Jewish Social Work Consortium Statement on the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Targeting of Israeli Social Workers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

January 30, 2026

Jewish Social Work Consortium Statement on the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Targeting of Israeli Social Workers

After formally censuring the Israeli Union of Social Workers last year, the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) is now moving toward suspension or expulsion. The IFSWs planned February 18, 2026 vote marks a clear escalation in a selective enforcement campaign. Presented as accountability, the proposal advances an ideologically driven effort to isolate Israeli social workers as a collective, based on nationality rather than actual professional conduct.

The vote is not grounded in any documented ethical violation rather, it effectively singles out an Israeli institution. This is a defining feature of antizionism as an identity-based hate movement.

At the core of the motion is a discriminatory premise: that Israeli social workers are ethically compromised by citizenship alone and by mandatory military service required under law. This collapses individual moral agency into state policy and subjects Israelis to a standard applied to no other national association. Selective enforcement of this kind is not ethical rigor; it is blatant prejudice.

These efforts have escalated through coordinated pressure by antizionist organizations, including Shatat–USA–Palestine Mental Health Network and Social Workers for Palestine, aimed at persuading national associations, particularly the National Association of Social Workers, to endorse the expulsion. Claims that continued Israeli participation “undermines global social work ethics” invert ethical reasoning. This is exclusion based on nationality and ideological litmus tests that undermine all ethical credibility.

This campaign erases the professional reality of Israeli social workers as clinicians, trauma specialists, peace practitioners, and coexistence advocates, including those working directly with Palestinian communities and those who actively oppose violence and extremism. Their work is dismissed through a flattening narrative that treats Israeli identity itself as evidence of ethical failure.

This is not principled critique or ethical debate. It is antizionism operating through professional institutions, denying Israelis moral complexity, collective legitimacy, and equal participation in global social work. When professional bodies adopt this framework, they normalize collective punishment under the guise of ethics.

If the IFSW proceeds with this vote, and if national associations such as NASW lend their support, they will be complicit in transforming social work ethics from a universal commitment to human dignity into a mechanism of exclusion.

• We call on the IFSW to halt this vote immediately.

• We urge NASW and other national social work associations to reject endorsement of expulsion and to affirm that ethical accountability must be conduct-based, not identity-based.

• We ask social workers worldwide to speak out against the misuse of professional ethics to legitimize discrimination.

The Jewish Social Work Consortium was founded by a group of Jewish social workers in the US and Canada—clinicians, academics, educators, writers, and advocates—committed to restoring the foundational values of our profession. At the heart of our mission is a call to uphold cultural competence, cultural humility, ethical care, and safety for all people, including Jews and Israelis.

CONTACT:

Jewishsocialworkconsortium@gmail.com

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