Silence is not a neutral stance — silence is a crime

Over 75,000 dead in Gaza – among them tens of thousands of children. More than 150,000 physically and mentally injured. Mass starvation leaving hundreds of thousands under the threat of extreme famine, and nearly 90% of the Strip’s infrastructure completely destroyed: hospitals, schools, and entire neighborhoods wiped out. Simultaneously, in the West Bank, we are witnessing an unprecedented escalation of unbridled settler terrorism under the auspices of the state and its institutions, violence, ethnic cleansing, and the killing of over a thousand Palestinians. The annihilation and destruction are carried out in our name, day after day, also in Iran and Lebanon. The lives of others across the border have become cheap in the name of our illusion of security. In the midst of this ongoing atrocity, the deafening silence of the professional unions in the fields of mental health and welfare is nothing short of a betrayal of the ethics we swore to uphold. We cannot speak of compassion, vulnerability, or healing inside the clinics, while outside them we are passive accomplices to moral blindness, the normalization of war crimes, and the absolute dehumanization of the Palestinian people. We, mental health and welfare professionals, have decided to speak out against the silencing. Distress is our compass, and we refuse to cooperate with “resilience” that means emotional detachment and callousness. Our professional, human, and moral duty is to look directly at the atrocities, raise a clear and uncompromising voice against the crimes against humanity committed in our name, and demand the end of the war. Because at this time, silence is not a neutral position – silence is a crime.