The Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, the International Sandplay Association, and the International Neuropsychoanalysis Association (NPSA) are all sponsoring or co-hosting conferences in Israel in the coming months. It seems extraordinary, given Israel’s record on human rights abuses and their impact on psychological well-being, that mental health professionals would continue to organize and attend such events.
If the Huwwara pogrom does not change their minds, then presumably nothing will. Here government ministers incited Jewish settlers to go on the rampage, attended by Israeli soldiers who also took part in the violence. Israel’s Finance Minister has called for Huwwara to be ‘wiped out.’
Along with several other groups, the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network wrote an Open Letter to the NPSA requesting that the NPSA reconsider its decision. The NPSA’s response – A message from the Organising Committee about Holding the Congress in Israel – an apologia for settler-colonialism, only reinforces the case for cancellation.
The NPSA Conference’s Organising Committee asks us to take into account “the fact that Israeli society is complex and multifaceted.” What does this mean? What difference does this complexity make to the people being killed daily, subject to pogroms in the West Bank (overseen by the army), to the victims of ethnic cleansing in Silwan, or to those imprisoned in Gaza?
The statement presents a picture of Jewish Israeli and Palestinian mental health professionals working as “partners” “despite their differences.” But can there be true partnership under apartheid? Could our Palestinian colleagues speak openly about their political views when it is illegal under Israeli law to back the boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign? How do we know that the NPSA is honestly representing their views or that the Israeli branch of the NPSA is an environment in which non-Jews can freely express themselves? Are they happy, for example, when the organization designates them as “Arabs” rather than Palestinians?
In fact, why are “Jews” counterposed to “Arabs” through the document, as if there is some essential ethnoreligious incompatibility behind their ‘differences? Why is Nazareth an “Arab city” and not a Palestinian one? Is it because the organizers have no quarrel with Jewish supremacism and the denial of Palestinian nationality rights within ‘48/Israel? In our experience, there is no difficulty whatsoever in Jews and Palestinians cooperating on the basis of a joint commitment to decolonization and social justice.
We believe that the picture of a ‘progressive’ Israeli mental health community is dishonest. Is it meaningful to say that you “oppose the occupation” while sabotaging the only strategy that might bring it to an end? But we look forward to being proved wrong when it declares itself in favor of decolonization and full equality as the basis for a just and peaceful future for all. Perhaps the Israeli branch of the NPSA could lead the way.
The statement concludes by presenting as “an alternative approach,” the oldest and most time-worn appeal for empathy, dialogue, and sharing, and “play,” as a way to engage with the direct and real threat of elimination facing the Palestinian people. Why do we object?
First, because the conditions for such open exploration don’t exist under a settler-colonial and apartheid system. To pretend otherwise is indeed to engage in play, play-acting, with one group exercising a social power and invulnerability that pressures the other to participate on a false basis. This unpleasant practice, based on a disavowal of the power difference that it serves to reinforce, has been exposed over and over again. (See, for example, Baconi, T. (2023) ‘The Trap of Palestinian Participation’ published last month).
Second, because it is an exercise in white privilege: the Palestinian people have clearly indicated how they expect us to respond to these “political problems”: by joining a principled boycott of Israel. To counterpose a day or two of talking together as an alternative to sustained solidarity work is arrogant and insulting, as well as directly undermining the only effective strategy of resistance available to Palestinians.
We renew our call on Mark Solms and his associates to call off this conference or to relocate it to a place where all participants might be able to engage on the basis of mutuality and equality. They might look to the example set by GLOW Linguistics: GLOW had likewise decided to hold an academic event in Israel, but in recognition of the increasingly controversial nature of Israel as a location, it decided to ballot its membership. The decision was overturned, and GLOW is now seeking an alternative venue.
Signed
Ireland, France, United Kingdom, and United States -Palestine Mental Health Networks
I am astonished that the NSPA are sponsoring and co-sponsoring conferences in Israel. One of their reasons being that Arab Israeli and Jewish Israeli mental health professionals have been at the forefront of local demonstrations and condemnations of human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza, and so need international input to continue their good work. I think we all know this is pink washing. We know that Palestinian mental health professionals will be extremely unlikely to being given permits to travel to Tel Aviv for any conferences. Neither will they, if given permission to travel to the conferences, have an opportunity to freely express their concerns and requirements to deliver adequate and beneficial services, to the Palestinian people, most of whom suffer ongoing PTSS. This is the NSPA’s opportunity to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people and through cancellation of conferences in Israel, put pressure on the Israeli government to end apartheid and the ongoing colonial oppression of Palestinians by Israel.
Interesting that one of the participating organizations is the International Sandplay Association. Are they just playing in the sand in Palestine/Israel?