UKPALMHN mailing 28 January

January 28, 2026January 28, 2026 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN mailing 31 December

January 28, 2026 ukpalmhnadmin

Palestinians in Gaza are literally left ALONE, FREEZING and STARVING in the winter storm.
I keep asking how we became such monsters, incapable of stopping this nightmare.
For them, for us, for whatever remains of the people in whose name this genocide is being committed.
Francesca Albanese
https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1998830824184066515

UKPALMHN Solidarity Spaces
Every Monday during January at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.

The full report of the PVP conference Living Through the Unimaginable: Witnessing and Responding to the Genocide in Gaza now available
This one-day conference on 8 November 2025 brought together mental health professionals and Palestinian colleagues to examine the realities of ongoing genocide, the collapse of services in Gaza, and the ethical challenges facing practitioners. The report summarises key themes from each section of the event, including the impact of colonisation on mental health, the limits of therapeutic work under conditions of mass violence, the silencing occurring within UK institutions, and the collective responsibilities of our professions.Full report (plus section by section overview of the conference):
https://ukpalmhn.com/pvp/pvp-conference-living-through-the-unimaginable/

Call for Palestinian voices at the Association of Child Psychotherapists Conference (ACP)
Source: Palestine-UK Child Psychotherapists
Date: December 2025
The ACP Conference in June 2026 is around looked after, fostered, adopted children.
Palestine-UK Child Psychotherapists would like to have our Palestinian friends and colleagues involved in a presentation about what is happening to orphaned children in Palestine, because their parents have been murdered in the genocide or so badly injured and disabled that they are unable to care for their children. This leaves thousands of children without parents and possibly with no surviving family members.We would like to ask our Palestinian colleagues if they might have the time and be willing to write something that could be recorded and presented at the conference or read aloud by one of us on any aspect of the community’s involvement with the orphans or children abandoned through the loss of parents in the chaos of forced displacement. We would like to make the most of this opportunity to bring the voices of the children and clinicians of Palestine into this conference.
Teresa Bailey, Consultant Child Psychotherapist and UKPMHN Steering Group member
Please write to Teresa via ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you can help with this initiative.

Urgent call to social workers – ask your social work association to vote for expulsion of the Israeli Union of Social Workers from the IFSW
Following the Social Workers for a Free Palestine (SW4FP) campaign for an IFSW Special General Meeting to consider the expulsion of the Israeli Union of Social Workers from the IFSW, it has now been agreed that this will take place on 18th February. SW4FP are now calling on social workers to ask their national associations to vote for expulsion of the Israeli Union given their continuing involvement in the genocide.
Follow the link below for a model letter which you can email to your national association, and instructions on how to find their email address on the IFSW website
https://forms.gle/FVzfy4uMtxQf1aTg9

Special issue: Psychotherapy and Politics International on PalestineSource: Psychotherapy and Politics International
Date: December 2025
This special issue of Psychotherapy and Politics International brings together a substantial collection of peer-reviewed articles examining the psychological, political and ethical dimensions of Israel’s colonisation of Palestine. Contributors draw on decolonial theory, psychoanalysis and political psychology to explore how occupation, apartheid and ongoing violence shape subjectivity, gendered experience and mental health, while also questioning the role and responsibilities of psychology as a discipline under conditions of structural injustice. A central contribution is Samah Jabr and Maria Helbich’s article “Colonisation and Resistance,” which revisits Frantz Fanon to illuminate the psychological dimensions of occupation and resistance, setting the critical tone for the issue. Other articles reflect on the reaffirmation of humanity under extreme violence, the limits of conventional therapeutic frameworks, and what psychology might learn from Palestinian experiences of collective struggle, with several authors drawing comparative insights from Latin America and Brazil. Taken together, the issue challenges individualised and depoliticised approaches to mental health and calls for a more explicitly political, decolonial engagement with Palestine .https://ojs.aut.ac.nz/psychotherapy-politics-international/issue/view/70

Palestine, health and the limits of humanitarianism (1.5 hour webinar)
Source: MedAct
Date: The webinar took place on 11 November and the recording became available on 16 DecemberThe discussion frames health work in Gaza as inseparable from settler-colonial violence, arguing that clinical care becomes a form of resistance when care is deliberately denied and the health system is systematically targeted. A central theme is that mainstream humanitarianism and “neutral”, depoliticised professional norms can function as instruments of imperial power: they can normalise or “humanitarianise” mass violence, increase dependency, and erode Palestinian health sovereignty, including through donor-driven attempts to reshape or effectively “buy” ruined institutions. Speakers repeatedly emphasise that health outcomes depend on structural conditions (food, water, land, safety) and that Gaza exposes interconnected systems of warfare, surveillance, extractive capitalism and repression, including links to the UK context (austerity, policing, borders, and corporate incursions such as Palantir). The panel distinguishes mobilisation from organising, urging health workers to move beyond symbolic solidarity towards building collective power that can obstruct harmful policies, defend colleagues facing institutional reprisals, and pursue strategies grounded in unity of struggle rather than pity-driven “perfect victim” narratives. Finally, the discussion points to historical and contemporary models of politicised, community-rooted “liberation medicine” and internationalist practice (including Cuba and earlier Palestinian health organising), while warning about NGO-isation and academic “humanitarian” programmes that can depoliticise, professionalise, or hollow out resistance and clinical capacity.
Full video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUJOrp8fJus

Palestine, Health and the Limits of Humanitarianism – Speakers’ resource page
https://www.medact.org/2025/blogs/palestine-health-and-the-limits-of-humanitarianism-resources/

Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners suffer severe crimes and extermination behind bars
Source: Commission of Detainees’ Affairs & Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (briefing)
Date: 25 December 2025
A new report by the Commission of Detainees’ Affairs (a Commission of the Palestine Authority) and the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (a Palestinian civil society organisation) documents systematic and severe violations against Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli custody, describing widespread abuse, ill-treatment and policies amounting to physical and psychological extermination. The briefing highlights the extensive use of administrative detention without charge, brutal prison conditions and deliberate denial of medical care that have led to grave harm, while emphasising the authorities’ failure to provide transparency or accountability. The report calls for international recognition of these practices as part of broader patterns of violence and urges urgent measures to protect the rights and lives of Palestinian detainees.
https://cda.gov.ps/index.php/en/51-slider-en/21602-palestinian-prisoners-report-dec-2025

Garbage is poisoning Gaza
Source: Dropsite News
Date: 16 December
This report describes a growing environmental and public health crisis in Gaza as an estimated 900,000 tons of solid waste have accumulated across the enclave, largely because access to Gaza’s major landfill sites has been cut off and municipal waste-management infrastructure has been largely destroyed. Residents, including displaced families living near vast piles of rotting trash, are exposed to toxic fumes, infestations, contaminated water and increased risk of disease, while sanitation services struggle to function amid continuing barriers to equipment, fuel and access. (dropsitenews.com)
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/garbage-poisoning-gaza-landfills-inaccessible-waste-disease

Rebranding genocide
Source: GroundXero
Date: 15 December
In this commentary, Chris Hedges argues that the ongoing destruction in Gaza is effectively a genocide that has been obscured or softened in public discourse through euphemistic language such as “ceasefire” or “peace plans.” The article contends that, despite temporary pauses in overt hostilities and stipulations in recent agreements, violations of international law continue and the fundamental conditions of suffering, displacement and structural violence in Gaza persist.
https://www.groundxero.in/2025/12/15/rebranding-genocide/

On the monotony of the checkpoint
Source: The Call
Date: 15 December
The piece describes how daily encounters with Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank slowly turn from acute fear into a numbing, routinised experience, showing how constant control over movement reshapes perception of time, safety and normality. It highlights the psychological effects of “social atomisation” and chronic uncertainty—people’s social worlds shrink, plans are cancelled, and even acts of minor resistance are squeezed into narrow windows defined by soldiers’ moods and shift changes, making occupation feel both banal and inescapable.
https://thecall.ps/p/on-the-monotony-of-the-checkpoint

“Freedom” desalination plant in Gaza
Source: Bisan Owda (wizard_bisan1 on Instagram)
Date: 18 December
What’s Ours Is Yours, a youth volunteer charity campaign, is launching the “Freedom” desalination plant, which will serve the northern areas of Gaza City and its camps. This achievement, accomplished during the genocide and without resources in such a short time, is truly “like digging into a rock”.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSaMORhCttc/

FEATURED EVENTS
Finding the Creatura – a lecture by Dr John Beebe
Source: Stand By The Mother series
Date: Sunday 1 February
This online fundraising lecture is part of the Stand By The Mother series, which brings depth-psychological perspectives to questions of care, suffering and human dignity in the context of Palestine. Led by Dr John Beebe, the talk draws on Jungian psychology to explore the concept of the Creatura and what it may offer practitioners and participants seeking meaning, ethical orientation and psychological grounding in times of collective trauma. Hosted by Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi, the event is intended for clinicians, therapists and others interested in depth psychology, while also raising funds in support of Palestinian mothers.A link for the meeting will be provided in our next mailing.
For further information, please write to: standbymother@gmail.com

Bearing Witness in the Academy: Silence, Emotional Labour, and the Cost of Neutrality
Source: Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine (PVP)
Date: Saturday 14 February from 10.30am – 12.30pm
The speaker, Aneeza Pervez, is a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Her recent research examines how institutions respond to political violence and genocide, and how silence and emotional labour shape the moral life of universities. Link to the meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84435183882?pwd=kGtSYUgraPclnniDrhQXbv5CEnC18o.1

Aneeza also spoke at the recent PVP conference “Living Through the Unimaginable” leading to an interesting and engaged plenary discussion. A summary of her talk, slides and a recent open access paper she has written are available in the afternoon session of the full conference report:
https://ukpalmhn.com/pvp/pvp-conference-living-through-the-unimaginable/
(scroll down to find the report and then scroll down the report to find the relevant section)

FEATURED ACTIONS
Councillor Pledge for Palestine
In the run up to local elections in May 2026, Palestine Solidarity Campaign has launched an important new initiative asking local councillors to sign a Pledge for Palestine committing to:- Uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestine people- Stand up to Israel for its crimes of genocide and apartheid- Ensure their council isn’t complicit, including through divesting pension funds from complicit companies.On the action page, enter your postcode and you will see the names of your local councillors and a template letter (that you can alter if you wish) that will be sent to them automatically. Asking sitting councillors to sign the Pledge for Palestine will help to identify target seats in which councillors who do not support divestment could be replaced with those who do. Further information and the action page are available here:
https://mailchi.mp/palestinecampaign/nov2025lobby-4931105?e=27bd721334

Stop FANUC: Together let’s end the Japanese company’s complicity in Israel’s genocide, apartheid and military occupation
Source: Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement
Date: December 2025
The BDS Movement has launched a new campaign against FANUC. FANUC has an office in the UK.FANUC is a Japanese-owned company which manufacturers robots used by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. FANUC robots are crucial in the manufacturing of 155mm shells, the ammunition most commonly used by Israel in its genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and its systematic destruction of Gaza. These weapons are also used by Israel in its aggression and massacres elsewhere. 155mm shells are one of the world’s most indiscriminate lethal weapons, exploding into two thousand pieces of shrapnel upon impact, able to kill or injure people in a 600 meter diameter. Israel has fired hundreds of thousands of these unguided shells into Gaza.Full information:
https://bdsmovement.net/stop-fanuc

Change.org petition:
https://www.change.org/p/fanuc-stop-selling-robots-to-make-israeli-weapons-stopfanucnow

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).”

