This article calls for the American Psychological Association (APA) to proactively include the elimination of antisemitism or prejudice against Jewish people in its current mission to disassemble all forms of racism from its organization as well as society. In this article, Jews (estimated as 2.4% of the population) are defined as a people with a common identity, ethnicity, and religion as they experience prejudice; their intersection in Jewish identity; the history and characteristics of antisemitism and its current manifestation in public life, academic institutions, and psychology. Despite Jews having made major contributions to the development of psychology as a profession, historically through the first half of the 20th century, Jews were systematically discriminated against within the discipline of psychology through quotas for acceptance into graduate training, discriminatory employment practices in university psychology departments, and most egregiously through the espousing of “scientific racism” including eugenics by prominent leaders in the APA. We describe how historically leaders in the APA engaged in overt and covert antisemitism while the APA continues to do little or nothing to combat it. We then offer suggestions for the mitigation and elimination of this form of bias, discrimination, and hate as it once again escalates in society. We recommend that the APA engages in research about antisemitism, its predictors, consequences, and power; evaluates the efficacy of intervention programs; encourages contact with various multicultural minoritized groups; and disseminates knowledge to educate about the psychological effects of antisemitism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
How can anyone object to that?
If he wants to write a response to the same journal, perhaps as a letter, that would be fine. But this is the title of his piece: "A Call for Retraction: The Recent American Psychologist Article on Antisemitism."
His response makes it clear that he is at least as biased as the authors.
There is also a deeper issue that I cannot ignore. Throughout the article, the authors avoid providing readers with crucial context for understanding much of the criticism of Israel and the ideology of Zionism: namely, the country’s decades-long oppression of the Palestinian people. And while they warn of “the increased threat of annihilation of the state of Israel” (p. 4), the words “Nakba,” “occupation,” and “apartheid” never appear.
Must every article on antisemitism defend Israel from scurrilous charges that have nothing to do with the topic? Apparently, when Israel is even mentioned peripherally, Zionists must defend themselves. Not only that, but they must accept the false, anti-Zionist framework as their starting point.
This is not a call for debating the contents of the article. It is a call to silence Zionist academics and psychology professionals and to force them to deny their own reality.
Retracting an article in an academic journal is a nuclear option. It is used when the paper is fraudulent, relying on falsified data or plagiarized. I do not have access to the original article so I cannot judge the quality of Eidelson's critique, but nothing that he writes justifies the demand for retraction.
Which means it isn't a debate but instead a call to silence those who disagree with him.
The response is written as if it is a reasonable response, but what it demands is not reasonable at all.
