Scarlet Wong a Sydney-based psychologist who served as mental health activity manager in Gaza in March 2024 with MSF also spoke at the Friends of Palestine event.

Labor Teal and cross bench MP’s Ged Kearny, Zali Steggall, Kate Chaney, Helen Haines and David Pocock at a Gaza discussion in the main committee room of Parliament House in Canberra. Thursday 28th August 2025 Photograph by Mike Bowers

Wong became very emotional as she described what she had witnessed:

Helping people down on their luck was a part of our national identity. When my parents, who were refugees, came to Australia, the Fraser government once sent Qantas planes to airlift refugees, and I grew up believing in these values, which is why I work for MSF, where I visited the West Bank in 2021 and Gaza last year, I’ve been asked to share what mental health conditions I saw in Gaza, so I’ll give you the example of Tom, but I won’t say how I know him, as I fear for his life.

Tom was hit by an air strike and almost died suffering severe injuries. He was taken to hospital immediately by his family. Israeli soldiers then stormed the hospital.

They arrested Tom for surviving their strike, and immediately snapped his crutches and beat his wounds. Soldiers then transferred him to did him [an Israeli] prison, known as a place where humanity goes to die.

They showed him pictures of his wife and sister and told him, we’ve killed them all. They showed him pictures of his house and said, we’ve blown it up. They pretended to offer him food, and as he reached for it, they stomped on his hand and left it to go gangrenous. They deprived him of medical care. A female soldier mocked him, threatening sexual violence if he didn’t stand

Tom’s family now tends to a broken man still imprisoned in his mind in a state of complete dissociation. So what diagnosis should I give someone who’s dissociated after being psychologically and physically tortured, while the destruction of hospitals has left people with pre existing psychiatric conditions like schizophrenia, wandering the streets without treatment and inpatient care, the majority of presentations do not constitute pathology.

Dissociation, hyper vigilance, panic attacks are all appropriate survival responses to psychological torture, including the persistent hovering of high tech drones threatening to kill at any moment.

I’m a mother of three, and last year, yes, I was terrified to go to Gaza, but I was more afraid of looking into my children’s faces if I were to tell them that I did nothing when Palestinians were being ethnically cleansed.