Write to your MP: Support Divestment from Israeli Apartheid
Write to your MP to demand they support Amendment 2 to the Pensions Scheme Bill which would direct pension funds to end investments that contribute to grave violations of international law. PSC’s research has found that Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds, administered by local councils, invest £12.2billion+ in companies with proven involvement in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. Local divestment campaigns are active across Britain, and are achieving significant gains, with 23 local councils having passed a motion or issued a statement to support divestment.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/support-divestment

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UKPALMHN mailing 10 December

December 12, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN Solidarity Spaces
Monday 15 December and Monday 22 December at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting.

“After two long years during which use of the word ‘ceasefire’ was enough to put you at risk of losing your livelihood or political career, after resolutions calling for a ceasefire were blocked repeatedly by the US at the UN Security Council, ‘ceasefire’ has become something we are expected to be grateful for, now that ‘ceasefire’ means continued genocide.”
Selma Dabbagh, Rebranding Genocide

Israel’s genocide in the occupied Gaza Strip continues unabated despite ceasefire
Source: Amnesty International
Date: 27 November
Amnesty International states unequivocally that Israel continues to commit genocide in Gaza after the ceasefire, deliberately imposing conditions of life aimed at the physical destruction of the Palestinian population. The report highlights Israel’s ongoing obstruction of food, medical supplies, fuel, reconstruction materials, infrastructure repair and humanitarian access, which together sustain life-threatening deprivation across Gaza. It further notes that forced displacement, expansion of the “yellow line,” restrictions on return, and denial of access to investigators entrench a system designed to maintain these destructive conditions.
Press release:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/11/israels-genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza-continues-unabated-despite-ceasefire/
Official public statement:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde15/0527/2025/en/

Rebranding Genocide
Source: London Review of Books (blog)
Date: 28 November 2025
“For Palestinians, the rebranding of genocide is not an abstract debate about terminology but a lived experience of loss, displacement and deliberate destruction.”
In this personal essay, British-Palestinian writer and lawyer Selma Dabbagh argues that the term “genocide” has been cynically rebranded as “conflict” — masking ongoing atrocities and allowing the international community to normalise the destruction in Gaza. She describes repeated ceasefire violations, widespread destruction, enforced displacement, and the creeping expansion of control over Gaza as evidence that what continues is not a ceasefire but a methodical campaign of dispossession and erasure.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/november/rebranding-genocide

Israel is quietly expanding its occupation of Gaza under cover of “ceasefire”
Source: Truthout
Date: 4 December
Palestinian journalist Dalia Abu Ramadan describes how Israeli forces have been steadily shifting the so-called Yellow Line deeper into Gaza, quietly expanding the area under military control even while claiming to observe a ceasefire. She reports that residents returning to their neighbourhoods are confronted with new military fences and barricades, and that the army has bulldozed large strips of land to create additional buffer zones. These incremental incursions occur without public announcement, allowing the effective occupation line to move, while international observers focus on the ceasefire itself. Abu Ramadan, who hopes to graduate from the Islamic University in Gaza, argues that these tactics reveal a systematic effort to tighten control under the guise of reduced hostilities.
https://truthout.org/articles/israel-is-quietly-expanding-its-occupation-of-gaza-under-cover-of-ceasefire/

How Israel’s genocide in Gaza extends to digital annihilation
Source: Middle East Eye
Date: 2 December
In this opinion piece, Palestinian journalist Sujoud Awais argues that the ongoing genocide in Gaza is being extended into digital spaces through systematic erasure of archives, censorship, and information blackouts that wipe out Palestinian presence online. She describes how what is lost is not only lives and land, but also history, memory and collective identity — emphasising that digital annihilation is part of the broader campaign of dispossession. Awais, who has previously contributed to peer-reviewed publications, warns that the erasure of Palestinian digital heritage is a deliberate strategy to silence future generations as well as those living today.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-israel-genocide-gaza-extends-digital-annihilation

Pregnant women in Gaza face catastrophic scenarios
Source: The Electronic Intifada
Date: 29 November 2025
By Farah Samer Zaina, a writer, translator and English lecturer from northern Gaza.
The article describes how pregnant women in Gaza are experiencing sharply increased rates of miscarriages, neonatal deaths, premature births and congenital deformities — often after perilous journeys through conflict zones just to reach medical care. It documents how severe shortages of nutritious food, vitamins and prenatal care — alongside displacement, malnutrition and toxic exposure — are deeply endangering maternal and fetal health. The piece underscores that the crisis is structural: the ongoing war, destruction of infrastructure, lack of medical access, and dire living conditions mean pregnancy in Gaza now carries far greater risk than before.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/pregnant-women-gaza-face-catastrophic-scenarios/51072

Child amputees in Gaza use makeshift prosthetics as Israeli restrictions block medical supplies
Source: Drop Site News
Date: 25 November 2025
The article describes how children in Gaza who have lost limbs — including 10-year-old Rateb Abu Qleiq — are forced to fashion makeshift prosthetic limbs because proper prosthetics are unavailable. Rateb lost his right leg below the knee after an Israeli airstrike that also killed his mother and brother; desperate to walk again, he and his cousin used scavenged plastic sewage pipe and string to build a crude prosthetic. The piece reports that Gaza now has the world’s highest per-capita number of child amputees, with thousands in need of rehabilitation, while medical supply blockades and destruction of prosthetic-care facilities — including Hamad Hospital for Rehabilitation and Prosthetics — make recovery nearly impossible for many.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-child-amputees-makeshift-prosthetics-limbs-israeli-restrictions-hamad-hospital

Meet Sana, 7 months old, her father, journalist Yehya Subaih was murdered 5 hours after she was born, 7 May 2025
Source: Bisan Owda (a brief video with @wizard_bisan1 on Insta)
Date: 24 November
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRceUAfiovi/

Israel is threatening to demolish a popular West Bank youth football pitch
Source: Middle East Eye
Date: 5 December
No psychological relief for Palestinian children …
The article reports that an artificial-grass football pitch in the Aida refugee camp, built in 2021, has become a central space for local children — both boys and girls — to play. It notes that several girls from the camp have gone on to represent Palestine national youth football team at youth-level competitions. The threatened demolition of the pitch by Israeli authorities therefore risks undermining a vital community resource and a rare pathway for young Palestinians to engage in sport and represent their country.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-threatening-demolish-popular-west-bank-youth-football-pitch

FEATURED EVENTS

The Logic of Extermination/The Logic of Denial: An Online Symposium
Date: Sunday14 December at 6pm (UK time)
Source: The Psychosocial Foundation × Parapraxis
This full-day online symposium explores how the “logic of extermination” and the “logic of denial” operate in the context of the genocide in Gaza and other long-standing racialised violences, bringing together international scholars across three panels. It serves as a fundraiser for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, emphasising how psychological, political and historical frameworks are interwoven in mass violence.
https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/store/p/logics-of-extermination-and-denial

USA-Palestine Mental Health Network: Reading Circles Programme 2026
The USA-Palestine Mental Health Network is offering a series of facilitated reading circles in 2026, each centred on key texts exploring Palestinian experience, mental health, resistance, and structural violence. These groups provide structured collective reading and discussion spaces, with each circle running for six sessions and operating on a donation basis.
Reading circles (all groups are in English)

UK-friendly times:
Cycle 25 – Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine by Professors Lara & Stephen Sheehi. Thursdays from 15 January–19 February 2026.

Cycle 26 – Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Saturdays from 7 February–14 March 2026.

Cycle 1 – Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights by Omar Barghouti. Sundays from 11 January–15 February 2026.

Not UK-friendly times:
Group VII – Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding by Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kervorkian. Bi-weekly on Mondays from 23 February–4 May 2026.

Cycle 24 – Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Practicing Resistance in Palestine. Wednesdays from 14 January–18 February 2026.

https://mailchi.mp/c1b6e5dfc738/new-reading-circles-for-2026-48677?e=f02f8a3048

FEATURED ACTIONS

Councillor Pledge for Palestine
In the run up to local elections in May 2026, Palestine Solidarity Campaign has launched an important new initiative asking local councillors to sign a Pledge for Palestine committing to:- Uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestine people.- Stand up to Israel for its crimes of genocide and apartheid.- Ensure their council isn’t complicit – including through divesting pension funds from complicit companies.
On the action page, enter your postcode and you will see the names of your local councillors and a template letter (that you can alter if you wish) that will be sent to them automatically.
Asking sitting councillors to sign the Pledge for Palestine will help to identify target seats in which councillors who do not support divestment could be replaced with those who do.Further information and the action page is available here:
https://mailchi.mp/palestinecampaign/nov2025lobby-4931105?e=27bd721334

Eurovision – No stage for war crimes
At the time of writing, the petition has 587,000 signatures
After two years of genocide in Gaza and near-daily attacks since the ceasefire, last week Israel was confirmed for Eurovision 2026. Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia have already pulled out in protest. But for organisers to change course, more key countries must follow their lead. We need to pressure national broadcasters to withdraw right now, while this decision is fresh. We can’t let Israel whitewash its crimes with songs and sparkle while the brutal apartheid and suffering for Palestinians continues.
https://secure.avaaz.org/campaign/en/eurovision_no_for_war_crimes_loc /

Write to your MP: Sign the Early Day Motion (EDM) on cluster munitions and demand an end to contracts with Elbit Systems
Israel has used banned cluster munitions in its recent bombings of Lebanon, but our government continues to give contracts to the manufacturer of these banned bombs and allows them to operate factories in Britain. Imran Hussain MP has tabled Early Day Motion (EDM) 2376 highlighting this and demanding the government takes action. Please take two minutes to email your MP to ask them to sign EDM 2376 demanding an end to contracts with Elbit Systems and the closure of their British factories.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/clustermunitions

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).”

