The “Silence is a Crime” forum was created out of the need of mental health and welfare professionals to make their voices heard against what we see as a war of annihilation. We are witnessing the indiscriminate killing of innocents alongside crimes against humanity that Israel is committing in Gaza. Starvation, population displacement, preparation for deportation and transfer, destruction of medical infrastructure, destruction of civilian and educational infrastructure, cutting off communication from the world, and more. All this, alongside unbridled violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, partly directly by security forces and partly by extreme messianic forces operating under the auspices of the government and backed by security forces, with the aim of deporting and ethnically “cleansing” an indigenous population. Beyond our civic and human duty, we believe that as mental health and welfare professionals, our ethical code obligates us to take action and raise a clear and sharp voice against what is being done in our name. The position paper we published is intended to clarify how this duty of ours to speak out is derived from our professional ethics. We argue that not only must we speak out, but failing to speak out is an action in itself.
We are aware that our call comes against the backdrop of an unbearable, bleeding, and painful reality that has increased the tendency for a split and explosive discourse in our society. It is clear to us that there are professionals who will find it difficult to hear our call and will even oppose it. However, alongside the difficulty, we strive to expand the boundaries of the discourse taking place both in society as a whole and among us, the professionals, after it has been reduced out of defenses of denial and detachment. The time has come, alongside the pain over the terrible violence we absorbed in the 10/7 massacre – to add to the acknowledgment of the victim position also the awareness of the cruel aggressor position within us. In order for us to emerge from the exclusive and splitting victim position, the circle of silence must be broken. While we think of the professional community as operating in a professional field that sanctifies broad, contextual observation, from an integrative and open perspective, we often ask ourselves what maintains the silence and encourages the denial, and we expect our colleagues to think about this together with us.
In this context, we would like to address the climate on social networks, in professional groups, and in our workplaces. We ourselves have experienced, and have also received appeals from quite a few professionals about, severe attacks – silencing, exclusion, shaming – towards statements that contain criticism of the government, reference to the harsh reality in the country, reference to what is happening in Gaza, difficulty with actions of the army, and other voices that are not in the mainstream at this time. Powerful collective discourse mechanisms are activated when the majority opinion is considered the “truth” while minority opinions are excluded and silenced as political and illegitimate. Worse, we witness with shock a violent discourse, immoral and contrary to the rules of ethics, which allows within it calls for support for transfer, indiscriminate killing, another Nakba, and more.
We call on all our colleagues and especially on managers/leaders of communities, physical and virtual: a responsibility rests upon you in this period when aggression overflows, to lead positively, to maintain the boundaries of discourse, to protect minorities and scapegoats, especially Palestinian colleagues in Israel. We call for paying attention to various forms of exclusion and silencing, to oppose a chilling effect towards professionals who wish to express a moral voice, even if it is currently a minority voice. It is our duty to ensure that elements of humanity are expressed towards all human beings and are not colored by nationalism in the spirit of the times.
We call on professionals to express a position, in a clear and lucid voice, and to make heard the silenced voice that opposes the atrocities currently being committed in Gaza and the West Bank against human beings. In this period, facing powerful social forces, it is very difficult to express this voice, and partly for this reason we are here. Physical safety, liberty, freedom of thought and speech are inextricably linked to the mental health of human beings. And for this purpose, we established our forum – to remind how these values are connected to our professional ethical codes, to serve as a home and provide backing and support, and a space for thought and action. We would also welcome the involvement of all of you!
In the first days of our existence, we held a protest vigil with the participation of over 100 mental health and welfare professionals in front of the Histadrut building, as a symbol of our professional unions – those same unions that authored our ethical codes, but are now silent in the face of what we see as their violation. In addition, we established a forum and invited professionals to join it; within a few days, over 600 members joined it, identifying with our clear call to break the silence of professionals and unions in the face of genocide. At every moment, more members are joining it, in a way that illustrates how thirsty our professional field was for a clear ethical voice, which, since it did not come from the professional unions, came from below as a cry. We realized that just as citizens we cannot wait for our leadership and rely on it, so too as professionals we must act. However, we expect our professional leadership to raise a clear voice out of its obligation to the ethical codes it created, and out of an understanding that continued silence and silencing are complicity with crimes against humanity.