Orli Peter

Neuropsychologist, trauma specialist, former associate professor at Mount St. Mary's University, child of a Holocaust survivor, CEO, Israel Healing Initiative.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Link to open letter. Whether you are a concerned memer of the public or a mental health professional, please consider signing.

https://t.co/IMMLsnKQH0

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

The pressure is mounting. The Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR) has launched an open letter urging the Consider urging the U.S. Department of Education to suspend federal recognition of the American Psychological Association accreditation for one year.

Here is what is now at stake:
The APA's Commission on Accreditation would stand to lose federal authority and access to federal funding for the training programs they accredit. They also would lose prestige nand credibility, and would face increased federal scrutiny and pressure to reform.

It may take sweeping structural reform to root out the deep ideological rot within the @APA , right up to its newly elected leadership. And even the loss of federal recognition and funding for a year may not be enough. But this is a start, and a significant one.

Whether you are a concerned member of the public or a mental health professional. Please sign.

[Link in comments.}

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

@afshineemrani Please post the study.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

@jarvis_best You win the internet today. 😅

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

2) The examples of antisemitism, extremism, and even the glorification of terrorism within the American Psychological Association are so egregious and so numerous that @SwipeWright couldn’t possibly fit them all into his Wall Street Journal essay.

Here is one disturbing example included in the congressional letter but omitted from the WSJ.

The president of APA’s Division 39, the Society for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology, Dr. Lara Sheehi:

* Taught that Zionism is a mental illness.
* Called for the destruction of Zionism.
* Referred to Israelis as “genocidal f**ks.”
* Following October 7, wrote, “How dare you slander the names of our martyrs as terrorists.”

Yet she was allowed to remain in office despite public complaints. After her term ended, she returned temporarily as president when her successor stepped down and was thanked by the incoming president for her leadership during a difficult period.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

It is an absolute disgrace that so many of our leaders in psychology and mental health use their social media platforms to preach love, peace, compassion, and human rights in distant countries, yet remain conspicuously silent about the antisemitism festering within one of the most powerful institutions in our own profession: the American Psychological Association, an organization with over 190,000 members.

The APA is supposed to represent psychologists and uphold the ethical standards of our profession. Yet serious allegations of antisemitism within its own ranks have been met with a stunning lack of accountability.

Where are the prominent psychologists and mental health leaders who are so eager to condemn injustice everywhere else in the world but are silent inside our own ranks?

If they already use their secular pulpit to highlight social or political issues, ASK THEM WHY they are silent about what is happening inside their own professional house.

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

🚨 NEW: For the @WSJ, @Hartz_PhD and I expose the ideological takeover of the American Psychological Association.

The APA is facing the possible loss of its federal accreditation authority following allegations of widespread antisemitism.

But while the APA's antisemitism problem is serious, it's only a symptom of a much deeper ideological rot.

The organization has become so captured by radical left-wing political activism that its commitment to scientific objectivity competence is now in serious doubt.

We examined the program for this year's major APA Division 39 conference, which drew nearly 800 attendees and held 90 panels over four days.

By our count, roughly 70 of the 90 panels were overtly political, and always left-wing. Topics included abolishing the family, queer anarchist psychoanalysis, dismantling gender assessment guidelines, and white supremacy. One session even concluded with a drag show.

There was at least some hope that the threat of losing federal accreditation might prompt some institutional soul-searching. It didn't.

Instead, APA members just elected Candice Hargons as their next president. Her campaign identifies "systemic intersectional oppression" as the profession's "common enemy" and calls for rejecting the traditional scientific notions of objectivity.

Psychologists wield enormous influence over vulnerable patients, and the people seeking treatment deserve the peace of mind knowing that the care they're receiving care is evidence based and not tainted radical politics.

We believe most would agree that federal accreditation should actually mean something. If the APA cannot distinguish its scientific mission from its political activism, the Education Department should reconsider whether it deserves the government's endorsement as an authority over psychological training.

Read our full essay in the Wall Street Journal below:
🔗https://t.co/bmL1dCkyIx

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

I’m reposting this to balance out all the death threats I get. Thank you @Scribemoon for making it even!