Write to your MP: Support Divestment from Israeli Apartheid
Write to your MP to demand they support Amendment 2 to the Pensions Scheme Bill which would direct pension funds to end investments that contribute to grave violations of international law. PSC’s research has found that Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) funds, administered by local councils, invest £12.2billion+ in companies with proven involvement in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. Local divestment campaigns are active across Britain, and are achieving significant gains, with 23 local councils having passed a motion or issued a statement to support divestment. Write to your MP to ask they support divestment from companies enabling Israeli apartheid.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/support-divestment

UKPALMHN mailing 26 November

November 29, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

National Demonstration for Palestine
Source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: Saturday 29 November from 12:00 noon to 4:30pm
Location: From Hyde Park Corner to Whitehall
End the Occupation – Stop Arming Israel – End Apartheid
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we will be marching again in London to demand an end to Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demonstration-for-palestine-29-november/

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 1 December and Monday 8 December at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to these meetings

Resolution 2803: How the UN Security Council legitimised Palestinian children’s death-worlds
Source: Lama Khouri writing in CounterPunch
Date: 24 November 2025
Lama Khouri is a member of the Palestine-Global Mental Health Network.
This article contends that United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803 did not merely fail to protect Palestinian children — it officially sanctioned their systematic destruction by endorsing a plan that entrusts Donald Trump and allied states with control over Gaza’s governance and reconstruction. It argues that through colonial, racialised frameworks the international system continues to produce a hierarchy of children’s lives, whereby Palestinian children are rendered killable while others are protected. Drawing on theorists such as Achille Mbembe and Frantz Fanon, the piece describes how the resolution transforms genocide into governance and normalises the elimination of a population.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/24/resolution-2803-how-the-un-security-council-legitimized-palestinian-childrens-death-worlds/

Palestinian civil society condemns UNSC Resolution 2803 establishing joint US–Israel illegal occupation of Gaza (Position paper)
Source: Al-Haq
Date: 20 November 2025
This position paper, authored by a coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations, presents a collective voice rejecting UNSC Resolution 2803, which they argue institutionalises foreign military and administrative control over Gaza without Palestinian consent. It contends the resolution serves as a de facto form of occupation, sidelining Palestinian self-determination and incorporating aid and reconstruction into frameworks of coercion and dispossession. The paper emphasises that Palestinian perspectives and agency are essential to any meaningful resolution, and calls on states to reject the resolution, uphold rights of return, and pursue accountability for settler-colonial violence.
https://www.alhaq.org/advocacy/26842.html

All my dreams have been erased: Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank
Source: Human Rights Watch
Date: 20 November 2025
This 105-page Human Rights Watch report analyses “Operation Iron Wall”, during which Israeli forces forcibly displaced around 32,000 Palestinians from the Jenin, Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, demolished hundreds of structures and have since barred residents from returning. It concludes that these actions constitute the war crime of forcible transfer and form part of crimes against humanity, calling on states to impose targeted sanctions, suspend arms sales and take measures to ensure accountability.
https://www.hrw.org/report/2025 /11/20/all-my-dreams-have-been-erased/israels-forced-displacement-of-palestinians-in-the

Killing fields at the food line: Israel’s siege on Gaza’s supply chainSource: Good Shepherd CollectiveDate: 20 NovemberPrices of goods in Gaza remain astronomically high, despite the illusion of a ceasefire.[…]What emerges is a precision-engineered famine. Israel controls every calorie that enters Gaza, restricts the fishing zones that might provide protein, bombs the agricultural lands that could grow vegetables, and destroys the water infrastructure necessary for food production and preparation. The result is predictable: a captive population forced to pay prices that would be considered extortionate in the world’s wealthiest nations, while living in rubble with no income, no infrastructure, and no escape
.https://thecall.ps/p/killing-fields-at-the-food-line-israels

Dr. Samah Jabr discussing Israel’s impunity when it comes to torturing and raping Palestinians
Source: Dr Samah Jabr on LinkedIn
Date: 21 November[You may need to close a pop-up window in order to see this item]
This is a short clip with Dr Jabr but the post also includes a link to the full interview (requires sign-up).
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/samah-jabr-25509883_torture-rape-activity-7397603402307768320-UYIP/

Germany is offering asylum to donkeys from Gaza. Gaza’s children? Not allowed.
Source: Opinion piece in Mondoweiss
Date: 23 November
A text book example of de-humanisation.
Germany is now taking in animals from Gaza while refusing entry to injured and sick Palestinians. The message is clear: in Germany’s hierarchy of “valuable” life, Palestinians are valued less than animals.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/11/germany-is-offering-asylum-to-donkeys-from-gaza-gazas-children-not-allowed

It is reasonable to ask Israeli academics to condemn genocide?
Source: Circulated by theSouth Africa-Palestine Mental Health Network
Date: 11 November
This document argues that Israeli academics have an ethical responsibility to publicly oppose the genocide in Gaza, noting that academic institutions often legitimise or obscure state violence through silence and selective scholarship. It challenges the idea of academic neutrality and urges scholars to adopt positions rooted in accountability, solidarity and opposition to structural harm. It highlights the limits of liberal academic discourse and calls for more direct forms of engagement aligned with justice for Palestinians.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xcyEN4CmOyyFt042ibH9epU1DZA5ewpB/view

Diary of a Young Doctor: Notes from the genocide in Gaza
Source: Goodreads
Date: 8 November 2025
We included a moving and insightful piece by Dr Ezzideen in our 29 October mailing.
Five days before 7 October 2023 a young Palestinian doctor returns to Gaza, having completed his medical studies abroad. His family gathers to celebrate his achievements and welcome him home. On 11 October seventy-five members of his extended family are killed in an airstrike, and thus begins his incredible story of survival and service to his people. […]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/242996578-diary-of-a-young-doctor

FEATURED
EVENTSThere are 15 informative and inspring events listed in the run up to Christmas:
https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

War trauma in children: Voices from Gaza and global perspectives (webinar)
Date: Friday28 November at 12:30 (UK time)
Source: Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Islam Indonesia and Palestine-Global Mental Health Network IndonesiaThis webinar examines the psychological impact of ongoing conflict on children, featuring contributions from mental health professionals working in Gaza and international experts in trauma and childhood studies. It focuses on the current mental-health crisis, evidence-based interventions in conflict zones and the role of global solidarity in supporting affected children.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdy4yIH2YLcGlot_KMxjbhy7CDOp67AqayDDZoOAsZMP5gYvA/viewform

Break the Silence: Trauma therapists talk about Gaza
Date: Saturday 29 November at 8pm
Source: EMDR Therapists for Palestine
This is an online event and it will be recorded.
Have you felt powerless, frustrated, gaslit and shut down when trying to talk about the Palestinian genocide in therapeutic spaces? Confused as to why trauma therapists want to talk about healing trauma, both collectively and intergenerationally, yet avoid mentioning Gaza? Join Gabor Maté and Palestinian friends including experienced therapists Nada Khader and Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi to explore the implications of what Maté calls “the unspeakable collective trauma that has been for decades inflicted on the people of Palestine,.. A trauma witnessed and grieved by millions around the world”. Please buy a ticket, your donations will support the recovery of children from Gaza.
https://events.humanitix.com/breaking-the-silence-trauma-therapists-talk-about-gaza

The Logic of Extermination/The Logic of Denial: An Online Symposium
Date: Sunday14 December at 6pm (UK time)
Source: The Psychosocial Foundation × Parapraxis
This full-day online symposium explores how the “logic of extermination” and the “logic of denial” operate in the context of the genocide in Gaza and other long-standing racialised violences, bringing together international scholars across three panels. It serves as a fundraiser for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, emphasising how psychological, political and historical frameworks are interwoven in mass violence.
https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/store/p/logics-of-extermination-and-denial

FEATURED ACTION
For all actions see: https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

A call to action: Please sign the Open Letter to Thomas Hübl and The Collective Trauma Summit calling on the wellness world to end the silence on genocide in Palestine
This call to action urges people to sign an Open Letter addressed to Thomas Hübl and the organisers of the Collective Trauma Summit, challenging the wellness and therapeutic sectors to end their ongoing silence on the genocide in Palestine. Although the Summit ended in October 2025 and the original submission window has formally closed, signatures are still being collected, including from contributors and others within wellness institutions, to maintain public pressure and accountability. The letter has already been signed by more than 500 individuals, including prominent figures such as Dr Gabor Maté, and is continuing to circulate widely (it has been viewed over 16,500 times), generating behind-the-scenes conversations within wellness networks. Organisers emphasise that all are welcome to sign and share the letter, particularly those in mental health and wellness professions, to amplify its impact and keep the issue visible.Full details about this action can be found here:
https://ukpalmhn.com/resources/open-letter-to-thomas-hubl-and-the-collective-trauma-summit-november-2025/
The Open Letter can be found here:
https://www.change.org/p/open-letter-to-thomas-h%C3%BCbl-and-the-collective-trauma-summit-2025-03441627-5434-449a-9f6d-36c08dcd40fb

UKPALMHN mailing 19 November

November 20, 2025November 25, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 24 November at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting.

National Demonstration for PalestineSource:
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: Saturday 29 November from 12:00 noon to 4:30pm
Location: From Park Lane to Whitehall
End the Occupation – Stop Arming Israel – End Apartheid
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we will be marching again in London to demand an end to Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians
.https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demonstration-for-palestine-29-november/

Fatina was 11 when the bomb ripped through her shelter …
Source: Adam Goren, a psychoanalytically trained child and adolescent psychotherapist
Date: 17 November
In this short essay, child psychotherapist Adam Goren suggests Palestine exposes a dark and troubling irony; that broken greed-driven societies create the very distress they then deploy therapy to alleviate. The experience of Palestinian healer Ashira Darwish is drawn on to show how brown and black bodies are isolated and targeted for remediation as part of a gargantuan (largely unconscious) gaslighting project. In centring personal pain, western psychotherapies and other such interventions inadvertently distract from root causes of distress in a whole people’s, often deliberate, brutalisation and dehumanisation. Such broken societies, bent on capital accumulation, create psychological-industrial-complexes that monetise their own misery. Nevertheless, as 11-year-old Fatina and her mental health worker from Gaza illuminate, Palestinians are finding their own solutions to the unimaginable horror inflicted upon them.
https://ukpalmhn.com/resources/fatina/

On professional silence during genocide: The 2025 Sigourney Award
Source: Palestine-Global Mental Health Network writing in CounterPunch
Date: 18 November
This article exposes how the Sigourney Award—celebrating trauma-expertise—has never honoured a Palestinian professional in 35 years, even while genocide is occurring in Gaza and Palestinian mental-health workers are active on the ground. It highlights the complicity of institutions in erasing Palestinian suffering and mentions that the International Collective of Palestine Mental Health Networks will continue centring Palestinian voices and resisting frameworks that treat them only as subjects of study, not as agents of healing.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/11/18/on-professional-silence-during-genocide-the-2025-sigourney-award/

