The American Psychological Association and the Weaponization of Antisemitism

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 14 Apr 2025

Roy Eidelson – TRANSCEND Media Service

Last week I participated in a panel discussion on the weaponization of antisemitism at the annual conference of the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39 of the American Psychological Association). The views expressed are entirely my own and do not reflect the positions of the other panelists or any other group. 

3 Apr 2025 – Thank you for this opportunity. I want to use my 15 minutes to describe how the weaponization of antisemitism has impacted the American Psychological Association (APA) — and our profession more broadly — since the Hamas-led attacks inside Israel on October 7th, 2023. To be clear, these are my views alone, and I am not representing any group.

I’ll begin with four important points for context. First, those attacks and the hostage-taking on October 7th were war crimes. They were undeniably horrific and traumatizing, deeply affecting Jews and non-Jews around the world.

Second, real antisemitism is “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews.” It is dangerous, it is growing, and it must be condemned and combatted. But it’s important to emphasize that scholarly research — such as that by Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden — shows that while antisemitic attitudes in the United States exist across the political spectrum, they are “far more prevalent on the right” than on the political left. I’ll add that there’s no more obvious evidence of this than the white supremacists in the current administration in Washington, DC.

Third, support for Palestinian rights, dignity, and freedom is not antisemitic. In my view, to claim otherwise is at best misguided and at worst deceitful. Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a prototypical example of the latter. But he is far from alone.

And fourth, I believe denial, blindness, minimization, or disregard for the horrors that have unfolded in Gaza over the past 17 months is, quite simply, outrageous and indefensible. I’ll add here a finding from a Pew Research Center poll last spring: only 4% of Israeli Jews said that Israel’s military response against Hamas in Gaza had gone too far. Only 4%.

So, what do I mean by the “weaponization of antisemitism”? I understand it this way: as a psychologically powerful, gaslighting propaganda machine with two complementary narrative engines. One engine takes the State of Israel and dramatically expands it, so it becomes “All Jews Worldwide.” This profound distortion is intentional. It is used to claim that condemnation of Israel’s genocidal assault is an attack on all Jews — and is therefore an unacceptable expression of “antisemitism.”

But this propaganda machine has another task as well: it must simultaneously stifle concerns over Palestinian suffering. So, the second engine works in the opposite direction. It takes all Palestinians and dramatically shrinksthem into Hamas alone. In this way, all Palestinians are dehumanized and presented as caricatured monsters. Through this distortion, they all become supposedly legitimate targets for annihilation. And this enables some people — far too many people, apparently including some psychologists — to seemingly ignore the unconscionable misery in Gaza. That’s the weaponization of antisemitism.

This weaponization is dangerous on multiple counts. Not only because it’s quite literally deadly for the victims of Israel’s aggression. And not only because it’s being used as a Trojan Horse to dismantle our institutions of higher learning and other organizations essential to a functioning civil society. And not only because it serves as an excuse for a cruel, inhumane, and racist deportation agenda. It’s also dangerous for Jews themselves, because it divides the Jewish community and it distracts us from the clear-and-present peril posed by the antisemitism of white Christian nationalists and other right-wing extremists.

Unfortunately, key leaders within the APA have, at times, seemingly either embraced or allowed themselves to be muzzled by this weaponization of antisemitism and its accusations. How extreme are some of these accusations? As one example, last month, someone who’s apparently considered something of an oracle in a group called “Psychologists Against Antisemitism” wrote this about the APA in the Israel National News: “Several [APA] divisions have specialized in the kind of hot Jew-hatred that once prevailed at German and at other European universities in the Nazi era.” If nothing else, I believe outrageousness of this sort should serve as a reminder of the futility of attempting to appease those who seemingly believe there are no Palestinian people, or who view Palestinians as less than human.

Let’s now turn back to the days immediately after the horrific events of October 7th, 2023. On October 11th, the APA issued a statement titled “APA warns of psychological impacts of violence in Middle East.” The very first sentence condemned “in no uncertain terms the recent violent attack by Hamas on Israel.” The statement also included this: “There can be no justification for holding people hostage. There can be no justification for cutting off access to basic necessities, such as electricity, food and medicine.”

To be clear, before the APA had even released this statement, calls for a genocidal assault had already emerged from Israeli officials. Israel’s minister of defense, for example, had publicly stated, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed…We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly.”

This form of collective punishment is a war crime according to international humanitarian law and the APA was entirely correct to condemn it. But board members of a then-new group called the “Association of Jewish Psychologists” were seemingly outraged by this stance. They issued a “rebuttal” on October 16th, accusing APA leaders of being “terribly naïve” in opposing the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. Now 17 months later, and with Gaza utterly destroyed, to the best of my knowledge the group’s leadership has never issued a formal retraction or apology. Instead, they’ve apparently made their earlier statement very hard to find.

