Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Samah Jabr
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Brunel University has buckled under pro-Israel pressure to silence Palestinian voices
Earlier this month, Professor Paul Hellewell, Vice Provost and Dean of the College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Britain’s Brunel University, assured its students that an “anti-Israel” article recommended as part of a course curriculum would not be used again. The article in question was my 2019...
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Gaza, the Betrayed
Gaza is less than 100 kilometres from Jerusalem. It is deliberately placed out of reach, separated by three visible borders. The Israeli border is the main obstacle, but there are two others, each affirming the authority of one of the two conflicting Palestinian factions: Ramallah’s Palestinian Authority and Gaza’s...
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Permissible pain: How to deal with traumatic images coming from Palestine
Every aggression waged by the Israeli war machine against the Palestinian people is supported by international mainstream media platforms that falsify facts and justify Israel’s “right to defend itself”. In reaction, local media distributes images of bleeding, maimed and shell-shocked Palestinians emerging from the rubble caused by Israeli bombardment....
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Resistance to Israel’s occupation is an essential element in the recovery of the occupied mind
Israel has imposed military occupation, settler-colonialism, and an apartheid regime upon a multitude of fragmented Palestinian communities, thereby creating, sustaining, and contributing to grave health and mental health issues. These are caused directly through inflicting physical and psychological distress, environmental violence and hazards, and targeting medical providers and services;...
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In the battle for liberation, Gaza is closer to Jerusalem than Ramallah is
Ramadan has been a tense month in Jerusalem; it started with the Israelis forbidding Palestinian Jerusalemites from using the area at the Damascus Gate as a public space for social and cultural activities, in their effort to undermine the identity and significance of the place for the Palestinian community....
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Arab normalisation is another attempt to defeat the Palestinians psychologically
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign ministers representing the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed the “Abraham Accords Peace Agreement” in Washington DC which normalises their relations at the expense of Palestinian national and human rights. US President Donald Trump hosted the ceremony and has claimed...
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COVID-19 gives Palestinians a chance to improve their mental health services
The COVID-19 pandemic has the seeds for a mental health crisis around the world; in Palestine it highlights pre-existing challenges in mental health provision. Although Palestinians have survived previous episodes of collective anxiety, restriction of liberties, uncertainty and loss, the pandemic uncovers a historically neglected mental health system which is currently...
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Covid19 in Palestine: Palestinians’ Double Struggle against an Epidemic and Apartheid
I write this on a day that saw the confirmation of a sudden and delayed rise of Covid-19 cases among Palestinians in the small neighborhood of Silwan, East Jerusalem. On this very day, I had been denied access to my workplace in Ramallah by Israeli soldiers at the Qalandia...
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Gaza's new mental health unit: A project of psychological control
In March, a field hospital being built by Israeli aid group Natan in conjunction the American Evangelical Christian organisation Friend Ships will start operating in the northern Gaza Strip near the Erez crossing. Authorities in occupied Ramallah claimed the project, spearheaded by pro-Israel donors, is a front for American and Israeli...
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Leave the judgment to God: The role of Islamic discourse in addressing suicide
A mother came to me in the wake of her son’s suicide. She had consulted a Sheikh – in this case someone who claimed to be a religious leader – for consolation, but was told that whoever purposely kills himself with dwell in the Hellfire forever. The mother, deeply...
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Palestinian barriers to healing traumatic wounds
Traumatised patients who I see in my office often express negativistic mistrust when I ask them about their feelings: “It is humiliating to complain to anyone other than God”; “Don’t complain about injuries, don’t hurt anyone but yourself”; “Contain your pain in your aching heart to avoid the shame...
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The Palestinian cause in jihadist ideology: between fact and fiction
A commitment to Palestine binds together many Arab, Muslim and other marginalised minorities in the West, generating strong emotional, ideological and political support. The nature of this bond often goes beyond issues of kinship or religious connection to involve a common underlying experience of political alienation. Radical jihadist groups,...
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The assassination of Palestinian memory: Another tool of ethnic cleansing
While Israel was celebrating its independence day earlier this week, I heard two anecdotes. One story was related to me by Jerusalemite friends working in Israeli institutions, who told me about their discomfort during Yom HaZikaron–the day of remembrance honoring Israeli soldiers who have fallen and honoring other Israelis...
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Professional Solidarity with Palestine: A Mental Health Imperative
In the field of medicine, we often speak of the social determinants of health. In Palestine, not only social, but political determinants of health have a grave impact on the wellbeing and mental health of our community. I am not just talking about the political blackmail through recent blatant...
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A betrayed generation in Palestine reveals post-Oslo nihilism and cynicism
More than 55 per cent of Palestinians living in the occupied territories were born after the signing of the Oslo Accords 25 years ago. What is life like for this generation, now that their hopeful dreams of independence and prosperity have been reduced to a nightmare by the ongoing...
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Talking through our fears: Resisting the Palestinian complacency of silence
On a few occasions, my mother has awakened me anxiously to let me know who is the latest to be arrested for a Facebook statement, and to warn me from posting my views on my page. And when I tell her goodbye before my trips abroad, she responds with...
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Our history haunts our future
A French colleague once asked me, “Why are the Palestinians stuck in the Nakba? They commemorate villages no longer present on any map and bequeath to their children the keys to homes that have been long abandoned. Why don’t they leave it all behind, and look to the future?”...
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A monologue with the ‘Other’: the inauthenticity of discourse under occupation
The occupation of Palestine has fallen into universal oblivion. In the face of this void, however, there are still Palestinians who attempt to affirm their selfhood through challenging the occupation creatively; by refusing, for example, to submit to it with either helplessness or nihilism. Personally, I found an occasion...
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The salt will never lose its taste
The latest religious and racial slurs embodied in the Trump administration’s decision to transfer the US Embassy to Jerusalem has rubbed salt into the ever-open wound of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. This move is yet further evidence of the absence of any moral, social and lawful legitimacy of America’s...
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The innocence of those who fear and the guilt of those who hate
In our stressful state of occupation, there is, among other ills, an essentialist view of Israeli and Palestinian characteristics. In the many public talks that I have given to Westerners about the violation of the rights of Palestinians, one question almost invariably comes up: “What about the fears of...
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The call of the sky: Transcending the borders of the occupation
In a psychotic state, a 16 year old young woman patient from the West Bank went beyond the confines of her own boundaries: “I saw the sky turned red in colour and I perceived a calling… I looked into people’s eyes to see that they too were excited and...
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More royal than the king: An encounter with French Zionism
From those who are willing to legitimise killing and torture in support of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the fabrication of lies and false accusations to intimidate their opponents is only to be expected. Opinon: BDS is the French exception to international boycotts My latest encounter with international Zionism...
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When Israel and Britain celebrate the historical trauma of Palestinians
After 100 years, Britain seems to be at the same moral stage as it was when UK Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour wrote to a leader of the British Jewish community, Baron Rothschild, promising the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine. Instead of making redress...
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Humiliation: The hammer crushing Palestinian society
While the exercise of military control over an occupied country may be expected to inflict inevitable pain and trauma on the citizens of that country, the history of Israeli policy has far exceeded any “pragmatic” needs of an occupier to dominate and subdue a local population. The Israeli humiliation...