Torture and health worker complicity in Israeli detention sites
Source: The British Medical Journal
Date: 11 November
This article reports that Palestinian detainees continue to face systematic torture and degrading treatment in Israeli custody, including in facilities such as Sde Teiman, and raises concerns about the role of Israeli health workers who document or witness abuse without intervening. It calls for robust international scrutiny and emphasises the ethical obligation of medical professionals to prevent harm, uphold human rights standards and resist institutional complicity.
https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2347

Freed Palestinian child prisoners recount torture in Israeli custody
Source: Middle East Eye
Date: 15 November
In interviews conducted by the NGO Defense for Children Palestine (DCIP), three children describe how they were abducted by Israeli forces near aid distribution points and transferred to the notorious Sde Teiman detention camp in southern Israel. They said they endured torture, beatings and starvation in Israeli custody. The trauma has left them unable to sleep, and they are plagued by night terrors and bed wetting.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/prison-inside-me-freed-palestinian-child-prisoners-recount-torture-israeli-custody

Israel punishes a rape whistleblower but embraces the alleged rapist soldiers
Source: Zeteo
Date: 18 November
The article reports that Yifat Tomer‑Yerushalmi, the former military advocate who leaked footage of alleged rape by Israeli soldiers at Sde Teiman prison camp, is now facing retaliation while the accused soldiers are being publicly celebrated. It argues that the mainstream media remains largely silent as state-backed officials reframe whistle-blowing as defamation and the victims’ truth is suppressed.
https://zeteo.com/p/israel-punishes-rape-whistleblower-embraces-soldiers

“I’m happy and sad to see you”: the paradox of surviving the Gaza genocide
Source: Mondoweiss
Date: 26 October
This opinion piece by Dr Hassan El-Nabih reflects on a moment in the enclave of Gaza where a former student told him, “I’m happy to see you … and also sad to see you,” capturing the dual emotions of survival amidst devastation. He explains how Gaza’s academic life, languishing under siege and bombardment, has become a testament to resilience—not only of bodies, but of education, memory and resistance.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/im-happy-and-sad-to-see-you-the-paradox-of-surviving-the-gaza-genocide/

Tents in Gaza collapse from rain as Palestinians struggle with massive flooding
Source: Drop-Site News
Date: 14 November
The article documents how displaced Palestinians in Gaza — many living in tents following the war — are now facing heavy winter rains and flooding, underscoring that trauma and precarious living conditions persist long after the ceasefire. It highlights how shelters are flooding, children’s belongings are ruined, and aid continues to be restricted, emphasising that the suffering in Gaza has not ended.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-rain-flooding-tents-winter-storms-displaced-shelter

Reading the crisis: “For Edward Said” with Brenna Bhandar and Hashem Abushama
Source: Stuart Hall Foundation
Date: 9 November
This online teach-in revisits Edward Said through Stuart Hall’s 2004 open letter “For Edward Said”, exploring its relevance for current debates on the Israel–Palestine system and academic discourse. The session examines how Said’s critiques of Orientalism and intellectual responsibility intersect with Hall’s conjunctural analysis to offer tools for rethinking colonial power, representation and resistance today.
https://www.stuarthallfoundation.org/resource/reading-the-crisis-for-edward-said-with-brenna-bhandar-and-hashem-abushama/

What happened to the Palestinian popular struggle?
Source: +972 podcast
Date: 6 November
In the occupied West Bank today, life looks completely different than it did just two years ago — with unprecedented levels of state-backed settler violence, arbitrary arrests, new road closures, and mounting economic pressure. But resistance, too, is changing. Veteran activist Munther Amira connects this moment to earlier chapters of the Palestinian struggle and reflects on what it means to keep resisting when survival itself has become the fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpo-8Jacu6s

Recording of UKPMHN Cafe Palestine 38
The UKPMHN Cafe Palestine 38 – The normalisation of Genocide and Ecocide – took place on Saturday 15 November 2025. The meeting reflected on a world that sponsors genocide, and indulges a cynical disregard for the ecological disasters that have been unleashed on Gaza and which threaten further mass death, particularly in the global South. The speakers were:
Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh, a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University;
Prof Paul Hoggett, a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. He co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance and served as its first chair in 2012.
https://youtu.be/bY16uQiRFXs
This and all previous UKPMHN Cafe Palestines can be found at:
https://ukpalmhn.com/cafe-palestine/cafe-palestine-index/

FEATURED EVENTS
There are 15 informative and inspring events listed in the run up to Christmas:
https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

Gaza: Reprocide and the weaponisation of starvation (webinar)
Date: Sunday 23 November at 6pm (UK time)
Source: JVP Health Advisory Council and Harvard FXB Center (in conjunction with the USA-Palestine Mental Health Network)
This webinar examines how starvation is deployed as a tool of war in Gaza, featuring Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar and physician-advocate Dr Alice Rothchild. It situates their testimony within broader discussions on reproductive violence, military policy and humanitarian ethics.
Lt. Col. Anthony Aguilar is a West Point graduate and 25 year special forces veteran. Col. Aguilar joined the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation but quit after witnessing war crimes including the shooting of unarmed Gazans at food distribution centers. He has devoted his time since as a whistleblower.
https://www.jvphealth.org/events/sunday-november-23-2025-jvp-hac-webinar-reprocide-and-the-weaponization-of-starvation

War trauma in children: Voices from Gaza and global perspectives (webinar)
Date: Friday28 November at 12:30 (UK time)
Source: Faculty of Psychology, Universitas Islam Indonesia and Palestine-Global Mental Health Network Indonesia
This webinar examines the psychological impact of ongoing conflict on children, featuring contributions from mental health professionals working in Gaza and international experts in trauma and childhood studies. It focuses on the current mental-health crisis, evidence-based interventions in conflict zones and the role of global solidarity in supporting affected children.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdy4yIH2YLcGlot_KMxjbhy7CDOp67AqayDDZoOAsZMP5gYvA/viewform

Break the Silence: Trauma therapists talk about Gaza
Date: Saturday 29 November at 8pm
Source: EMDR Therapists for Palestine
This is an online event and it will be recorded.
Have you felt powerless, frustrated, gaslit and shut down when trying to talk about the Palestinian genocide in therapeutic spaces? Confused as to why trauma therapists want to talk about healing trauma, both collectively and intergenerationally, yet avoid mentioning Gaza? Join Gabor Maté and Palestinian friends including experienced therapists Nada Khader and Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi to explore the implications of what Maté calls “the unspeakable collective trauma that has been for decades inflicted on the people of Palestine,.. A trauma witnessed and grieved by millions around the world”. Please buy a ticket, your donations will support the recovery of children from Gaza.
https://events.humanitix.com/breaking -the-silence-trauma-therapists-talk-about-gaza

The Logic of Extermination/The Logic of Denial: An Online Symposium
Date: Sunday14 December at 6pm (UK time)
Source: The Psychosocial Foundation × Parapraxis
This full-day online symposium explores how the “logic of extermination” and the “logic of denial” operate in the context of the genocide in Gaza and other long-standing racialised violences, bringing together international scholars across three panels. It serves as a fundraiser for the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme, emphasising how psychological, political and historical frameworks are interwoven in mass violence.
https://www.thepsychosocialfoundation.org/store/p/logics-of-extermination-and-denial

FEATURED ACTION
For all actions see: https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

Tell your Councillors: Divest from Companies Enabling Israel’s Genocide
Source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: November 2025
E-mail your councillors today to demand that the council ends its financial ties to companies complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. PSC has sent a legal notice to every council in England & Wales administering a Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) fund, outlining that they are under a legal obligation to take steps to divest from companies enabling and profiting from Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org .uk/divestmentduty

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).”

People’s Embargo for Palestine webinar launch
Date: Saturday22 November at 6pm (UK time)
Source: Palestinian Youth Movement
This webinar launches the People’s Embargo for Palestine and provides updates on the #MaskOffMaersk campaign and coordinated international efforts to halt the flow of arms and energy to Israel. Speakers from unions and organisations across several countries will discuss strategies for building pressure on governments, corporations and institutions to end complicity in the assault on Palestinians.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQ7U_JykS7z/

UKPALMHN mailing 12 November

November 13, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

Cafe Palestine: The normalisation of genocide and ecocide
Saturday 15 November from 4pm – 6pm (UK) / 6pm – 8pm (Palestine)
At this Cafe Palestine we reflect on a world that sponsors genocide, and indulges a cynical disregard for the ecological disasters that have been unleashed on Gaza and which threaten further mass death, particularly in the global South.
Speakers:Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books.
Prof Paul Hoggett is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His research spans social policy, community life, and the emotional dynamics of politics, with notable expertise in the intersection of psychoanalysis, group relations, and social systems. He co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance and served as its first chair in 2012.
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86208116892?pwd=Pz6ne1TazWleakZUVcBPfJaC1DQl3f.1

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 17 November at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please write to ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting.

National Demonstration for Palestine
Source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: Saturday 29 November from 12:00 noon to 4:30pm
Location: From Park Lane to Whitehall
End the Occupation – Stop Arming Israel – End Apartheid
On the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, we will be marching again in London to demand an end to Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
https://palestinecampaign.org/events/national-demonstration-for-palestine-29-november/

Nasser Abu Srour: Life, literature, and the struggle of Palestinian prisoners
Source: Palestine Will Be Free
Date: 9 November
Nasser Abu Srour, a poet and novelist from Bethlehem, was released and exiled to Egypt last month after thirty-three years in Israeli prisons. His account of endurance, education, and creativity under severe confinement highlights the systematic brutality faced by Palestinian detainees and the resilience of their cultural life.
https://palestinewillbefree.substack.com/p/nasser-abu-srour-life-literature-struggle-palestinian-prisoners

Palestine Mental Health Networks Statement about Sudan
Source: The International Collective of the Palestine Mental Health Networks(which includes the UK Network)
Date: 12 November
The international collective of the Palestine Mental Health Networks, including UK-Palestine-Mental Health Network, write from a place of rage and grief. For nearly two years, Sudan has endured systematic violence while the international community has chosen deliberate abandonment. Over twenty-one million people face famine. October marked the deadliest month for civilians since the war began. More than half of the internally displaced are children. This is not neglect. It is active, calculated choice. […]
https://ukpalmhn.com/resources/sudan-statement-november-2025/

Purging Palestinian Solidarity from the NHS
The UK-Palestine Mental Health Network has signed the following open letter. (The letter is open to signature by organisations rather than individuals.)
Government press release indicates anti-Palestinian racism to become official policy, while worsening antisemitism in health care.
The 16 October 2025 press release, “Government takes urgent action to tackle antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS” issued by the Department of Health and Social Care, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is deeply concerning: it is a threat to equality, human rights and the mental well-being of the 1.5 million workers in the NHS. Not content with its ongoing political, diplomatic and military support for Israel, and its widespread repression of pro-Palestine protest, the government now seeks to entirely outlaw expression of support for Palestine within the NHS, with a series of divisive and authoritarian measures.[…]
https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1OXrblm6kFDZS7CVb_7gy07JM2TQmFRxB/mobilebasic

Updated Statements from Dajani and Rozmarin
Speaking of Home: An Intimate Exchange on Israel-Palestine is a filmed hour-long conversation between psychoanalysts Eyal Rozmarin (Israeli) and Karim Dajani (Palestinian), moderated by an organisation called ROOM. The two psychoanalysts (both resident in the USA) engage in a powerful and tender conversation showing how unconscious process underlies political-cultural realities and individual misunderstandings. It was recorded on 14 July 2024
https://analytic-room.com/speakingofhome/
In September 2025, the British Psychotherapy Foundation arranged an online discussion of the film for their members. Dajani and Rozmarin were asked if they might wish to contribute their current thoughts since the original conversation was filmed in July 2024. Both provided statements that were much appreciated in the discussion, and have kindly agreed to make these freely available.

