| Appeared in CounterPunch, October 2, 2025
For nearly two years Gaza has endured an escalated genocide already named as such by international jurists and human rights bodies. The Zionist entity acts with impunity, shielded by a world order built on capitalism, white supremacy, and the rise of fascism from Trumpism in the United States to its echoes across Europe and beyond. This is not mere rhetoric-it is the documented reality of our present lives, witnessed in real-time and archived in collective memory.
Gaza Under Siege
The toll defies comprehension. In June 2024, it was estimated that over 186,000 people had been killed, the vast majority of them civilians (Lancet). At least 20,000 children have been martyred since October 2023—approximately 2% of Gaza’s child population-with one child slaughtered every hour on average (Save the Children International). Over 1,000 of those lost were infants under one year old, with nearly half born into war only to perish within it. More than 42,000 children have been injured, and at least 21,000 carry permanent disabilities-limbs severed, futures fractured (Save the Children International). More than 39,000 children have been orphaned of one or both parents-approximately 17,000 walk this earth utterly alone having lost both parents (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics). Gaza now endures what has been named the largest orphan crisis in modern history. And being wounded child, alone, every family member slaughtered, became common enough to warrant its own acronym: WCNSF: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.
Starvation spreads like wildfire through Gaza’s camps and shelters. Infants die before milk can touch their lips, their first breath stolen before the second arrives. Famine has been declared, with death by hunger now a weapon as calculated as any bomb. At least 440 souls have withered from starvation as of September 2025, including 147 children whose small bodies could not endure the siege (Al Jazeera, 2025; UN OCHA, 2025). In July 2025 alone, 74 succumbed to malnutrition, including 24 children under five (World Health Organization). More than 12,000 children were identified as acutely malnourished in July-the highest monthly toll ever recorded and a six-fold surge since the year began (World Health Organization). Families wish death would come sooner rather than later, praying they perish swiftly, not slowly as they suffocate beneath the rubble.
Hospitals, nearly all damaged or destroyed, stand as ruins unable to tend the wounded. Medical staff perform amputations without anesthesia. Doctors operate by cellphone light when generators fail. Children arrive with wounds that cannot be treated, burns that cannot be soothed, infections that spread unchecked. Healthcare workers themselves become targets, killed while tending to the dying. Ambulances are bombed. Red Crescent volunteers are shot. The very infrastructure of care has been systematically dismantled.
Families live among rubble and dust, every night fearing it will be their last. Zionist leaders boast with chilling candor that a hundred Palestinians can be killed in a night and no one will care. They speak of ethnic cleansing openly, without shame, while Western media sanitizes their words and Western governments provide the bombs.
But this cruelty is not only of today. It is the echo of decades of dispossession and siege, of aggression upon aggression. Trauma here does not pass. It accumulates, layer upon layer, grief upon grief. Doctors report that many children are shot in the head and chest, a clear indication of targetted killing. The murder of Palestinian children is an attack not only on the present but on the futurity of Palestine itself. Every murdered child represents not just a life stolen but generations erased, dreams destroyed, a future denied.
The Mental Health Crisis
As mental health professionals, we recognize what is happening in Gaza as a catastrophic assault on collective psychological well-being. Entire communities are experiencing cumulative trauma on an unprecedented scale. Children who have survived multiple bombardments display severe symptoms: dissociation, acute anxiety, bed wetting, mutism, and a constant state of dread. Many have witnessed the killing of parents, siblings, and friends. They live in a constant state of hypervigilance, unable to sleep, unable to play, unable to imagine a future.
Parents carry the unbearable weight of being unable to protect their children, of having to make impossible choices about survival. Grief is compounded by the absence of proper burial rites, by bodies left under rubble, by mass graves, by the denial of dignity even in death.
Yet Western mental health institutions remain largely silent. Professional associations that claim to uphold universal human rights issue tepid statements or none at all. Universities that train therapists in trauma-informed care continue partnerships with Zionist institutions, creating this very trauma. This silence is not neutral-it is complicity. It betrays every ethical principle our field claims to uphold.
The World Is Changing
Yes, the United States still gives blind support. But the world is moving. Spain has suspended arms sales. Barcelona and other municipalities have cut ties. Iowa City in the United States has voted to divest. Dockworkers in Italy and Greece have blocked ships carrying weapons. Unions, academics, and artists across the world are refusing complicity, severing links with institutions that uphold apartheid.
Student encampments have spread across university campuses, demanding divestment and accountability. Medical professionals have formed convoys to bear witness. Legal scholars are building cases for prosecution. Artists refuse to exhibit in institutions that normalize occupation. Athletes decline to compete under flags that represent genocide.
And millions march. From Rome and Milan to Boston, New York, Johannesburg, voices rise and banners stretch across streets. Palestine will be free. They prove wrong the lie that no one cares. This is a global movement for justice, connecting struggles against colonialism, racism, and imperialism everywhere.
The Flotilla
Now a flotilla sails, a fleet of fragile boats on a vast sea. Despite drone attacks it continues toward Gaza. Greece has guaranteed safe passage in its waters, and Italy and Spain have sent naval vessels to stand watch. On deck are parliamentarians, lawyers, young activists, and ordinary citizens carrying medicine, flour, and hope. Their message is simple: You are not alone.
This flotilla represents more than aid. It is a rejection of the siege mentality that would isolate and erase Palestine. It is solidarity made manifest, bodies placed between violence and victims, conscience refusing to turn away.
Our Call
We call on mental health professionals, international associations, and organizations to honor the basic commitment to first do no harm and to implement the following:
- Sever ties with complicit Zionist institutions
- Divest from companies profiting from occupation, apartheid, and war crimes. (See BDS)
- End exchange agreements, joint programs, and partnerships that normalize genocide
- Withdraw recognition, resources, and legitimacy from institutions that enable Zionist crimes
- Amplify Palestinian voices and scholarship systematically excluded from mainstream discourse
- Document and name this genocide in all professional communications and research
- Organize direct support for Palestinian mental health workers and community healers
- Refuse to pathologize Palestinian resistance or frame liberation struggle as extremism
To the People of Palestine
We know how heavy it feels to hope when the West Bank is being annexed, when genocide, starvation, and murder in Gaza continue daily. We know that words from a distance can feel empty when you are burying your children, when you are hungry, when bombs fall each night.
Yet we say, please do not lose hope. The walls of impunity are cracking not because leaders found conscience but because the people of the world are moving with you. Your steadfastness, your Sumud, inspires millions. Your refusal to disappear, to be erased, gives strength to liberation struggles everywhere.
From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free. |
