June 26, 2026 • 10:00 – 11:30am PDT (find your local time)
What Occupation Does to the Soul:
Global Reverberations of Palestinian Historical Trauma
A Community Gathering with Dr. Samah Jabr, Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, facilitated by Dr. Jess Ghannam
Join us for a conversation marking the book launch of Radiance and Pain in Resilience, a powerful collection of essays by Palestinian psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and internationally respected mental health advocate Dr. Samah Jabr.
We are gathering in the midst of genocide. The massive, deliberate traumatization of an entire people, cheered, funded, and shielded from accountability by Western governments, is unfolding in real time. As Israel’s assault on Gaza continues to annihilate bodies, families, and entire lineages, this conversation refuses to look away. It asks what it is to tend to the psyche under conditions of systematic destruction.
Drawing on decades of clinical practice, political analysis, and lived experience under occupation, Dr. Jabr examines the psychological consequences of colonization, displacement, and historical trauma on the Palestinian people. Through personal reflections, case studies, and cultural critique, she challenges dominant Western paradigms of mental health and offers a decolonial, psycho-spiritual framework rooted in dignity, collective care, resistance, and truth.
Dr. Jabr will be joined by Dr. Gabor Maté—physician, trauma expert, author of The Myth of Normal—and Dr. Jennifer Mullan, clinical psychologist and author of Decolonizing Therapy. The conversation will be facilitated by Dr. Jess Ghannam, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences at UCSF.
Together, we will reflect on:
- How political realities inhabit the body and psyche
- How collective trauma moves through generations
- How professionals hold mental health under occupation and injustice
- What Palestine reveals about the world we live in
- How liberation-centered approaches to mental health can restore dignity, truth and accountability
This conversation invites us into a deeper understanding of resilience beyond recovery. As a reckoning with history, as a practice of dignity and solidarity, and as a path to remaining human in the face of dehumanization.