Eyal’s Statement:
Karim and I taped this conversation last summer. It made sense for us to engage in it, because we could each place ourselves in relation to each other and at the same time to a sense of belonging – even if, in my case, a deeply ambivalent belonging – with some collectivity: for him Palestinian, for me Jewish-Israeli, and speak from there.
The situation was already beyond horrifying. It has gotten exponentially worse since then. We would not have the same conversation today. Because if it has been debatable before, it is no longer – Israel is perpetrating a premeditated, organized genocide on the Palestinian people, and the so called civilized world is either supporting it, or standing by. They did not bomb the railroads to Auschwitz, and they are not bombing the runways from which the American made, Israeli manned extermination machines have been taking off for two years.
My identity as an Israeli-Jew has become lethal. Whatever sense of belonging I have had, is being destroyed together with Gaza. The Israeli part is a black hole, the Jewish part wonders if it could be rescued from the Israeli, or whether it has already been destroyed by it. What I have, is a clear knowledge of the absolute evil being perpetrated in my name.
Karim and I talk regularly, but now it is mostly about keeping each other sane vis-a-vis the insane violence and lies and indifference. We are also trying to understand how something like this can happen, again. There has been a great deal of thinking after the Nazis, but now we have industrial mass-murder being declared and executed live. We can see what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” played out on TV and on social media. We can see in real time a collective going mad. I am now attached to the worst kind of crime in the dictionary of human civilization, forever. I don’t know yet what to say from that place.
Except this: we must stop the extermination by any means, we must rescue as many people and as much Palestinian heritage as possible, and we must work towards different kinds of belonging and political organisation in Palestine.

Karim’s Statement:
Thank you for writing to me and offering an opportunity to address the audience. I would like to make three brief and condensed points for consideration.The first is that the film is an attempt at a dialogue between two individuals. We do speak about our collectives but we are speaking as individuals. We cannot dialogue as representatives of our respective collectives for many reasons. The most important is that the Israeli collective is in control of everything and the Palestinian collective is being oppressed and erased by all available means. The asymmetry in the positions between the two large groups makes dialogue impossible. Furthermore, in a dialogue between individuals, if it is sincere, the positions articulated change because learning something new requires loosening existing conceptual frames.
Nothing new has really emerged between the two large groups. We are in a new phase now. The genocide is on-going, and the suppression of any efforts to stop it by western governments has reached a level that can best be described as evil. All people of conscience should demand humane and sane actions from their governments and institutions. How many more children must starve?
As psychoanalysts, there are two pressing issues that I suggest we try to address within our groups and as a social phenomena of great analytic interest.
The first is how do we understand the lack of empathy in the Israeli collective towards the murder of children, and the displacement of millions of people. How is it that 82% of the Israeli collective supports the Genocide in Gaza. How do we understand that?
The second, is the way our institutions, particularly the IPA, has suppressed any mention of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and any effort to speak about it honestly. How do we understand that? If we fail as a group to even mention the reality of the genocide and suppress all avenues of inquiry into its psycho-social determinants then we must ask ourselves the questions: who are we serving and what are we working towards?

FEATURED EVENT
For all events see: https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

Effective Mental Health Interventions in Humanitarian Settings
Source: Colombia Global
Date: Monday 17 November at 3:00 pm
Mental health is a critical yet often under-resourced priority in humanitarian settings. As crises and displacement intensify, the psychological toll on affected communities grows deeper and more complex, eroding the foundations of individual well-being and human dignity. […]
https://globalcenters.columbia.edu/events/effective-mental-health-interventions-humanitarian-settings

Break the Silence: Trauma therapists talk about Gaza
Source: EMDR Therapists for Palestine
Date: Saturday 29 November at 8pm
This is an online event and it will be recorded.
Have you felt powerless, frustrated, gaslit and shut down when trying to talk about the Palestinian genocide in therapeutic spaces? Confused as to why trauma therapists want to talk about healing trauma, both collectively and intergenerationally, yet avoid mentioning Gaza? Join Gabor Maté and Palestinian friends including experienced therapists Nada Khader and Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi to explore the implications of what Maté calls “the unspeakable collective trauma that has been for decades inflicted on the people of Palestine,.. A trauma witnessed and grieved by millions around the world”. Please buy a ticket, your donations will support the recovery of children from Gaza.
https://events.humanitix.com/breaking-the-silence-trauma-therapists-talk-about-gaza

FEATURED ACTION
For all actions see: https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

Tell your Councillors: Divest from Companies Enabling Israel’s Genocide
Source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: November 2025E-mail your councillors today to demand that the council ends its financial ties to companies complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians.PSC has sent a legal notice to every council in England & Wales administering a Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) fund, outlining that they are under a legal obligation to take steps to divest from companies enabling and profiting from Israel’s genocide, military occupation and apartheid against Palestinians.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/divestmentduty

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).”

Netherlands pushes ahead to ban imports from illegal Israeli Jewish settlements
Source: Palestine Chronicle
Date: 10 November
The Netherlands is advancing legislation to prohibit imports from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, citing escalating settler violence and threats to a two-state solution. Foreign Minister David van Weel said the move follows the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel’s occupation is illegal and aligns with actions already taken by several EU states. The measure, though limited by EU trade law, reflects growing European pressure for accountability over Israel’s human rights violations in the West Bank and Gaza.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/netherlands-pushes-ahead-to-ban-imports-from-illegal-israeli-jewish-settlements-report/

UKPALMHN mailing 5 November

November 6, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 10 November at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please write to ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting,

Mental Health Conference for Palestine: Living through the Unimaginable
Source: Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine
Date: Saturday 8 November from 9:30am – 4:30pm
Location: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Speakers: Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, Dr Yoa’d Ghanadry-Hakim, Martin Kemp
This is a hybrid (in-person/online) event but seating is limited, so advanced booking is recommended.
Join us for a day dedicated to updating on the present situation, bringing together professionals working in Palestine and allied Mental Health groups in the UK organising around Palestine. The conference is aimed at all mental health professionals who want to make an ethical response to the destruction of ordinary human life in Palestine and spearhead a collective mental health response.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-health-conference-for-palestine-living-through-the-unimaginable-tickets-1744401304259

Cafe Palestine: The normalisation of genocide and ecocideSaturday 15 November from 4pm – 6pm (UK time)
At this Cafe Palestine we reflect on a world that sponsors genocide, and indulges a cynical disregard for the ecological disasters that have been unleashed on Gaza and which threaten further mass death, particularly in the global South.
Speakers:
Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books.
Prof Paul Hoggett is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His research spans social policy, community life, and the emotional dynamics of politics, with notable expertise in the intersection of psychoanalysis, group relations, and social systems. He co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance and served as its first chair in 2012.
Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86208116892?pwd=Pz6ne1TazWleakZUVcBPfJaC1DQl3f.1

Torture Journal: Special issue on Israel and Occupied Palestine
Source: Torture Journal (open access)
Publisher: International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims
Date: 15 October
This double issue presents one of the most extensive academic and field-based examinations of genocide and torture in Israel and Occupied Palestine, exposing how systematic violence and dehumanisation have become integral to Israeli state policy. The articles document genocidal torture and exterminatory violence in Gaza, including first-hand testimonies, analyses of starvation and sexualised abuse as tools of domination, and the targeting of children and medical personnel. Legal and psychological studies trace the colonial and apartheid structures that institutionalise arbitrary detention and collective punishment, framing these as mechanisms of genocide and social control. Collectively, the issue demonstrates how Israel’s prolonged occupation and warfare constitute a coordinated system of torture and annihilation sustained through law, ideology, and international complicity.
https://tidsskrift.dk/torture-journal/issue/view/12453

Silenced there, silenced here: How NHS medics are being punished for speaking the truth about Gaza
Source: Substack (Omar Abdel-Mannan)
Date: 28 October
Omar Abdel-Mannan describes how UK doctors who speak publicly about Israel’s assault on Gaza face complaints, investigations, and even arrests, reflecting a growing campaign to intimidate medical professionals into silence. He contrasts the physical silencing of Gaza’s health workers under bombardment with the bureaucratic and political suppression of their British colleagues, arguing that both aim to erase testimony about atrocities. The piece warns that this climate of fear is corroding medical ethics itself, replacing compassion and truth-telling with complicity and self-censorship.
https://substack.com/inbox/post/177413418

Civic needs assessment of Palestinians in the UK
Source: British Palestinian Committee (38 page report)
Date: 30 October
The report identifies mental health as one of the most urgent needs of Palestinians in the UK, with nearly 80 percent reporting high levels of anxiety and distress since October 2023. It finds that British mental health services are often culturally and politically ill-equipped—patients encounter hostility, long waits, and therapists who misunderstand or pathologise their collective trauma, which is inseparable from ongoing violence and displacement in Palestine. The study calls for Arabic-speaking, trauma-informed professionals familiar with the political context of Palestinian suffering, and for community-based, peer and online support networks to provide safe, empathetic spaces for healing.
https://britpalcommittee.co.uk/civicneedsassessment

