Note: This opinion piece reflects my personal views and not those of any group with which I am affiliated.
Israel-defending extremists in the healthcare professions are at it again, and their growing desperation couldn’t be more apparent. It seems they’ve finally come to the realization that they simply have no persuasive arguments to offer for supporting Israel’s ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and its genocide in Gaza. And so, with increasing fervor, they’re turning to their only remaining propaganda tactic: namely, feeble assertions that criticism of Israel — or solidarity with the Palestinian people — is the hallmark of dangerous, unrepentant antisemites.
Here’s the latest bizarre twist in this deceitful campaign. These healthcare professionals have now successfully targeted for erasure a scheduled continuing education webinar about antisemitism! The American Psychological Association (APA) adopted a new Resolution on Antisemitism earlier this year, approved by over three-quarters of its Council of Representatives. One might think that there’s considerable value in providing an opportunity for clinicians to learn how this APA policy may be relevant to their practices. That’s what the four presenters (two of them Jewish, one of them Muslim) intended to do in their presentation titled “(Un)Safe Speech: Applying the 2026 APA Resolution on Antisemitism in Clinical Practice.”
But Israel’s propagandists apparently couldn’t bear the prospect of attendees learning that APA’s new antisemitism policy focuses on “hostility, prejudice, discrimination, harassment, hatred, or violence against Jews as Jews” — as it should — and avoids conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Ironically too, the extremists’ actions here demonstrate first-hand another important truth contained in the APA’s new policy: a warning about the illegitimate “weaponization of antisemitism,” described as “the manipulative or bad faith invocation of accusations to silence legitimate criticism, scholarship, or activism.”
Is there a better example of this ugly weaponization than a dehumanizing Instagram post by Israel advocates that described the scheduled webinar presenters as “wolves in sheeps’ clothing”? I think it’s worth emphasizing as well that one of the individuals who collaborated on this appalling post is a member of both the APA’s own “Collaborative of Jewish Psychologists” (CJP) and the “Jewish Trauma and Resiliency Curriculum Committee” of the “Association of Jewish Psychologists.”
The webinar was scheduled to be hosted by the California Psychological Association (CPA) in late October. With several thousand members, the CPA is part of the APA network of state psychological associations, and the APA gives the CPA permission to offer continuing education sessions. Responding to a concerned registrant’s email expressing disappointment about the cancellation, the CPA’s CEO wrote that this decision was made by the CPA’s board of directors because they had received “several complaints about the program.” In that same message, the CEO added, incomprehensibly in my opinion, that the decision “was not made on the basis of the specific content” of the program. I’ve also learned that the decision was made without even first discussing these complaints with the presenters.
What then was the basis for cancellation? As far as I know, no further explanation has been provided (but one has been requested). It’s unclear exactly what role, if any, the CPA’s current president may have played in the decision. But it seems potentially relevant that last year he signed a petition accusing the APA itself of “systemic” and “virulent” antisemitism, based predominantly on expressions of distress and outrage over the genocide in Gaza. And more recently, when the same Israel advocates posted a follow-up Instagram message celebrating the webinar’s cancellation, he apparently “liked” it (as did multiple members of the APA’s CJP).
Whether this censorship was driven by fear, expediency, ignorance, or other considerations, CPA’s leadership has made a serious mistake. It’s not too late for them to reverse course and re-institute the webinar, and I recommend that healthcare professionals concerned about human rights, human dignity, and freedom of speech encourage them to do so (cpa@cpapsych.org). If this proves ineffective, I hope that another organization, one with a firmer moral compass, will step forward to sponsor this important continuing education program. To state the obvious, giving in to the self-serving demands of Israel-defending extremists only enables them. At this fraught time, resisting censorship and silencing has never been more important.