[SCRIBEMOON @SCRIBEMOON]

@natemate111 Follow @orlipeter . She is a trauma therapist here in LA who has been working with Nova Survivors. Her tweets the last few days on the deliberate cruelty of this, to deny Jews even their pain and sorrow, she has brilliant insights.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

I'm so curious about what happens in the brains of traumatized people when you put a camera in their hands. How can filmmaking become part of the healing process?

Movie producer @RosenmanHoward and I had a wonderful, intimate dinner with @NetaAriel, the director of Ma’aleh, one of Jerusalem’s leading film schools, and was named Woman of the Year in 2015.

And Ma’aleh has an impressive record, its graduates created the hit Israeli television series Srugim, its films have won international recognition, and Girl No. 60427 earned a prestigious BAFTA Student Film Award in 2022.

But the work they do that really got me curious was Ma’aleh’s Video Therapy program, which puts cameras in the hands of October 7th and other trauma survivors and helps them turn painful experiences into films they create and control.

Especially in today's hostile environment, where so much of their suffering has been ignored, distorted, or erased from academia, international media coverage, and even psychological treatment training, I’m fascinated by the therapeutic possibilities of giving these survivors control over how their stories are told,

And the neuropsychologist in me is eager to see something else: pre- and post-treatment qEEGs to examine whether, and how, this process changes brain functioning.

Stay tuned.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Interviewed by @MizellPreston of @FNCDigitalDesk

Trauma psychologist Dr. Orli Peter, who founded the Israel Healing Initiative, a nonprofit that has been providing high-tech trauma treatment for people impacted by the Oct. 7 attack, told Fox News Digital that the demonstrations across the country "manipulate the public," weaponize the anniversary, and detract from the mourning of Jewish people.

"Demonstrating while Jews are mourning on Oct. 7 weaponizes the anniversary," Peter explained. "It serves two purposes for the activists: One is to manipulate the public by interrupting the mourning before empathy settles on Jewish suffering and responsibility points to Hamas."

"The other is to show power over the mourners, telling them, 'Even in your grief, in your memory, in your most vulnerable day, we can invade," she added.

https://t.co/NqrL2tYx2p

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Link here.
https://t.co/BncZAGNS7F

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Why would anti-Israel activists choose October 7, of all days, to demonstrate across America, knowing that Jews are mourning the worst massacre of their people since the Holocaust?

Fox NewsDigital interviewed me today for an article examining the vast network organizing these demonstrations and the money behind it. They asked me to explain the psychology of choosing this particular day.

I believe the timing serves two purposes.

First, to hijack public attention before empathy can settle on Jewish suffering and responsibility for the massacre can settle on Hamas. The demonstrations interrupt the mourning and shift attention away from the victims.

Second, to show Jews that even their grief is not beyond the reach of those who wish to intimidate them. Choosing this day sends a message to the mourners:

“Even in your grief, in your memory, on your most vulnerable day, we can invade.”

Link in comments.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

...To choose this day to descend on mourners with chants, accusations and political theater takes a body opened by grief and pushes the dagger deeper. This is true even if you sincerely believe genocide occurred. People can be manipulated and still become agents of cruelty. https://t.co/ubcyW6ufX6

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Let me say this plainly: if you are planning to join one of the demonstrations on October 7, you are allowing yourself to participate in an act of cruelty and desecration.

This anniversary will reactivate trauma-related memory networks for many survivors, families and witnesses. Feelings, images, bodily responses and grief tied to October 7 can return with extraordinary force. Mourning is one way the mind begins to organize fragments of that pain: remembering, making sense of what happened, allowing grief to be felt.

To choose this day to descend on mourners with chants, accusations and political theater takes a body opened by grief and pushes the dagger deeper. This is true even if you sincerely believe genocide occurred. People can be manipulated and still become agents of cruelty. Victims of propaganda can still do cruel things.

There are two psychological effects to choosing today. The first has to do with a propaganda win. You interrupt public mourning before empathy has time to settle on Jewish suffering. Not even for a moment can public attention be allowed to rest on Jewish pain, even on the anniversary of the slaughter. Empathy may lead people to ask who did this.

The second has to do with inflicting power. Jews do not get to stand together publicly and grieve without you entering the space. Jews do not get to hold the memory of the people they lost without being shouted over. Jews do not get to be vulnerable without discovering that even their most sacred vulnerability will be invaded.

There are 364 other days to demonstrate, accuse Israel, condemn the war, demand Palestinian rights, or make whatever political argument you wish.

