The American Psychological Association (APA) — one of the world’s largest organizations of healthcare clinicians, researchers, and educators — contends that it “prioritizes human rights advocacy” and “encourages psychologists to support and advocate for populations at risk of human rights violations, including marginalized populations both domestically and globally.” But if APA leaders want to truly honor that commitment, they must do much more to publicly recognize and address the devastating plight of Palestinians in Gaza today.
For ten long months after the Hamas attacks in Israel last October, the APA’s senior executives and board of directors seemingly avoided public acknowledgement of the genocidal assault by the Israel Defense Forces. Indeed, in spite of the mass death and injury, displacement, and starvation in Gaza, APA’s leadership even discouraged groups within the Association from issuing their own statements calling for an urgent humanitarian ceasefire.
Finally, this past August, several members of the APA’s larger governing body — its Council of Representatives — challenged this resistance and brought a resolution to the floor in support of “an immediate, permanent, and comprehensive ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.” With repeated revisions, they worked tirelessly to craft a “balanced” statement responsive to the concerns raised by various committees and factions within the APA. Among their compromises, for example, was the inclusion of language stating that the resolution “is not meant to advocate or criticize any of the parties engaged in conflict.” Not surprisingly, absent from the statement are the words occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Thankfully, almost two-thirds of Council members voted in favor of the resolution. Yet it’s distressing that nearly a third did not. Opponents expressed views that the APA shouldn’t engage in “political” matters at all, that the APA shouldn’t focus so much attention on this particular conflict, and most remarkably, that the vote should be postponed for another six months to further refine the language. (After the statement was approved over these objections, it didn’t take long for unwarranted yet predictable complaints of antisemitism to burst forth from certain quarters.)
Despite its cautious tone, the ceasefire resolution is an important step in the right direction. But given the APA’s explicit commitment to advancing psychological health and human rights, the moral demands for furtheraction are self-evident and compelling. A one-off statement isn’t nearly enough, and the many credible accounts of Gaza’s healthcare nightmare should convince any psychologist who has doubts. Consider the following.
The largest mental health organization in Gaza is the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme. GCMHP’s report from this past July describes in detail how “prolonged and multiple exposure to traumatic events” has taken a devastating toll on the psychological wellbeing of Palestinians, increasing their feelings of anger, frustration, and despair, and causing heightened anxiety symptoms, especially among children and women. At this time of profound need for GCMHP’s professional services, the report also notes this dreadful consequence from Israel’s ongoing assault:
During the ongoing war, GCMHP lost two of its three premises (Gaza City and Khan Yunis community centers), while the third one in Deir El-Balah was partially damaged. Most painful was the loss of three female colleagues (psychologists). One man, a project coordinator, and his wife were moderately to severely injured. They lost their children and family members. A female administrative assistant was moderately injured, her daughter was killed, and her family members were injured.
Multiple agencies of the United Nations — where the APA is proudly an accredited NGO — have also illuminated the catastrophic healthcare circumstances confronting Gaza as a result of Israel’s year-long onslaught. Back in February, UNICEF’s Palestine representative observed that almost every child in Gaza — more than one million — was in need of mental health and psychosocial support. Conditions have only worsened in the months since. And just last month, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that “only 17 out of 36 hospitals remain functional – all partially – and just 57 out of 132 primary health-care facilities are functional, all amid crippling shortages of fuel, medicine, and essential supplies.”
Even more recently, just earlier this month, the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel issued a report that should be required reading for all APA leaders — and for healthcare professionals more generally. Here are two excerpts:
The Commission finds that Israel has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of Gaza. Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, wounded, arrested, detained, mistreated and tortured medical personnel and targeted medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of willful killing and mistreatment and the crime against humanity of extermination. Israeli authorities carried out such acts while tightening the siege of the Gaza Strip, resulting in fuel, food, water, medicines and medical supplies not reaching hospitals, while also drastically reducing permits for patients to leave the territory for medical treatment. The Commission finds that these actions were taken as collective punishment against the Palestinians in Gaza and are part of the ongoing Israeli attack against the Palestinian people that began on 7 October.
