“Normal to be Distressed”: UCLA Psychiatry Professors Rationalize Self-Immolation to Protest Israel

Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa caused a controversy recently at UCLA medical school after publicly rationalizing the self-immolation in front of Israel’s embassy of airman Aaron Bushnell in February to protest Israeli policies. Dr. Izar is listed as part of the UCLA staff. It was, according to one of the doctors, a “revolutionary suicide.”  We recently discussed a mandatory lecture at the UCLA medical school of one of the university’s “activists-in-residence” replete with anti-Semitic postings and racist rhetoric.

The professors made their comments as part of a panel on “Depathologizing Resistance” as reported  previously by The Washington Free Beacon.

Dr. Izar stated that Bushnell “carried a lot of distress…but does that mean that the actions he engaged in are any less valid?” She suggested that it is “normal to be distressed when you’re seeing this level of carnage [in Gaza].”

Dr. Moustafa is quoted as saying “Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological … reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society. It’s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war.”

Neither doctor ever evaluated or examined Bushnell. At the end of the discussion, Dr. Izar acknowledged that psychiatrists should not comment on people they have not evaluated.

There have been a few self-immolations in history as a form of protest, particularly the famous case of Thich Quang Duc who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War in 1963.

However, as a lay person, I would venture to say that it is not “normal” or “valid” to set yourself on fire in a protest. If self-immolation is the new normal, this could make the “publish or perish” culture of the faculty a bit more precarious at UCLA.

Between racist lectures from “activists-in-residence” and self-immolation rationalizations, it is not clear when UCLA medical students hunker down on such tangential matters like the central nervous system.