Stop Singling Out A People: Sign the Petition
On February 18, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) will vote on a motion to suspend or expel the Israeli Union of Social Workers not for misconduct, but on the basis of nationality. This follows the January 2026 censure and marks a clear escalation. No other national social work association has been singled out this way.
The complaint, initiated in October 2025 by the Irish, Spanish, and Hellenic associations, cites no documented ethical violations. This is not conduct-based accountability. It is anti-Zionism, a hate movement that treats Jewish collective identity and the existence of a Jewish state as inherently illegitimate and reframes exclusion as ethics. Instead of evaluating behavior, it assigns guilt by nationality.
Collective punishment of an entire professional community violates the core principles of social work: dignity, moral agency, and non-discrimination. It is ethically indefensible.
Social work codes explicitly reject collective blame. Both the IFSW Ethical Principles and the National Association of Social Work (NASW) and the Canadian Association of Social Work (CASW) ethics codes prohibit discrimination based on nationality and warn against actions that cause foreseeable harm. Punishing an entire professional community for failing an ideological litmus test directly contradicts those standards.
At the same time, anti-Zionist social work groups in North America are actively lobbying associations to support expulsion, turning professional governance into an ideological campaign rather than an ethical process.
Israel is a democratic society where citizens of all backgrounds hold legal rights and participate fully in civic and professional life. Yet Israeli professionals are being collectively demonized and treated as morally suspect by default. That framing has no place in a profession grounded in dignity and self-determination.
We are already seeing the effects. Prior censure has fueled hostility, flattening Israeli and Jewish colleagues into caricatures and normalizing exclusion across professional spaces. This harms clinicians, clients, and the integrity of the field itself.
Expelling a national association based on identity, presumed political complicity, or compelled speech abandons the ethical foundations of social work. It replaces universal principles with ideology and normalizes collective punishment.
Please sign the petition to speak out against the IFSW’s upcoming February 18th vote targeting Israeli and Jewish Social Workers. Make your voice heard so NASW and CASW will speak out against this egregious injustice.
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This piece was co-authored by Andrea Yudell.
