Avigail Abarbanel is an Israeli-born psychotherapist, clinical supervisor, and activist currently residing in Scotland. Born in Israel in 1964, she completed her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) before moving abroad and studying psychotherapy in Australia and the United Kingdom. Her political writing applies trauma-informed psychology to analyze Israeli society and Middle Eastern politics.
Abarbanel is the editor of the 2001 book Beyond Tribal Loyalty: Stories of Renegade Israelites, a collection of essays by former Israelis who rejected Zionism. In her political and clinical commentary for outlets like Mondoweiss, CounterPunch, and Electronic Intifada, she reflects on the racial hierarchies and nationalism present during her upbringing in Israel, writing: “I was, in effect, ‘mixed-race’ by Israeli standards, but still not doing quite as badly as the ‘black’ Jews. Not many people are aware of the Israel that I knew as a child. It was a harsh, nasty, unkind and racist place, even to its own people. ……At school I was repeatedly told that we, Jews, were innately more moral and ethical than all other people.“
In 2001, during the military escalations of the Second Intifada, Abarbanel formally renounced her Israeli citizenship, publicly relinquishing her passport to end personal complicity in state violence against Palestinians.
Drawing on her background in psychotherapy, Abarbanel views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of collective trauma, advocating for a single democratic state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all inhabitants. Summarizing the ethical foundation of her human rights advocacy, she noted: “I do not believe any one human being or group are more valuable than another. All humans desire much more than just survival. We need to work to create a world where all human beings are enabled to fulfil their potential but to do this work well and sustainably we have to have a solid sense of ourself.“