Statement On Normalization, Erasure, and
Our Professional Obligations During Genocide
February 2026
The Palestine-Global Mental Health Network and the International Collective of Palestine Mental Health Networks are issuing a statement concerning the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Henri Parens Symposium (“Resilience in Response to Violence & War,” March 7, 2026). We call on you to join us.
The symposium convenes during an ongoing genocide on Gaza — over 73,000 killed, children targeted, famine engineered, a ceasefire violated over 1,450 times — and does not name it. It calls genocide 'war.' It grants an Israeli presenter the status of subject — representing an organized national psychoanalytic response to October 7, with a donation link to her organization — while reducing the Palestinian to an object: a clinical case. And it wraps all of this in 'resilience' — a framework that asks how people endure violence rather than why their children are being killed.
We name this as normalization: perpetuating genocidal settler colonialism.
Silence after knowledge is complicity, not neutrality.
In solidarity,
The Palestine-Global Mental Health Network
The International Collective of Palestine Mental Health Networks
Please share this widely with colleagues in your networks.
Keep talking about Palestine. Keep sharing. Keep posting.
Keep disrupting. Never stop believing that Palestine will be free.