Therapy for Palestine UK
Source: EMDR Therapists for Palestine
Date: November 2025
(EMDR = Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing)
Therapy for Palestine UK is a growing network of clinicians offering pro bono, trauma-informed therapy for Palestinians in the UK. We provide safe, affirming, and culturally grounded support, recognising that Palestinian trauma stems from war, genocide, displacement, and decades of oppression and denial of statehood. Our service is open to all Palestinians living in the UK, and we extend our welcome to all the students recently arrived from Gaza. […]
Follow the link below for:
• Further information about Therapy for Palestine UK
• Invitation to Palestinians in the UK seeking mental health support (in English and Arabic)
https://ukpalmhn.com/emdr-therapists-for-palestine/therapy-for-palestine-uk/

“Antisemitism in medicine: As Wes Streeting vows sweeping changes, how did we get here?”
Source: British Medical Journal – Rapid Response letter
Date: 15 October
A “Rapid Response” letter written by Fareed Bashir, a member of UK-Palestine Mental Health Network Steering Group, to the BMJ concerning the article called Antisemitism in medicine: As Wes Streeting vows sweeping changes, how did we get here?The letter condemns UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting for weaponising antisemitism to silence doctors speaking about Israel’s genocidal crimes in Palestine, arguing that such tactics align him with Netanyahu’s regime and contribute to the ongoing extermination of Palestinians.
https://www.bmj.com/content/391/bmj.r2140/rr-4

Palestinians in Gaza struggle to retrieve their dead with little more than hammers
Source: Drop Site
Date: 21 October
Abdel Qader Sabbah reports from Gaza on families desperately digging through rubble by hand to recover the bodies of thousands of loved ones killed and left unretrieved due to Israel’s blockade on rescue equipment. Through testimonies from grieving mothers and survivors, the article exposes how Israel’s destruction, mass killings, and torture of detainees—combined with international indifference—have created a landscape where the dead are desecrated and the living endure unrelenting psychological torment.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/palestinians-gaza-bodies-buried-rubble-missing-ghf-israeli-captives-prison

Over 3 million life-years lost in Gaza
Source: The Lancet Correspondence (from Sammy Zahrana and Ghassan Abu-Sittah)
Date: 31 October
A statistical analysis of Gaza’s Health Ministry data estimates that as of July 31, 2025, Israel’s assault has caused over 3 million life-years lost among 60,199 recorded deaths—an average of 51 years per person—showing that the overwhelming loss falls on civilians, including more than one million life-years lost among children under 15.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)02112-9/fulltext

A torturous sanitation disaster is unfolding in Gaza’s displacement camps
Source: Truthout
Date: 25 October
Sara Awad describes the unbearable living conditions in Gaza’s displacement camps, where open sewage, scarce water, and the absence of toilets have created a deadly sanitation crisis for families surviving in tents after Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. Speaking from within the camps, she portrays this as a form of ongoing, silent torture—an assault on dignity and health that continues even after the bombs have stopped.
https://truthout.org/articles/a-torturous-sanitation-disaster-is-unfolding-in-gazas-displacement-camps/

There is no peace in Gaza
Source: The New Yorker (elements of a recent essay are reproduced on the Dutch Palestine Solidarity website)
Date: 24 October
Palestinian poet and essayist Mosab Abu Toha won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for essays published in The New Yorker chronicling life in Gaza.Poet Mosab Abu Toha recounts his family’s repeated displacement, the killing of his relatives, and the torture endured by those detained in Israeli prisons, describing how personal grief and hope coexist amid Gaza’s devastation. His narrative follows the release of relatives from Israeli detention, their brutal treatment, and the hollow relief of reunion in tents surrounded by ruin. Even from exile in the United States, Abu Toha portrays the anguish of watching loved ones live and die under bombardment, revealing how the so-called ceasefire has brought neither safety nor peace to those he loves.
https://palestina-komitee.nl/there-is-no-peace-in-gaza/

FEATURED EVENT
For all events see: https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

Break the Silence: Trauma therapists talk about Gaza
Source: EMDR Therapists for Palestine
Date: Saturday 29 November at 8pm
This is an online event and it will be recorded.
Have you felt powerless, frustrated, gaslit and shut down when trying to talk about the Palestinian genocide in therapeutic spaces? Confused as to why trauma therapists want to talk about healing trauma, both collectively and intergenerationally, yet avoid mentioning Gaza? Join Gabor Maté and Palestinian friends including experienced therapists Nada Khader and Heba Zaphiriou-Zarifi to explore the implications of what Maté calls “the unspeakable collective trauma that has been for decades inflicted on the people of Palestine,.. A trauma witnessed and grieved by millions around the world”. Please buy a ticket, your donations will support the recovery of children from Gaza.
https://events.humanitix.com/breaking-the-silence-trauma-therapists-talk-about-gaza

FEATURED ACTION
For all actions see: https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

Gaza: Keep the conversation going (a Pledge to have a conversation about Gaza)
Source: Oxfam UK
Date: November 2025
If we act together, we can keep the world’s focus on Gaza – and increase the pressure on the UK government to take meaningful action. A simple and powerful thing each of us can do right now is talk to the people closest to us about what’s going on. Will you pledge to talk to someone you know about Gaza, to keep the situation in people’s hearts and minds?
https://survey.alchemer.eu/s3/90920406/Gaza-Conversation-Pledge

UKPALMHN mailing 29 October

October 29, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN mailing 22 October

October 22, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 27 October at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting.

Mental Health Conference for Palestine: Living through the Unimaginable
Source: Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine
Date: Saturday 8 November from 9:30am – 4:30pm
Location: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Speakers: Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, Dr Yoa’d Ghanadry-Hakim, Gwyn Daniel, Martin Kemp
This is a hybrid (in-person/online) event but seating is limited, so advanced booking is recommended.
Join us for a day dedicated to updating on the present situation, bringing together professionals working in Palestine and allied Mental Health groups in the UK organising around Palestine. The conference is aimed at all mental health professionals who want to make an ethical response to the destruction of ordinary human life in Palestine and spearhead a collective mental health response.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-health-conference-for-palestine-living-through-the-unimaginable-tickets-1744401304259

Cafe Palestine: The normalisation of genocide and ecocide
Saturday 15 November from 4pm – 6pm (UK time)
At this Cafe Palestine we reflect on a world that sponsors genocide, and indulges a cynical disregard for the ecological disasters that have been unleashed on Gaza and which threaten further mass death, particularly in the global South.
Speakers: Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books.
Prof Paul Hoggett is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. His research spans social policy, community life, and the emotional dynamics of politics, with notable expertise in the intersection of psychoanalysis, group relations, and social systems. He co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance and served as its first chair in 2012.
A Zoom link to the meeting will be included in a future mailing.

The psychological impact is huge
Source: Al Jazeera English (video clip)
Date: 14 October
Dr Samah Jabr, a consultant psychiatrist, says that for Palestinians in Gaza, the trauma of Israel’s war doesn’t end with a ceasefire, but is something they’ll keep living with.
https://www.facebook.com /reel/798548789488997

Returning to Shujaiya: Palestinians are going back to Gaza City despite proximity of Israeli troops
Source: Drop Site News
Date: 17 October
A report including interviews with several Palestinians who have returned.
After the ceasefire, thousands of Palestinians have returned to Gaza City’s shattered Shujaiya neighbourhood, even though parts of it remain within an Israeli military “yellow line” zone. Families are rebuilding makeshift shelters amid total devastation, famine, and continued air surveillance, determined to reclaim their homes and dignity despite lethal warnings from Israeli forces. Many have lost relatives, livelihoods, and basic necessities, yet speak of steadfastness and belonging to the land that holds their memories. Aid restrictions and an immense volume of rubble—enough to fill New York’s Central Park twelve metres deep—continue to hinder recovery and the retrieval of the dead.
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p /shujaiya-palestinians-return-gaza-city-yellow-line

Five Gaza journalists reflect on the toll of the genocide
Source: Drop Site News
Date: 10 October
“I have mixed feelings of happiness and sadness because when the war ends, another struggle will begin—an internal war. Our wounds will reopen, and we will have time to grieve our beloved ones, to give sadness the time it needs. We may have survived physically, but we haven’t survived mentally. This genocide lives inside us. It swallowed our loved ones, our youth, our dreams. I think this genocide will stay living inside us forever in our minds”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-journalists-reflect-ceasefire-genocide

Soaked in Blood: The Killing Of Ameen Sameer Khalifa
Source: Middle East Eye (40 minute video report)
Date: 17 October
On 3 June 2025, Ameen set out to one of GHF distribution centres in southern Gaza trying to feed his displaced family. This is a deeply moving story of the life and death of one of the many martyrs killed at Israeli controlled aid centres. It uses first person and third person phone footage, interviews with family and friends, and a detailed investigation of the evidence carried out by Forensic Architecture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qz3xV6FSQU

“All kinds of torment” – Released Al-Awda Hospital director details Israeli abuse of doctors in detention
Source: The Palestine Chronicle
Date: 18 October
Dr Ahmed Muhanna, director of Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, described nearly two years of detention by Israeli forces marked by torture, humiliation, and deliberate targeting of medical staff. He reported that detainees, including doctors and nurses, were shackled for long hours in harsh conditions, denied healthcare, and beaten, prompting him to establish a small improvised treatment unit inside the prison.
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/all-kinds-of-torment-released-al-awda-hospital-director-details-israeli-abuse-of-doctors-in-detention/

Brutal, coordinated attack on first day of olive harvest in the West Bank
Source: Jasper Nathaniel on X
Date: 19 October
A well documented report of the attack (with video and interview)
On Sunday, the first day of the olive harvest in the village of Turmus’ayyer, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, a group of Israeli settlers attacked Palestinians farmers and residents in a brutal assault that left many people injured, including a Palestinian women who was knocked unconscious with a club. The incident was captured on video by journalist Jasper Nathaniel who said Israeli soldiers in the area led a group of Palestinian famers “directly into a brutal ambush by armed settlers.”
Report on X:
https://x.com/infinite_jaz/status/1979854674401341451
Drop Site interview with Jasper Nathaniel about the incident:
https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/1980006981374238851

A War Without Bullets: How disinformation reshapes the reality of Palestinian youth against the backdrop of a genocide
Source: 7amleh – The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media
Date: 15 October
This new 33-page report analyses how Israel’s digital disinformation campaign—through AI-generated content, propaganda, fake accounts, and algorithmic manipulation—has reshaped the consciousness of Palestinians, especially young people. False narratives about “safe zones” and “humanitarian corridors” have endangered civilians, while constant exposure to manipulated media has damaged youth’s psychological wellbeing, deepening fear, confusion, and mistrust in institutions. Disinformation, it argues, functions as a weapon that attacks awareness before the body, stripping Palestinian youth of epistemic justice and silencing their voices in global media spaces.
https://7amleh.org/post/a-war-without-bullets-en
Related news:
Influencers are being paid $7k per post to boost pro-Israel social media content
Source: Truthout
Date: 4 October
https://truthout.org/articles/influencers-are-being-paid-7k-per-post-to-boost-pro-israel-social-media-content/

