Respected scientific publications — particularly medical journals — are supposed to be highly professional, and to avoid partisan media’s cynical manipulation in which verifiable evidence is too often replaced with myths and half-truths. Therefore, when storied journal The Lancet, founded in 1823, traffics in boycott campaigns targeting top doctors and medical researchers, the publication — including editors, publishers, writers, staff members, and advertisers — is transformed into a platform for hate that spits in the face of its neutral scientific mission.
The credibility of scientific publishing depends precisely on the ability to distinguish between evidence-based claims and ideological advocacy.
For its latest discriminatory and anti-scientific act, The Lancet is playing a central role in a campaign for an all-encompassing boycott of the Israel Medical Association (IMA). It is doing so by platforming and amplifying a petition promoted by radical fringe groups, including the People’s Health Movement, Artsen voor Gaza (Doctors for Gaza), and the so-called Health Advisory Council of the Jewish Voice for Peace, therein crossing a fundamental red line. Far from any substantive medical content, the tirade recycles false slogans of “genocide” and blames Israel for the destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure. In parallel, the promoters of this campaign erase overwhelming evidence showing that it was Hamas and its allies, including NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders, that exploited and undermined Gaza’s hospitals for terror, and resulted in their ruin.
This attack on the IMA, like other tightly orchestrated discriminatory boycotts, is simply another part of the multi-front war to vilify everything related to Israel, part of a broader assault launched in parallel to Hamas’ October 7 atrocities. When The Lancet abuses and denigrates its platform to support this immoral action, editor Richard Horton and everyone involved is conferring legitimacy on action that is the antithesis of professional responsibility.
Even a cursory look at the People’s Health Movement (PHM) demonstrates the central theme of exploiting health issues for propaganda. The NGO’s global coordinator is Aziz Rhali, appointed in March 2026 “to lead PHM with a vision of Palestine as a global resistance symbol, advancing the health movement’s strategic vision.” Rhali is a very vocal and visible supporter of Hezbollah — on May 14, 2026, the French weekly magazine Le Point published several posts and photos by Rhali expressing clear support for the Iranian proxy army in Lebanon, and for its former leader arch-terrorist Hassan Nasrallah.
Furthermore, on October 7, 2023, as Hamas was actively committing atrocities in Israel, Rhali posted a photo of himself in a group smiling and holding a sign stating, “the Moroccan Front for the Support of Palestine and Against Normalization: Permanent and Unconditional Support for the Palestinian Resistance, Battle of the Al Aqsa Flood.” Rhali added the caption: “Victory Day.” On October 8, Rhali posted a series of photos of himself at a demonstration of “support for the Palestinian resistance.”
These and many similar basic facts were entirely absent from The Lancet’s propaganda-as-news article, headlined “Petition calls for boycott of Israeli Medical Association.” In their place, the piece devotes lengthy quotes to long-time propagandists who repeat the litany of false accusations and blood libels of war crimes, deliberate starvation, and genocide. The systematic entrenchment of Hamas forces and weapons in Gaza’s hospitals — real war crimes — is entirely omitted.
Instead, The Lancet joins in accusing Israeli doctors and the IMA by pompously declaring that this publication “has not identified any statements in which it [IMA] publicly condemned Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health system, criticised Israeli conduct in the war, called for a ceasefire, or responded to UN reports of genocide against Palestinians.”
The ramifications of The Lancet’s role in this campaign should disturb anyone who takes science, medical ethics, and professional accountability seriously. It is also, more broadly, another step toward the normalization of silencing among doctors and health providers — actions that have become distressingly common among academics, including medical schools. The central involvement of once respected humanitarian NGOs such as Doctors Without Borders highlights the processes by which these structures have been hijacked by small groups of anti-Israel activists.
Horton has a long history of abusing his position and The Lancet to publish pseudo-scientific articles filled with false accusations against Israel, including an “An Open Letter for the People of Gaza,” a heinously propagandistic screed. Two co-authors had sent emails to other medical professionals under the subject line “CNN Goldman Sachs & the Zio Matrix” that promoted a video featuring white supremacist leader David Duke and other antisemitic materials.
In 2014, following many calls for Horton’s removal, he suddenly appeared before an audience of Israeli doctors and expressed contrition, declaring he was hurt by the accusations of antisemitism and of abusing his position as editor of the medical publication.
But now, Horton and The Lancet have reverted to earlier form, joining in a campaign led by fringe NGOs that singles out Israel for opprobrium and vicious demonization. Once again, the abuse and lack of accountability is blatant.
In response, Horton repeats his standard claim that professional journals should not be “neutral” or hide their “moral outrage,” in this case, triggered by Israeli actions in Gaza following the October 7 atrocities. But this argument collapses in the absence of any criteria or review processes for the ostensibly moral claims and the evidence ostensibly behind them. Instead, moral outrage is simply an excuse for abandonment of scientific principles — and systematic discrimination and bias targeting Israel in general, and medical professionals in particular.
Neither The Lancet nor the NGOs pushing this campaign have called for boycotts of medical associations in the many countries involved in actual — as distinct from invented — ethical violations, for example, Russia, Iran, Sudan, and China.
The credibility of scientific publishing depends precisely on the ability to distinguish between evidence-based claims and ideological advocacy. By erasing that distinction, this once respected journal is transformed into another platform for orchestrated discrimination and demonization.
The responsibility for ending such abuse rests first and foremost with the publisher, Elsevier, and its corporate framework, which has already allowed Horton to control this platform for far too long. The lack of oversight and accountability, and the stain resulting from the trashing of medical ethics has spread throughout Elsevier’s network of publications and other activities. The time to pull the plug on this farce is long overdue.
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Prof. Steinberg is founder and president of the NGO Monitor research institute, and professor emeritus of political science at Bar Ilan University.
