The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ) denounces the U.S. House Education and Workforce Committee’s (HEWC) attacks on psychologists who oppose genocide and racism.

Drawn from the tired Project Esther playbook, the HEWC “report,” Antisemitism at the American Psychological Association aims to naturalize the dehumanization of Arab and SWANA people by waging a war strategy against “organizations, funds, access, communications, platforms, and people” that have spoken out against the Zionist genocide of the Palestinian people. By cynically equating criticism of Zionism with antisemitism and ideologically inverting the “oppressor/oppressed” paradigm they obsessively reference, these racist attacks not only legitimize the destruction of Palestinian life but also run alongside HEWC attacks on trans/queer and Black people, and its erasure of Jews who reject racial supremacism. By demonizing the field’s most ethical practitioners and attempting to coerce alignment with the very institutional forces responsible for the mass slaughter of the Palestinian people, HEWC aims to coopt psychology for the racist, genocidal aims of the MAGA movement. Its goal is transparent: transforming the field of psychology into a tool of repressive power, neutralized of any ethical commitments and wielded as a bludgeon for state propaganda and violence…. [Click to read full statement]