Complicit: Britain’s role in the destruction of Gaza (new book)
Author: Peter Oborne
Publication date: October 2025
A hard-hitting investigation arguing that successive Conservative and Labour governments, aided by a compliant media, supported and concealed Israel’s assault on Gaza. Drawing on insider knowledge and original reporting, Oborne exposes how political and journalistic elites misled the public, vilified peaceful protest, and evaded accountability for Britain’s role in the devastation.
https://orbooks.com/catalog/complicit/

Support for Palestinian Students to Study Abroad
Support for Palestinian Students to Study Abroad (SPSSA) has been organised by collaborators in the UK, Germany and France, working directly with colleges, universities and the relevant bodies granting visas. This fundraiser has been established to provide direct support to Palestinian students in Gaza and to raise funds required to evacuate eligible individuals to study at colleges and universities across Europe.
https://chuffed.org/project/152090-support-for-palestinian-students-to-study-abroad-spssa

Beyond Israelism
Source: Zeteo (podcast)
Date: 19 October
“A new series on Zionism, Jewish Identity and Palestinian Freedom”
Many readers will have seen the film Israelism (2023) which examines how young American Jews, such as Simone Zimmerman, are indoctrinated through educational and cultural programs to uncritically support Israel, often without exposure to Palestinian perspectives. Simone hosts a new podcast called Beyond Israelism that will “host bold and inspiring conversations that face, head on, the growing global reckoning with Zionism, the debates over Jewish identity, and the urgent struggle for Palestinian freedom. The episodes will unpack the myths of Zionism; dive deep into the meaning of Palestinian liberation, and through raw and fearless discussions examine the Jewish relationship with Israel.”
The first episode is called “The Growing Rift Between Young Jews and Israel”.
Search for “Beyond Israelism” on Apple Podcasts, Podbean, Spotify, or similar

Against frames of trauma and testimony: Palestinian children’s narratives from within a contemporary genocide
Authors: Rania Jawad,Sama Dawani,Said Shehadeh and Bisan NateelSource: Journal of Palestine Studies
Date: 1 October (published online)
This article is not open access
During Israel’s genocidal war on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, youth worker Bisan Nateel documented the ways children’s relationships to the sea, the land, home, and life have been reconfigured. […] The authors discuss how Nateel’s engagement with the children and coproduction of the narratives goes beyond collecting testimonies that position their narrators as victims of a particular event in time and pushes against dominant psychological paradigms of children in war.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0377919X.2025.2560304

FEATURED ACTIONS
3 new actions have been added to our Actions page in the past week:
https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

Release Paediatrician And Hospital Director Dr Hussam Abu Safiya
Source: Amnesty International Urgent Action
Date: October 2025
In December 2024, the Israeli military raided Kamal Adwan hospital and arbitrarily detained its director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, along with other medical staff and patients. The raid put the hospital, the last functioning major medical facility in the North Gaza governorate, out of service. Israeli authorities must immediately release him. Pending his release, they must ensure his protection from torture and other ill-treatment, and provide him with adequate healthcare.
Following the implementation of a ceasefire in Gaza on 10 October 2025, Dr Abu Safiya was added to a list of detainees set to be released by Israel, only for his name to be subsequently removed and his detention extended by another six months.
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/urgent-actions/release-paediatrician-and-hospital-director-0

Email the FCDO about Palestinian political prisoners
Source: Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Date: October 2025
Despite the Gaza ceasefire agreement, Israel’s apartheid regime continues, including its system of mass imprisonment as a tool of political repression. Even after the release of 1,968 Palestinian prisoners on 13 October, more than 9,000 remain in Israeli detention, including 400 children. The Israeli military has continued to conduct arrest raids across the West Bank, even during the week of the Gaza ceasefire. Write the FCDO and demand the release of Palestinians still held prisoner by Israel.
https://palestinecampaign.eaction.org.uk/PalestinianPrisoners

FEATURED EVENTS
You can see our full list of events on this page:
https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

London Palestine Film Festival 2025
November 14 – 28
Twenty seven separate events are listed in the Festival programme:
https://www.palestinefilm.org.uk/

ICAHD UK Annual Conference 2025
The Day After Gaza: How do we address the urgency of the political moment?
Date: Saturday 1 November from 10:30 am to 4:45pm
Location: Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8EP.
Source: ICAHD (formerly Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)
Advanced registration is essential
The conference will bring together leading voices on Palestine to assess the current struggle for Palestinian rights and the urgent political challenges ahead. Participants will explore Israel’s settler-colonial agenda, Trump’s peace plan, the Abraham Accords, and grassroots mobilisation. Sessions will share insights from ICAHD’s on-the-ground resistance and equip UK campaigners for more effective, sustained advocacy.
Speakers include:
Dr Jeff Halper – ICAHD’s Co-founder and Director, anthropologist, activist, author
Dr Nadia Naser-Najjab – – Palestinian from Jerusalem, Senior Lecturer at Exeter University
Jeremy Corbyn MP – long-time supporter of justice for Palestinians
Peter Frankental – Programme Director Economic Affairs, Amnesty International UK
Prof Avi Shlaim – British Israeli historian, award-winning author
and more …
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/icahd-uk-annual-conference-2025-tickets-1570864862089

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).

”Netflix and BBC sent legal letter over Israel film boycott
Source: Far Out Magazine
Date: 13 October
Last month, thousands of high-profile names in Hollywood, including the likes of Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, Emma Stone, and Joaquin Phoenix, signed a letter on behalf of Film Workers for Palestine, pledging that they would not work with Israeli film institutions while the war in Gaza is still ongoing. Now major production houses and entertainment corporations in the UK, including Netflix, the BBC and the union Equity have reportedly been sent a letter by UK Lawyers for Israel asserting that the boycott could potentially be in breach of the UK Equality Act. Film Workers for Palestine have responded in a statement, which says: “This kind of intimidation tactic is used so commonly and unethically by UKLFI that a formal complaint was filed with the Solicitors’ Regulation Authority in Britain over ‘a seeming pattern of vexatious and legally baseless correspondence aimed at silencing and intimidating Palestine solidarity efforts.’”
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/netflix-bbc-legal-letter-israel-film-boycott/
Film Workers for Palestine pledge:
https://www.instagram.com/p/DOVzqTPDpV6/?img_index=1

UKPALMHN mailing 15 October

October 16, 2025 ukpalmhnadmin

UKPALMHN Solidarity Space
Monday 20 October at 1pm (UK time)
This is an open space where people exchange their emotional responses with a view to remaining resilient amidst a constant stream of distressing news.
Please contact ukpalmhn@gmail.com if you would like a link to this meeting.

Mental Health Conference for Palestine: Living through the Unimaginable
Source: Psychoanalytic Voices for Palestine
Date: Saturday 8 November from 9:30am – 4:30pm
Location: Birkbeck, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX
Speakers: Dr Yasser Abu Jamei, Dr Yoa’d Ghanadry-Hakim, Gwyn Daniel, Martin KempThis is a hybrid (in-person/online) event but seating is limited, so advanced booking is recommended.
Join us for a day dedicated to updating on the present situation, bringing together professionals working in Palestine and allied Mental Health groups in the UK organising around Palestine. The conference is aimed at all mental health professionals who want to make an ethical response to the destruction of ordinary human life in Palestine and spearhead a collective mental health response.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mental-health-conference-for-palestine-living-through-the-unimaginable-tickets-1744401304259

Cafe Palestine: The normalisation of genocide and ecocide
Saturday 15 November from 4pm – 6pm (UK time)
At this Cafe Palestine we reflect on a world that sponsors genocide, and indulges a cynical disregard for the ecological disasters that have been unleashed on Gaza and which threaten further mass death, particularly in the global South.
Speakers:
Prof Mazin Qumsiyeh is a Palestinian scientist and author, founder and director of the Palestine Museum of Natural History and the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability at Bethlehem University where he teaches. Over the course of his career he has published well over 150 scientific papers on topics ranging from cultural heritage to biodiversity in addition to several books.
Prof Paul Hoggett is a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol. His research spans social policy, community life, and the emotional dynamics of politics, with notable expertise in the intersection of psychoanalysis, group relations, and social systems. He co-founded the Climate Psychology Alliance and served as its first chair in 2012.
A Zoom link to the meeting will be included in a future mailing.

The Gaza Health Declaration
Source: Mondoweiss
Date: 9 October
Hundreds of health professionals have signed the Gaza Health Solidarity Declaration, affirming their commitment to stand with Palestinian healthcare workers facing the aftermath of genocide and decades of occupation. The declaration calls for rebuilding Gaza’s health system on the principles of health solidarity—centred on Palestinian agency, sovereignty, and leadership, rather than charity or donor control. It denounces international complicity that has undermined Palestinian health sovereignty and demands an end to “aid-washing,” parallel health systems, and politically restricted funding. Signatories urge that true solidarity means supporting Palestinian-led institutions, promoting self-determination, and recognising political liberation as inseparable from public health and justice.As Mental Health Practitioners we strongly endorse these aims. Collective trauma on the scale we witness in Gaza is hugely exacerbated by the experience of powerlessness. The restoration of agency, self determination, dignity and respect is an essential component of any recovery from trauma at individual, family and community levels.
https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/the-gaza-health-declaration/
List of signatories:
https://www.healthworkers4palestine.com/health-declaration/

Protest Letter to the British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies
Source: Mental Health Workers UK for Palestine
Date: October 2025
This is an open protest letter that can be signed by individuals.
The British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) recent handling of the current situation in Gaza and Palestine at large has caused unintentional but avoidable harm to both its members and the communities it stands to serve. This is an urgent matter that requires immediate attention. By retracting the word genocide in CBT Today and presenting neutrality as a professional stance, members, clients, and wider communities have been left feeling silenced, retraumatised, and unprotected. This has had a particularly harmful impact on the Global Majority, Muslim, and Palestinian people, whose voices and experiences have been marginalised.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjVfuTtwvf-13bX2fKHu_ZczDaz9K-_qT1SBHjf7d5oCpjHg/viewform