Choosing October 7 means finding the deepest wound, ripping away the bandage, and turning the reopened flesh into a political stage. Demonstrating today should leave a stain on your moral self image.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Let me say this plainly: if you are planning to join one of the demonstrations on October 7, you are allowing yourself to participate in an act of cruelty and desecration.

This anniversary will reactivate trauma-related memory networks for many survivors, families and witnesses. Feelings, images, bodily responses and grief tied to October 7 can return with extraordinary force. Mourning is one way the mind begins to organize fragments of that pain: remembering, making sense of what happened, allowing grief to be felt.

To choose this day to descend on mourners with chants, accusations and political theater takes a body opened by grief and pushes the dagger deeper. This is true even if you sincerely believe genocide occurred. People can be manipulated and still become agents of cruelty. Victims of propaganda can still do cruel things.

There are two psychological effects to choosing today. The first has to do with a propaganda win. You interrupt public mourning before empathy has time to settle on Jewish suffering. Not even for a moment can public attention be allowed to rest on Jewish pain, even on the anniversary of the slaughter. Empathy may lead people to ask who did this.

The second has to do with inflicting power. Jews do not get to stand together publicly and grieve without you entering the space. Jews do not get to hold the memory of the people they lost without being shouted over. Jews do not get to be vulnerable without discovering that even their most sacred vulnerability will be invaded.

There are 364 other days to demonstrate, accuse Israel, condemn the war, demand Palestinian rights, or make whatever political argument you wish.

Choosing October 7 means finding the deepest wound, ripping away the bandage, and turning the reopened flesh into a political stage. Demonstrating today should leave a stain on your moral self image.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

This is the same tactic as the street protests going on right now. Acknowledge Jewish grief just long enough to move past it, then turn October 7 back into an attack on Israel. They cannot let people sit with Jewish suffering long enough for empathy to land there, because that risks Hamas losing even one moment in the propaganda battle, even on the anniversary of the massacre.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.

Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.

To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Your statement is basically the verbal version of what the protesters are doing in the street right now. Give Jewish grief a nod, then pivot immediately to attacking Israel. Even if you believe all the accusations against Israel, why interrupt this day when there are 364 others. You can’t let Hamas lose even one point in the propaganda battle, even on October 7. You can’t let people sit with Jewish suffering long enough for empathy to land there. This is unconscionable.

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

If you would like to help or learn more about our work, check here. https://t.co/u5C6TXV0Df

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Three years ago, I watched the first interviews with October 7 survivors, and despite more than 30 years of treating trauma, I had never seen anything like it.

I had worked with people traumatized by 9/11, Iranian refugees fleeing the Islamic regime, Israelis and Palestinians, rape survivors, soldiers, victims of violence. I thought I understood the outer limits of what human beings could do to one another.

October 7 changed that.

Children deliberately burned alive, women raped so brutally that witnesses I later treated were left in profound shock.

A month later, Daniel and his brother Neria were referred by Maman nonprofit to my Beverly Hills clinic with severe PTSD.

On October 7, they had been among the thousands of young people trying to escape the Nova Music Festival while Hamas gunmen fired at them. They recovered a weapon from a fallen soldier. While one brother fired back, the other dragged wounded survivors to cover beneath an armored vehicle. Their best friend was captured by Hamas and held in a tunnel.

They were so traumatized they could not sit on the waiting-room couch long enough to fill out an intake form. I gave them simple neurostimulation immediately just so they could sit long enough to begin.

Within a week, they were stable enough to return home.

Before they left, they told me: “We need treatment like this in Israel. If you come, we’ll have 50 people lined up outside.”

That was the beginning of the Israel Healing Initiative.

Three years later, we have treated more than 150 survivors, including people who were suicidal, and trained clinicians in these methods.

The first photo is a still from a video Daniel took on October 7 while he and Neria were pulling wounded survivors to cover. The second is Daniel today.

Three years later, the need has not ended.
Please help us continue this work.
Help us keep bringing them back to life. (Link in comments.)

[Orli Peter @orlipeter]

Heroism is contagious.

@Mr_Andrew_Fox

[Andrew Fox @Mr_Andrew_Fox]

Jewish friends, it is insane that antisemitism is now officially mainstream in one of our political parties.

All I can promise is that they have to go through me and many others first. If these Nazis gain power, I'll physically put myself between them and you, and I'll smile.