Effort To Expel Israel From Int’l Social Workers’ Federation Fails

Effort To Expel Israel From Int’l Social Workers’ Federation Fails

Chalk one up for the good guys. Last Wednesday, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) convened a special meeting to decide whether to suspend or expel the Israeli Union of Social Workers (IUSW) for perceived crimes since October 7. Israel’s enemies lost on both counts.

The “continuing breaches of IFSW’s Global Ethical Principles” that IFSW Interim Secretary General Dr. Pascal Rudin mentioned in his scene-setting report mostly boiled down to Israeli social workers serving their nation and protecting Israeli civilians from Hamas terrorists.

IFSW’s complicated relationship with its Israeli member organization dates back further, though. Rudin’s report positively recalled 2014, when the Israeli Union publicly supported “comprehensive peace,” the two-state solution, and “dignity and self-determination for all peoples.” IFSW’s warm stance changed soon thereafter. In 2018, IFSW censured the Israeli Union for issuing statements “asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the occupation were not social work issues.”

Israel’s union was censured once again in January 2025, “‘for not upholding the Federation’s ethical principles of supporting peace and non-violence.’” At issue were allegations that Israeli social workers joined Israel’s military after October 7. IUSW “indicated that some of its members serve in combat roles as a result of mandatory military conscription,” and the union was faulted for not “ask[ing] its government to exempt social workers from active combat roles” or “issu[ing] a public statement calling for peace.” (The Palestinian Union of Social Workers and Psychologists telling IFSW “its members are not engaged in military combat” may or may not have been true, but Rudin accepted it as fact.) 

The Irish Association of Social Workers, Greece’s Hellenic Association of Social Workers, and Spain’s Consejo General del Trabajo Social, who’ve accused the Israeli Union of “silence on the genocide in Gaza,” were among those convinced that IFSW still hadn’t gone far enough. Hence, they led the drive for Wednesday’s vote. 

Notably, this isn’t IFSW’s typical operating procedure. In a backgrounder on the 2025 censure, IFSW was asked whether “professional organisations in [other] countries at war,” like Ukraine, are “also called upon to take a stand”? Instructively, IFSW responded that “the IFSW Executive . . . initiate[d] action against the Israeli Union” because “all the correspondence and formal complaints received by IFSW referred specifically to Israel and not to Ukraine or other contexts.” Jewish Insider additionally reported, “The only other country to ever face a similar punishment from the IFSW was South Africa, which was suspended during the era of apartheid rule.”

As Wednesday’s vote over whether Israeli social workers should be treated as pariahs unfolded, there were two things to watch for: First, could Israel’s detractors muster “yes” votes from at least 75% of attendees to either suspend or expel the Israeli Union?

Second, how would IFSW’s North American region vote? The United States’ National Association of Social Workers (NASW) announced last Tuesday that it “strongly opposes the motion to expel the Israeli Union of Social Workers” and was “urging all 68 voting member associations to uphold the profession’s core values of unity, dialogue, and compassion.” The Canadian Association of Social Workers did not respond to a pre-vote inquiry about how it intended to vote and whether it would issue a public statement explaining its vote.

IFSW’s vote mattered beyond Israel, Andrea Yudell, co-founder of the Jewish Social Work Consortium, told me before the vote, because “after the [2025] censure occurred, we saw exploding antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the field.” That explosion has affected not only Jewish and Israeli-American social workers, but also Jews and Israeli-Americans seeking therapists.

Yudell and her co-founder, Jennifer Kogan, described this as a blind spot. With last week’s vote, “Israel and Israelis… are just sort of put into a binary, as colonizing oppressors. They’re not being seen as the complex human beings that we all are,” Yudell observed.

“If they are expelled, which is wrong for Israeli people, it also legitimizes the hate that’s been running rampant,” Yudell continued. It becomes a “‘We told you so,’ and we saw that after the censure. We saw on listservs … ‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.’” The authors of such sentiments, Yudell clarified, were “people that we know, by the way.”

“We’re the helping profession, right? We don’t single out anyone to say, as a group, as a nationality, as a race, ‘You’re bad. You’re wrong.’” Yudell said. Kogan added, “That goes against our [professional] ethics, which is the point we’re trying to make.” 

Kogan and Yudell wanted to see both NASW and CASW vote “no” last Wednesday, but knew there had been “anti-Zionist organizations pressuring NASW to vote yes,” as Kogan told me. And the same may well have been true for CASW. To show support for the reverse, Kogan and Yudell’s organization partnered with others to launch an online petition urging both North American organizations to oppose the anti-Israel position. The petition’s text noted Wednesday’s motion “is not based on any documented ethical violations by Israeli social workers. Instead, it imposes a nationality-based collective sanction, treating professionals as ethically suspect solely because of their national affiliation,” which “raises serious civil rights concerns,” and for good reason.

Standards, like ethics, are useless if they’re not applied consistently. Thankfully, enough social work member organizations voted against applying a harsh double standard to Israel last Wednesday. Hopefully, now, the “healing, unity, and professional integrity” that NASW referenced in its post-vote press release can begin.

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