Update from Social Workers for a Free Palestine (SW4FP)
There are two related developments to share.
Motion passed at IFSW Europe
At the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) Europe delegates’ meeting in Oslo (3–5 October), members passed a motion condemning the genocide in Gaza and breaches of international law, including starvation, collective punishment, and obstruction of humanitarian relief.
The motion also called for a Special General Meeting of IFSW members, so that they could discuss the continuing membership in IFSW of the Israeli Union of Social Workers.
Report on the IFSW website (scroll down – the full motion is also linked to here)
https://www.ifsw.org/ifsw-europe-delegates-meeting-3-5-october-2025-oslo-norway/
Campaign to suspend the Israeli Union of Social Workers
Following on from the successful motion at Oslo, Social Workers for a Free Palestine (SW4FP) have launched an international campaign calling for the suspension or expulsion of the Israeli Union of Social Workers from the IFSW. This can only be decided at a Special General Meeting, which must be convened by the IFSW Global President and Executive.
Under IFSW rules, such a meeting will be held if at least one-fifth of national member associations request it. SW4FP are therefore urging IFSW members to ask their national social work associations to contact the Global Executive and formally request that a Special General Meeting be convened.
A Google Form has been created to make this process easier:
https://forms.gle/FVzfy4uMtxQf1aTg9
The form includes details about how to find and contact your national association, and a template letter.
For further details or questions, please email:sw4palestineuk@gmail.com

Why you’ve been misled about “Israeli hostages” and “Palestinian prisoners”
Source: Novara Media
Date: 13 October
This is an 15 minute interview with Milena Ansari from Human Rights Watch
Coverage that contrasts “Israeli hostages” with “Palestinian prisoners” hides a crucial truth: many Palestinians are detained without charge or fair trial, so the term “prisoner” falsely implies legal process and guilt. Human Rights Watch describes widespread administrative detention, secret evidence, and military courts with a 99.7% conviction rate, where even children, activists, and health workers are held arbitrarily. Conditions in Israeli prisons are described as brutal, with reports of torture, medical neglect, starvation, prolonged shackling, and systematic humiliation under a system designed to dehumanise and silence Palestinians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sB-AIcI-6U

Researchers urge locally led reconstruction for Gaza
Source: Nature
Date: 9 October
You may need to create a free account to read the whole article
Experts on post-war recovery warn that rebuilding Gaza’s health, education, and research systems will fail unless Palestinian professionals lead the process. They stress that reconstruction plans under US President Trump’s ceasefire framework risk repeating past mistakes if they rely on top-down, internationally driven structures instead of drawing on Gaza’s deep local expertise. Palestinian academics emphasise the need for inclusive planning that supports community leadership, mental health, and continued education alongside physical rebuilding. Researchers argue that empowering local institutions and addressing the political roots of the crisis are essential to prevent a repeat of the destructive cycles seen in Iraq and earlier Gaza reconstruction efforts.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03324-w

Israeli soldiers torched food, homes, and a critical sewage treatment plant in wake of ceasefire announcement
Source: A shocking long-read. As of today, the report has not been independently verified by any western mainstream media sources, but it has been corroborated through additional reporting by two other middle eastern news outlets.
In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s announcement that both Hamas and Israel had signed off on an agreement to stop the fighting, the Israeli military launched an arson spree, setting fire to civilian infrastructure, including the destruction of an essential sanitation plant in Gaza City. […]Monther Shoblaq, Director General of the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU) in Gaza, said the attack is a blow that could push Gaza City’s wastewater system “to point zero.” He added the plant is “one of Gaza’s oldest” and warned that its destruction will set back planned reconstruction efforts by years. “I mean, they signed a ceasefire,” Shoblaq said. “Why set it on fire?”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/israel-idf-soldiers-set-fire-food-homes-sewage-treatment-plan-after-ceasefire-announced

FEATURED ACTIONS
You can see a list of all current actions on this page:
https://ukpalmhn.com/gaza-crisis/

Volunteers on Palestinian farms are more valuable—and scarce—than ever
Source: Atmos
Date: 6 October
Yessenia Funes reports that international volunteers who once travelled in large numbers to support Palestinian farmers are now far fewer, as Israel’s ongoing assault and restrictions have made access to the West Bank increasingly difficult. Farms such as the Tent of Nations near Bethlehem embody a philosophy of non-violent resistance, welcoming visitors who help maintain the land while bearing witness to occupation. The presence of volunteers offers both practical protection and moral solidarity, connecting local struggles for survival to global movements for justice.
https://atmos.earth/political-landscapes/volunteers-on-palestinian-farms-are-more-valuable-and-scarce-than-ever/

FEATURED EVENTS
You can see our full list of events on this page:
https://ukpalmhn.com/events/

Sabeel-Kairos advocacy tour
Source: Sabeel-Kairos UK – a campaigning Christian charity that works for human rights, justice and equality for Palestinians in partnership/solidarity with the Christian community in the Holy Land. We are delighted to be hosting Sahar Francis, Palestinian Human Rights Lawyer, and Revd Ashraf Tannous, Pastor of the Lutheran Churches in Bethlehem and Beit Sahour, in the UK for a week of political, religious and cultural events focussing on the deteriorating situation in Palestine, the human rights challenges, and the existential threat facing the small but influential Palestinian Christian community.
Dates and locations:
(Wednesday 15 October – Manchester)
Friday 17 October – London (full day conference From Lament to Liberation)
Saturday 18 October – Southport and Liverpool
Sunday 19 October – Leeds
Speakers: Sahar Francis, Human Rights Lawyer, and Revd Ashraf Tannous, Palestinian pastor in Bethlehem
https://www.sabeel-kairos.org.uk/uk-advocacy-tour-full-list-of-public-events/

ICAHD UK Annual Conference 2025
The Day After Gaza: How do we address the urgency of the political moment?
Date: Saturday 1 November from 10:30 am to 4:45pm
Location: Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 235 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8EP.
Source: ICAHD (formerly Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)
Advanced registration is essential
The conference will bring together leading voices on Palestine to assess the current struggle for Palestinian rights and the urgent political challenges ahead. Participants will explore Israel’s settler-colonial agenda, Trump’s peace plan, the Abraham Accords, and grassroots mobilisation. Sessions will share insights from ICAHD’s on-the-ground resistance and equip UK campaigners for more effective, sustained advocacy.
Speakers include:
Dr Jeff Halper – ICAHD’s Co-founder and Director, anthropologist, activist, author
Dr Nadia Naser-Najjab – – Palestinian from Jerusalem, Senior Lecturer at Exeter University
Jeremy Corbyn MP – long-time supporter of justice for Palestinians
Peter Frankental – Programme Director Economic Affairs, Amnesty International UK
Prof Avi Shlaim – British Israeli historian, award-winning author
and more …
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/icahd-uk-annual-conference-2025-tickets-1570864862089

BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT AND SANCTIONS (BDS)
A founding aim of the UK-Palestine Mental Health Network is to “encourage our colleagues individually and collectively to consider their response to the Palestinian call for boycott, sanctions and divestment (BDS).”

Launch of the 2025 edition of Why Boycott Israeli Universities?
Source: British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP)
Date: Tuesday 21 October at 6pm in Central London
An academic boycott of Israel’s universities is an effective, non-violent means of exerting pressure on Israel and its western backers to recognise the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination and a peaceful future. The call to boycott Israeli universities, first made in 2004 by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), is more urgent than ever. To inform and strengthen the boycott campaign, BRICUP has produced a new edition of the booklet Why Boycott Israeli Universities? You are invited to join us for the launch of the booklet and a discussion of the next steps in the campaign.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/why-boycott-israeli-universities-tickets-1764799525889

Confronting the political economy enabling Israel’s genocide, occupation and apartheid
Source: Amnesty International
Date: 18 September
Amnesty International has issued an urgent global call for governments, companies, and public institutions to end all economic and political complicity in Israel’s genocide, occupation, and apartheid system. The organisation’s briefing names major arms, surveillance, and infrastructure firms—including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Elbit Systems, Hikvision, CAF, and Mekorot—whose products and contracts directly sustain Israeli crimes under international law. Amnesty urges states to impose comprehensive boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) measures: halting arms sales, ending trade and investment ties, and barring complicit corporations from contracts, funding, and public engagement. Secretary General Agnès Callamard calls on civil society worldwide to mobilise peacefully, insisting that genuine accountability requires severing the global political economy that profits from Palestinian suffering.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2025/09/global-political-economy-enabling-israels-genocide-occupation-apartheid/

PERSPECTIVES
These opinions do not necessarily represent the views ofthe UK-Palestine Mental Health Network

Has another Nakba been averted?
Source: Al-Jazeera Inside Story
Date: 11 OctoberA 30 minute panel discussion
Palestinians are returning to their homes after refusing to leave Gaza during Israel’s war.Tens of thousands of Palestinians are streaming back to their land in northern Gaza – a right of return included in the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel. Multiple attempts to remove the population have failed. Many Palestinians say they have avoided another Nakba, or catastrophe – the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 – and defeated Israel’s forced displacement policy.
But the land they are returning to is unrecognisable. Is Gaza uninhabitable? Or can it be rebuilt under the interim authority that next governs the strip? And does the ceasefire allow for this complex and lengthy task?
Guests:Ines Abdel Razek – co-director of the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy
Ilan Pappe – chairman of the Nakba Memorial Foundation
Ghada Karmi – academic and the author of Return: A Palestinian Memoir
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/inside-story/2025/10/11/has-another-nakba-been-averted

A pause in killing is not an end to genocide: justice is the only path to peace
Source: Hind Rajab Foundation
Date: 9 October
A Statement by the Foundation calls upon all individuals, institutions, and states of conscience to intensify efforts for justice, to maintain mobilisation for Gaza and for Palestine, and to ensure that this ceasefire is not mistaken for peace. Justice for Gaza cannot wait. The moral and legal duty to act persists until accountability is achieved, the blockade is lifted, and the Palestinian people can live freely and securely in their homeland.
Full statement:
https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org/posts/a-pause-in-killing-is-not-an-end-to-genocide-justice-is-the-only-path-to-peace

The Gaza “Deal”: Now on to the true threats to the Palestinian people
Source: Jeff Halper, Director of ICAHD (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)
Date: 9 October[…] This is what is coming down the pipeline as Trump returns to his 2020 “Vision of Peace” plan and the completion of the Abraham Accords. In that bigger political picture, Gaza is not an issue in and of itself. For all the suffering it generated, the Gaza “war” simply paved the way for the normalisation of an Israeli apartheid regime over all historic Palestine. The Abraham Accords thus pose the greatest threat to the Palestinian people since the Nakba. […]
https://icahd.org/2025/10/09/the-gaza-deal-now-on-to-the-true-threats-to-the-palestinian-people-jeff-halper/

In destroying Gaza, Israel destroyed its own image as a moral enterprise
Source: David Hearst, Editor-in-Chief of Middle East Eye
Date: 9 October
After stage one, Trump’s Gaza deal is likely dead in the water. But with soaring global support for Palestinian liberation, justice is on the horizon
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-colonialism-end-nigh