Meanwhile, the group Psychologists Against Antisemitism, which I mentioned earlier, also seemingly set its sights on the APA’s response following October 7th. The group’s founder and president published an op-ed in the Times of Israel on October 24th, titled “The mental health groups pouring salt in the wound of Jewish trauma.” She described the APA as a hotbed of “misinformation bereft of moral conviction or a commitment to science.”

Let’s now fast-forward to just six weeks ago. The same group, Psychologists Against Antisemitism, published an open letter and petition to APA leaders in which they absurdly claimed that antisemitism was “systemic” and “virulent” within the APA. Unsurprisingly, their claims of antisemitism were linked to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights — neither of which is intrinsically antisemitic.

But the propaganda machine that weaponizes these charges of antisemitism doesn’t seem to ever stop running. It’s designed to flatten anyone — non-Jew and Jew alike — who stands in its way. Indeed, as I speak, members of Psychologists Against Antisemitism are reportedly developing plans to reach out to the Trump Administration in an effort to compel changes at the APA. If this is true, draw your own conclusions about the moral compass of such an alliance.

Again, in my view, for the past 17 months the APA’s leadership has repeatedly tried to appease those, including some APA leaders themselves, who seemingly prioritize defending Israel above all else — at the expense of the Association’s avowed commitment to human rights. Here are four specific examples.

Example 1: When some divisions of the APA have sought to issue statements expressing concern over Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza, APA officials have balked. In the case of Division 48, Peace Psychology, with which I am most familiar, APA leaders apparently responded to a brief statement — now well over a year ago — by insisting, among other things, for an explanation as to why it wasn’t antisemitic to call for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.

Example 2: Last August, a group of determined APA Council members overcame resistance from various fronts and brought forward a resolution calling for “an immediate, permanent, and comprehensive ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict.” To placate certain parties, the resolution included language stating that it “is not meant to advocate or criticize any of the parties engaged in conflict.” Not surprisingly, words like “occupation” and “ethnic cleansing” were absent from the resolution. The first person invited to speak during debate on the Council floor was a board member of the Association of Jewish Psychologists — the very group that had seemingly objected when the APA had condemned the use of collective punishment. She spoke in opposition to the ceasefire resolution. When it passed anyway, it wasn’t long before insinuations about antisemitism predictably emerged. As for the APA’s leadership, the resolution’s passage has not spurred any meaningful follow-up advocacy.

Example 3: An essay about antisemitism by six board members of the Association of Jewish Psychologists was recently published in the American Psychologist — the APA’s flagship journal — despite, in my view, a range of serious scholarly shortcomings. I have publicly, but unsuccessfully, called for its retraction, and I’ve written a detailed explanation why. Here I can only summarize some of the significant problems. On the very first page, the authors frame their entire essay by claiming that over half of all hate-crimes in the United States reflect anti-Jewish bias. This is far from true: the actual figure is closer to 12%. The authors also make other assertions of fact without documentation; they use unreliable data and unconfirmed claims linked to “pro-Israel” advocacy groups like the Anti-Defamation League and “Stand With Us”; and they fail to accurately represent some findings from other researchers. The article ends with a self-promotional appeal: that the APA should partner with the Association of Jewish Psychologists in combatting antisemitism.

And Example 4: Today marks three full weeks since almost three-dozen leaders of several APA divisions and affiliated groups wrote to six leaders of the APA, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss the outrageous accusations by Psychologists for Antisemitism of out-of-control Jew-hatred within the APA and within our divisions. Despite two follow-up messages also sent to these APA leaders, not a single one of the six has ever responded in any manner whatsoever to our request. (We’re still waiting.)

As I draw to a conclusion, I am aware that some in attendance today may wrongly accuse me of being an antisemite or a self-hating Jew. Sadly, I’ve learned that just goes with the territory these days. I have no intention of allowing their efforts to silence me, because I speak in solidarity with those whose circumstances are far more precarious than my own.

I’ll end with this. A generation ago, in my view the APA’s leadership abandoned its commitment to human rights and betrayed the Muslim community by failing to adequately oppose the abuse and torture that characterized the so-called War on Terror. I believe the APA will have made precious little progress in the 23 years since if it now fails to stand up against the false charges that are central to the weaponization of antisemitism. Instead of succumbing to these tactics, the APA should take a strong stand against real antisemitism, while also doing much more to publicly challenge the devastating assault on the Palestinian people today.

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Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. Roy is the author of Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What’s Happening, What’s Right, and What’s Possible and can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 14 Apr 2025.

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