L’Esecutivo della SIEFPP – Soci Italiani European Federation for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy – con il presente comunicato desidera esprimere solidarietà e sostegno ai colleghi israeliani che hanno espresso la loro grande sofferenza nel lavorare nelle zone di guerra, attraverso una lettera aperta indirizzata a tutti i soci della EFPP che riportiamo qui sotto.

Stiamo tutti vivendo una estensione pervasiva della guerra, che sta progressivamente ingenerando un trauma trasversale alla condizione umana, col rischio che questo comporta per le generazioni future. Bambini e giovani, prime vittime designate, sono esposti al rischio della coazione a ripetere a violenza, come effetto del trauma trasmesso tra le generazioni. Noi, come analisti, ci preoccupiamo per il loro futuro e di quello dell’umanità.

Sottolineiamo, infine, che siamo uniti nel condannare la violenza e la crudeltà e sosteniamo il rispetto dei diritti umani e la dignità di tutte le persone.

A Psychoanalytic and Moral Statement Against Violence in the West Bank

We, members of psychoanalytic institutes and other mental health professionals, unequivocally and resolutely condemn the acts of violence, vandalism, humiliation, murder, and assault against the persons and property of Palestinian residents of the West Bank, perpetrated by Jewish agents of terror. Our professional and moral position rests on our mental health expertise and a determined commitment to human dignity, freedom of speech and movement, and every person’s fundamental right to security and protection.

Acts of terror — including beatings, humiliation, shootings, arson, destruction of crops, vandalism, and the taking of human life – have become widespread in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank, leaving deep scars of lasting trauma on the souls of their Palestinian victims. These are not “isolated incidents” carried out by “extreme individuals.” They are a malignant and dangerous symptom of the violation and erosion of law, morality, and the social order as a whole. This symptom demands immediate recognition, accountability, and reparation.

Children growing up under constant threat, women and men watching their homes burn, entire communities living in grief and chronic anxiety —inflict long-term psychological wounds that are transmitted from generation to generation. The reverberations of these injuries fuel and perpetuate cycles of violence and enmity in our shared home.

Psychoanalysis teaches us that any dynamic rooted in power and oppression takes hold deep within us, corrupting the souls of oppressor and oppressed alike. Violence is born of a defensive internalization of superiority, institutionalized humiliation, and the dehumanization of the “Other.” A state that routinely allows acts of terror against a captive and unprotected population is a state that has lost its moral compass and conscience — one that profoundly endangers its own values and the moral foundations that are its strength, justification, and the essential guarantee of its psychological resilience.

We call upon the Israeli government to enforce the law upon all citizens without discrimination, and to cease its criminal tolerance of Jewish terror. We appeal to Israeli civil society to raise its voice, to refuse the normalization of terror, and to recognize the suffering of human beings who are being crushed in its name.

Finally, we urge our colleagues — mental health professionals in Israel and around the world — to support therapeutic programs for trauma survivors in Palestinian communities, and to lend a clear professional and moral voice to this cause.

Recognition of the other’s pain is the foundation of all psychoanalytic work and of every life-affirming, moral society. Silence in the face of systematic violence is not an act of neutrality. It is complicity in injustice. We refuse to be silent and to be silenced.