers. Fascist asshole!

The standard DU rules are more than sufficient to govern any forum, including this one.

[pennylane100]

6. While I believe this is a war/conflict with no good guys,

I have read that the Israelis make it difficult for garza citizens to get the medical care they need and that many of their children are malnourished because of Israeli blockades of food and medicine. That seems to be injecting politics into the practice of medicine.

[LeftishBrit]

8. True and I am against the 'boycott' of the Palestinians, which is often ignored - BUT Egypt also

practices it, and then condemns Israel, which is decidedly hypocritical IMO.

In any case, medical research doesn't just benefit its country of origin; it benefits us all.