Mistreatment of Palestinian detainees by Israeli authorities is the result of an intentional policy. Acts of physical, psychological, sexual and reproductive violence were perpetrated to humiliate and degrade Palestinians. This was observed across several facilities and temporary holding locations, as well as during interrogation and while in transit to and from facilities. Detainees, including older persons and children, were subjected to consistent mistreatment, including lack of sufficient food and appropriate hygiene facilities, beatings, abusive language and being forced to perform humiliating acts. Israeli security forces committed those acts with the intent to inflict pain and suffering, amounting to torture as a war crime and a crime against humanity and constituting a violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The deaths of detainees as a result of abuse or neglect amount to the war crimes of willful killing or murder and violations of the right to life.
The recent open letter to President Biden and Vice-President Harris from 99 American healthcare professionals who’ve volunteered in Gaza at various points over the past year offers yet one more chilling account. Describing themselves as a “multifaith and multiethnic group,” they offer firsthand accounts that include —but are not limited to — the following: almost everyone in Gaza is sick, injured, or both; malnourished mothers have no choice but to feed their newborn infants with formula made from poisonous water; pre-teen children are regularly brought for emergency care with gunshots to their heads or chests; still births and maternal deaths that would normally be preventable are now commonplace; and Palestinian healthcare workers are among the most traumatized people in Gaza — and nearly 1,000 of them have been killed by Israeli forces.
As a final point meriting further reflection, it’s instructive to compare how the APA’s leadership responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and how they’ve responded to Israel’s destruction of Gaza. Within days of the Russian invasion, APA’s Council rushed to overwhelmingly endorse a statement expressing “solidarity with the National Psychological Association of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people, and colleagues in the Eastern European region, as the Ukrainian nation defends itself.”
Over the weeks that followed, the APA’s public affairs office published articles online — for example, “Talking to kids about the war in Ukraine” and “How to handle the trauma of war from afar” — and produced a podcast titled “Speaking of Psychology: Surviving the trauma of war in Ukraine.” And there was more. The APA contributed time and resources to helping Ukrainian psychologists address “the staggering needs of Ukrainians at home in their country and abroad.” And APA members were encouraged to make financial donations to support “psychological care for Ukrainian people.”
These were all valuable initiatives by the APA in support of Ukraine and its citizens. But it’s hard to ignore the disturbing contrast — the prevailing silence and inaction, the apparent invisibility of Palestinian anguish — when it comes to Gaza.
In fact, as far as I can tell, over the past year the APA has failed to offer any meaningful support to the people of Palestine. That can change today, and two initial steps are obvious. First, APA’s leadership can call for an end to the U.S. government’s provision of the lethal weapons and political cover that are essential for Israel’s continuing assault. Prominent international organizations, the largest union of healthcare workers in this country, and U.S. political leaders have already done so. The American public has expressed majority support for an arms embargo as well. Second, with assets totaling tens of millions of dollars, the APA can readily provide financial assistance to non-profit groups working to alleviate the unconscionable suffering in Gaza (and in the West Bank and Lebanon as well). In my view, anything less is a tragic betrayal of the APA’s avowed commitment to human welfare and human rights.
As a reminder, this is not the first time that the APA has seemingly chosen expediency over ethics. Most memorably, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. government implemented policies that led to the abuse — and torture — of thousands of Muslim men and boys. Distinguished human rights groups quickly voiced strong opposition. But eschewing this principled chorus, APA officials instead promoted the absurd claim that psychologists helped to keep these detention and interrogation operations “safe, legal, ethical, and effective.” It took more than a decade before APA’s leadership came to grips with this tragic failure and promised a resetting of the organization’s “moral compass.” Where is that compass today?
Note: This essay first appeared at Mondoweiss.