A CALL TO ACTION!
Mental Health and Welfare Professionals against the Escalating Violence and Neglect of Palestinian Safety
When the environment fails continuously, man is forced to organize himself through survival rather than through life (inspired by Donald Winnicott).
We, professionals in the field of Mental Health and Welfare, members of the “Silence is a Crime” group, wish to raise our voices and express our deep concern in the face of the ongoing escalation of violence against Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. We cannot stand by while so much suffering is being inflicted on those living among us and on our neighbors. We understand that this is also our ethical and moral imperative as Mental Health and Welfare professionals, out of loyalty to our professional codes.
The purpose of this document is to point to the connection between all manifestations of violence that are detailed below and to argue that they originate from a deliberate policy on the part of the State of Israel towards the Palestinian society. These are the executive branches of a long standing structural and political policy designed to establish Jewish control and supremacy over the Palestinians throughout the area between the sea and the Jordan River. When violence is neither addressed nor condemned, is not investigated and law is not enforced, it not only openly escalates, but is also transparently assimilated into everyday reality. Thus, structural and political violence operates not only through weapons, but also through education, media and Culture. The processes of demonization and de-humanization of Palestinians have deepened and spread within Israeli-Jewish society to such an extent, that we are now witnessing a situation in which the Palestinians have been excluded from the domain of human society’s responsibility, and their lives are no longer sanctified.
For years, Palestinian citizens of Israel have suffered from the murderous violence of organized crime that rages in their communities and takes an unbearable toll on human lives. The life-threatening danger disrupts daily routine and instills a fear of leaving home or even sending children to school. The growing disparity between the extent of crime in Jewish and Arab society, the ineffective law enforcement, and moreover the disparity in the percentage of crime cases that lead to prosecution, are not the result of incompetence or lack of professionalism, but of neglect and institutionalized discrimination. Complicit in this are all State institutions, from the legislative and executive branches to the police, which is responsible for public peace and law enforcement.
In addition, Palestinian citizens of Israel are threatened with the loss of their homes, so that even the immediate and basic source of protection, the walls of their own home, is endangered. Discriminatory policy, which once again removes them from the protection of the law, defines construction resulting from natural population growth as “illegal” and punishable by destruction. In the Negev this policy is reaching its peak. For years now Bedouin citizens have been subjected to the threat and actual implementation of dispossession and expulsion from their lands.
While Palestinians inside Israeli territory are suffering from the lack of protection, their abandonment in the West Bank is intensifying. In the past two years, settlers have carried out violent pogroms against Palestinians on a daily basis. Entire families and communities have fled their lands because of the unrelenting settler terrorism.
This violence is also neither random nor isolated. It is backed, accompanied, guarded by and sometimes even carried out in cooperation with the Israeli army. The State of Israel thus violates the international law that applies to it by virtue of being an occupying power and determines its responsibility for the safety of those under its control.
From a mental health perspective, living in a reality of systemic and ongoing violence, uncertainty and life-threatening danger produces persistent trauma that constantly simmers between extreme traumatic events; chronic anxiety, depression, and a sense of helplessness; profound damage to the basic sense of security; and the collapse of the sense of continuity and family routine.
In the past two years, since October 7th and the war crimes committed by Hamas in the communities surrounding Gaza and at the Nova Festival, the State of Israel has removed all restraints in its murderous and vengeful violence against the Palestinians in Gaza, to the extent that experts in the fields of Holocaust and Genocide, in Israel and around the world, have defined it as genocide.
As mental health and welfare professionals familiar with the long-term multi-generational radioactive effects of such colossal violence, we can only imagine the intensity of the psychological devastation and collapse that is currently taking place on the other side of the border. The well documented testimonies emerging from there tell of severe physical and mental destruction, a tale of hell on earth, where words like “depression”, “trauma” and “anxiety” are unable to contain and describe the intensity of the survivors’ suffering.
These days we are witnessing a courageous emergence of Palestinian Arab society in Israel from stagnation and fear; tens of thousands are taking to the streets demanding that the State of Israel fulfill its duty towards its law-abiding citizens, protect their lives and restore security to the streets. This struggle of Palestinian Arab citizens within the borders of the State of Israel is also part of the resistance to the policy of abandonment, oppression, dispossession and violence, which is carried out in the West Bank and Gaza as well. Palestinian citizens of Israel are voicing their concern that they may be next in line for persecution and expulsion.
In addition, we would like to express our concern for the psychological and mental well-being of Jewish society in Israel. Unable to stem the violence rising within it, it is increasingly losing the brakes necessary for maintaining a humane society. The widening circles of participation in violence – from direct perpetration, through widespread encouragement and support, to the turning away or indifference that enables it – indicate a society that is losing its faith and its path to solutions based on dialogue and agreements between people, and drifting into the illusion that only force will provide it with security.
Out of deep concern for the future of life in this Israeli-Palestinian region, we call on the community of mental health and welfare professionals, led by our professional unions, to take a clear and unequivocal stand opposing the continued violence and neglect of Palestinian lives – both of those living as citizens of the state and those living under Israeli occupation.
We call on the Directors and those in positions of responsibility in mental health and welfare centers, to work to create safe and equal surroundings for discourse, which will enable discussion of the key issues that concern mental health and welfare professionals in Palestinian Arab society, and to acknowledge in a responsible and ethical manner the difficult social and political reality in which both they and their patients live.
A widespread protest is currently taking place, led by the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Affairs in Israel. As such, days of disruption and strike are planned – we call on the heads of the unions, the directors and managers of the various institutions and organizations – please take a position that supports joining the struggle, allow the workers to strike, demonstrate and join in any way they choose.
There is no more time: we must raise our voice, join human rights organizations already operating on the ground, support the right of Palestinians in Israel to a life of physical and mental security, and the equal right of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation to a life of security, peace and prosperity.
We must act in order to stop the dehumanization of Palestinian society and its abandonment to violence, in the entire region between the sea and the Jordan River, and strive for the existence of a humane society respecting the most basic values that define us all.