Dear friends,

1. Bethlehem-based Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist Dr Mansour Shehadeh this week published an article ‘Towards Better mental health services in Palestine’, which can be reached here: http://tinyurl.com/hjjs2nr  “Palestinian society”, she writes, “continues to reflect on developing better care for the most vulnerable and marginalized people, thus showing that it remains on the side of ‘life’ and can continue to be constructive and creative in a context marked by continuous attempts to break the vital momentum of an entire people.”

2. BDS: One of the aims of UKPMHN is to encourage the mental health community to consider from a position of knowledge and principle its position on the call from Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS).  The expansion of the BDS movement has generated a fierce counter-attack from Israel and its Western allies, declaring BDS immoral (Gove declared it “worse than Apartheid”!). An update on the Movement and its achievements over this last, difficult year, see: http://tinyurl.com/h2f3k59    Donate to the BDS movement here:https://bdsmovement.net/donate

(And we congratulate Eran Cohen, candidate for the post of President of The Union of Jewish Students, for his pro-BDS stand. A non-Zionist, Eran seeks to turn UJS from a propaganda vehicle for the Israeli Goverment into a body representing the interests of Jewish students of all political persuasions: http://tinyurl.com/hasuxuk)

3. The Palestine Prisoners Solidarity Network, Samidoun, issued this tribute to the late Fidel Castro, reminding us that Cuba co-sponsored UN Resolution 3379 that condemned the racist nature of Zionism in 1975. The article includes a further link to a speech by Castro from 2001 calling for “an end to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in amazement.”http://tinyurl.com/jc3fkzg