APA’s Antisemitism Resolution Fails Jews, Comforts Jew-Haters
Once again, the American Psychological Association (APA) has subordinated the safety and dignity of Jewish Americans to ideological capture, allowing an organized campaign of distortion to reshape official policy. In doing so, APA has produced a resolution on antisemitism that provides more comfort to antisemites than to Jews.
In February 2026, the APA approved a new Resolution on Antisemitism, replacing the 2005/2007 Resolution on Anti-Semitic and Anti-Jewish Prejudice. What was presented as an update is, in fact, a capitulation — the result of a sustained campaign by a group called Psychologists for Justice in Palestine (PJP), which spent approximately two years lobbying to have the original resolution repudiated and rewritten. They succeeded. American psychology is worse for it.
A Campaign Built on Falsehoods
PJP’s campaign rested on a foundation of serial misrepresentations. They claimed the 2007 resolution was aligned with — and therefore tainted by — the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. This is false. The 2007 APA resolution was adopted years before the IHRA definition existed. They also claimed the resolution would be used to “silence” or “criminalize” pro-Palestinian speech and criticism of Israel. Yet in nineteen years since its passage, they produced not a single documented instance of this happening. Absent evidence of censorship, the accusation reveals itself as projection: it is PJP that sought to silence — and ultimately did silence — a resolution protecting Jews.
Their most persistent distortion was the claim that the 2007 resolution equated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. This is demonstrably untrue. The resolution was careful and nuanced, arguing that antisemitism may disguise itself within discourse about Israel’s government — a meaningful distinction. It never stated, or implied, that criticism of Israel or Zionism is inherently antisemitic. Neither, for that matter, does the IHRA definition itself, which explicitly states that criticism of Israel comparable to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.
Nuance, however, was never the point.
A Response That Was Ignored
In August 2024, my organization, Psychologists Against Antisemitism, submitted a formal response to the PJP petition, refuting its falsehoods. It was signed by over 1,200 psychologists and scholars and transmitted directly to APA leadership. We never received a reply. Not even an acknowledgment.
What the New Resolution Gets Wrong
The revised resolution completely ignores the concept of “new antisemitism” entirely — the recognition that contemporary Jew-hatred frequently disguises itself in the language of anti-Zionism. This erasure is not merely an oversight; it is ideologically motivated. Today, more than ever, anti-Zionism functions as the socially acceptable face of Jew-hatred, and a resolution on antisemitism that cannot name this phenomenon is not a resolution against antisemitism. It is a shield for it.
Among the most troubling passages in the new resolution is a clause warning against the “weaponization of antisemitism” — defined as the “manipulative or bad-faith invocation of accusations to silence legitimate criticism, scholarship, or activism” directed against Israel. Read this carefully. The APA has now embedded into official policy the suggestion that Jews who raise concerns about antisemitism may be acting manipulatively, in bad faith, to dominate and silence others. This is not new language. This is the language of centuries-old antisemitic stereotype — the scheming, manipulative Jew pulling strings — dressed in the vocabulary of social justice.
Note also the shift in language: the 2007 resolution referenced the government of Israel. The new one refers to the state of Israel. This is not a minor edit. Criticizing a government’s policies is a democratic norm something that many inside and outside of Israel engage in regularly. Opposing a state’s right to exist is something else entirely — it is the logic of “from the river to the sea,” of rendering Israel judenrein, of denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. The APA has quietly but consequentially adopted the latter framing.
A Pattern of Institutional Failure
This is not the first time within APA that Jews have been subject to gaslighting, reverse victimization, and invalidation about their lived experiences. And it began way before October 7th, 20023. In 2016, the executive board of one of APA’s Divisions (there are 54 in total) endorsed the original Black Lives Matter platform statement — a document that characterized Israel as an apartheid and genocidal state and promoted BDS. When senior Jewish members of Division 17, including myself — all Fellows — expressed support for racial justice while raising concerns about the endorsement of positions targeting Israeli academics, we were dismissed. Our objections were characterized as merely “Jewish-identified” concerns. Requests for dialogue were ignored. Division leadership insisted that the perspectives of “Muslim-identified” and “Palestinian-identified” colleagues be centered in any revisions and suggested that critiquing elements of the BLM platform might replicate “colonialism.” Fear of aligning with the “Trump administration” was offered as a reason not to repudiate BDS.
The pattern is consistent: Jewish concerns get managed. Other concerns get accommodated.
There is one more telling detail. The term “weaponization” appears in the new antisemitism resolution — but nowhere in any APA resolution or statement on racism, sexism, LGBTQIA+ issues, or any other form of discrimination. Only antisemitism receives this qualifier. Only Jewish claims of hatred are preemptively marked as potentially manipulative. What does this say about who the largest mental health organization believes, and who it does not?
One may also ask why a resolution ostensibly about antisemitism spends significant energy addressing Palestinian rights. What other APA resolution about prejudice against a particular group pivots to appease groups outside that resolution’s scope?
During the same February 2026 council meeting, the APA also adopted a Statement on Reaffirming APA’s Commitment to Human Rights and Freedom of Expression, declaring opposition to “silencing or punishing non-violent advocacy.” Given that PJP has characterized Israel as genocidal, and that other members—across multiple APA listservs—have openly praised Hamas, championed BDS, and issued divisional statements that demonize Jews and rationalize the atrocities of October 7th, one is entitled to ask: precisely what advocacy is being suppressed?
The Stakes
This is what the APA’s Council of Representatives are spending an inordinate amount of institutional energy on — not the mental health crisis, not the epidemic of loneliness, not the collapse of access to care. Instead: dismantling protections for Jewish Americans, encoding antisemitic tropes into professional policy, and providing ideological cover for those who celebrate Jewish death.
It is a profound institutional failure and a moral disgrace. And it should alarm every psychologist — Jewish or not — who believes that professional organizations exist to protect the vulnerable, not to rationalize hatred dressed up as justice.
