Mick Hartley

Jews don't count, yet again:

The professional body for counsellors has “censored” an article about Jewish trauma in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack over fears that it would trigger a backlash.

The British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy pulled a piece from its quarterly magazine on the eve of its publication, citing “unease” around the possible “ramifications” it could have.

Written by Dr Sandi Mann, a mental health practitioner, the article highlighted “the challenges of working with a traumatised community” in the UK as Jews struggle to come to terms with the massacre that took place in southern Israel.

It also discussed how the charity Jewish Action for Mental Health, based in Manchester, set up an innovative “mass trauma response unit” to work with groups of people simultaneously instead of the standard one-to-one model used by counsellors.

Mann stressed that the article was about the experience of British Jews, not Israelis, and had been initially well received by the editor, who was “supportive and sympathetic” to the content. Various revisions were made before it was sent back to her for a final proof just before the magazine, the Counselling at Work journal, was printed.

However, she received an email at the 11th hour informing her that it was being scrapped due to the BACP’s senior leadership team feeling “uneasy”. The editor later called her to explain their “fears” about what could happen if they published the piece.

Mann, who has written for every issue of the magazine for the past 10 years, told The Times that the decision “definitely” amounted to censorship.

She said: “Jews and their experiences are being marginalised by the culture of fear, threats and intimidation.

“They say that ‘Jews Don’t Count’ and it really feels that I’m living this. This was the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust — the impact on the Jewish community can’t be denied….

“To have the article pulled made me feel that we don’t count, that our trauma has been invalidated, that no other community would be treated like this; we don’t have to present the suffering of lots of different sides when we talk about other terrorist atrocities.”

Would an article on any other group that had experienced trauma – Muslims, say – be pulled like this? I think we know the answer to that one.