It is our ethical imperative and professional responsibility to speak out against the oppression of the Palestinian people and act for justice in Palestine.
- APA’s Resolution on APA, Psychology, and Human Rights (2021) and Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct (2017): Respect for human rights is central to psychological ethics
- ICJ said Israel’s presence in Palestinian territories is illegal and calls on it to end.
- International Court of Justice, Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
- Evidence of human rights violation committed by Israel against Palestinians
- Amnesty International, Israel’s Occupation: 50 Years of Dispossession (June 2017)
- Amnesty International, Israeli Apartheid Against Palestinians (February 2022)
- Amnesty International, Israel must end its occupation of Palestine to stop fuelling apartheid and systematic human rights violations (February 2024)
- Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution (April 2021)
- United Nations, Human Rights Council, A/HRC/55/73, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967
- United Nations, A/77/328, Report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel (September 2022)
- ICJ said Israel’s presence in Palestinian territories is illegal and calls on it to end.
- We (anyone who pays taxes to the U.S. government) are complicit.
- U.S. tax dollars fund Israel’s military since the 1970s (~$310 billion total and ~$3.8 billion/year), which actively maintains Israel’s occupation over Palestine and the current genocide.
- The U.S. makes and supplies weapons to Israel, which are used to indiscriminately kill and wound Palestinians [54-60].
- In its Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024, ICJ said no member states should assist Israel in maintaining its illegal occupation of Palestine.
- APA’s Resolution Against Genocide (2008): APA “condemns genocide wherever it occurs across the globe and confirms that all people have the right to survival and safety … individual psychologists [should] work toward the development of policies that work to eradicate and prevent genocide and to ameliorate its impact on individuals and communities.” (p. 2-3).
- The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli government has consistently failed to comply with any measures outlined in the orders from the ICJ to prevent committing any genocidal acts and improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
- ICJ, Order of 26 January 2024, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)
- ICJ, Order of 28 March 2024, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)
- ICJ, Order of 24 May 2024, Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip (South Africa v. Israel)
- The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that it is “plausible” that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The Israeli government has consistently failed to comply with any measures outlined in the orders from the ICJ to prevent committing any genocidal acts and improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza.
- APA’s Apology to People of Color (2021), Resolution on Harnessing Psychology to Combat Racism (2021), and Role of Psychology and APA in Dismantling Systemic Racism (2021): Psychology and psychologists must recognize our complicity in perpetuating racism and have a responsibility to take active steps to dismantle all forms of racism.
- This includes anti-Palestinian racism that has fueled the systematic dehumanization and oppression of Palestinians.
- American Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African Psychological Association, Statement on Anti-Palestinian/Anti-Arab/MENA Hate (November 2023)
- Arab-Canadian Lawyers Association, Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations (April 2022)
- Yasmeen Abu-Laban & Abigail B. Bakan, Project on Middle East Political Science,Anti-Palestinian Racism: Analyzing the Unnamed and Suppressed Reality, (September 2021)
- Abdallah Fayyad, Vox, It’s not Islamophobia, it’s anti-Palestinian racism (June 2024)
- This includes anti-Palestinian racism that has fueled the systematic dehumanization and oppression of Palestinians.
Chronic and constant exposure to violence, as a result of living under Israeli occupation, have deleterious effects on Palestinian mental health. We cannot talk about Palestinian mental health without addressing their oppression.
- USA Palestinian Mental Health Network – https://usapalmhn.org/
- Palestine-Global Mental Health Network – https://www.pgmhn.org/
- Visualizing Palestine: Six Wars Old (November 2023)
- World Bank Group, International Security and Development Center, Zentrum Überleben, and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Mental Health in the West Bank and Gaza (November 2022)
- Médecins du Monde France and the Association of International Development Agencies, No Peace of Mind (June 2022)
- Save the Children, Trapped and Scarred: The compounding mental harm inflicted on Palestinian children in Gaza (2024)
- Save The Children, Trapped: The impact of 15 years of blockade on the mental health of Gaza’s children (2022)
- Medical Aid for Palestinians, Systematic Discrimination and Fragmentation as Key Barriers to Palestinian Health and Health Care (November 2021)
- WHO Impact on Health (2023-2024) Infographics
- Dalia Haidar, BBC, ‘Wounded child, no surviving family’: The pain of Gaza’s orphans (December 2023)
- Bethan McKernan, The Guardian, ‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychiatrist challenging western definitions of trauma (April 2024)
- UNICEF, Stories of loss and grief: At least 17,000 children are estimated to be unaccompanied or separated from their parents in the Gaza Strip (February 2024)
- Iman Farajallah, Psychiatric Times, The Invisible Wounds of Palestinian Children (March 2024)
- Farajallah, I. (2022). Continuous traumatic stress in Palestine: The psychological effects of the occupation and chronic warfare on Palestinian children. World Social Psychiatry, 4(2), 112-120. https://doi.org/10.4103/wsp.wsp_26_22
- Helbich, M., & Jabr, S. (2022). A Call for Social Justice and for a Human Rights Approach with Regard to Mental Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Health and human rights, 24(2), 305–318. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9790960/
- Marie, M., SaadAdeen, S., & Battat, M. (2020). Anxiety disorders and PTSD in Palestine: a literature review. BMC Psychiatry, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-020-02911-7
- Ayer, L., Venkatesh, B., Stewart, R., Mandel, D., Stein, B., & Schoenbaum, M. (2017). Psychological Aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict: A Systematic Review. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 18(3), 322–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838015613774
- Jabr, S., Morse, M., El Sarraj, W., & Awidi, B. (2013). Mental health in Palestine: country report. The Arab Journal of Psychiatry, 24(2), 174-178. https://doi.org/10.12816/0001376
Other readings:
- Leila Fadel and Hala Alyan, Palestinian writer and psychologist discusses dangers of dehumanizing Palestinians (December 2023)
- Hala Alyan, ‘I am not there and I am not here’: a Palestinian American poet on bearing witness to atrocity (January 2024)
- Hala Alyan, Why must Palestinians audition for your empathy? (October 2023)
- Devin Atallah and Nihaya Abu-Rayyan, There is No Lifting the Rubble from Afar: A Conversation Between Two Palestinian Healers Waging Love Against Genocide (January 2024)
- Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud, A World Without Palestinians (February 2024)
Statements of solidarity from psychologists and mental health-related professionals:
- American Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African Psychological Association, Palestinian Solidarity Statment (October 2023)
- Asian American Psychological Association, Statement on Israel/Palestine (October 2023)
- Psychoanalysis for Social Responsibility (Section IX of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, APA Division 39), Statement in Support of Palestine (December 2023)
- The Red Clinic, Psychoanalysis in Solidarity with Gaza (December 2023)
- Jennifer Mullan and Melody Li, Open letter: End Mental Health Field’s Complicity to Genocide (December 2023)
- Roy Eidelson, Will the American Psychological Association Ever Join the Gaza Cease-Fire Call?, (January 2024)
- Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (APA Division 9), Psychologists’ Response to the Violence in Gaza statement (April 2024)
- Erica Burman, Ian Parker, et al., ‘Liberating’ not ‘oppressive’ over Gaza (May 2024)
- The Coalition of National Racial and Ethnic Psychological Association, Statement Calling for a Ceasefire in Palestine (May 2024)
- Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine, Call for Psychoanalytic Professionals to Address the Human Catastrophe in Gaza
- Roy Eidelson, A Call for Retraction: The Recent American Psychologist Article on Antisemitism (June 2024)
- Roy Eidelson, My Concerns about the “Association of Jewish Psychologists” (April 2024)