Hate is not opposition
One of the more popular fallacies in argumentation is the “tu quoque” argument. “Tu quoque” means “you too” in Latin, and the fallacy – also referred to as “whataboutism” – is utilized when someone accused of a crime defends themself by pointing to the accuser’s crimes, or a general hypocrisy concerning the rule. For example, if Person A were accused of stealing a car by Person B, their “tu quoque” response would be either “Person B has also stolen cars in the past” or “well, everyone’s stealing cars these days, aren’t they?”
The fallacy is that other people’s bad behavior, or inconsistent enforcement of a rule, is no argument for innocence. Populists love this strategy because it deflects attention and absolves them from justifying their behavior. According to Anne Appelbaum’s “Twilight of Democracy,” Putin, especially, has successfully leveraged “whataboutism” when faced with accusations of corruption, domestically cultivating the perception that the West is equally if not more corrupt and broken than Russia is. Among those Putin has successfully converted to this view is U.S. President Donald Trump himself, who, when asked in a Fox News interview about whether Putin was a “killer,” responded that the United States had also killed many people.
In November 2025, the Disciplinary Court of the Israeli Bar Association in Tel Aviv ordered the suspension of Israeli-Arab lawyer Maha Ighbaria from practicing law for one year, over two Facebook posts she made on October 7, 2023 and the day after. The day of the Hamas massacre, Ighbaria wrote “Good morning Gaza”; on the following day, in response to criticism, she wrote, “I have always been and will always be on the side of my people, wherever they are, and by any form of resistance they choose that is legitimate against occupation, siege, and apartheid.” The Disciplinary Court convicted her of “offending the dignity of the legal profession.” Adalah – the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, who filed a petition in her defense, argued that the suspension was “based on subjective impressions rather than actual harm to the public interest.” As part of its defense, Adalah “presented multiple examples of Jewish lawyers posting openly racist or violent statements toward Palestinians… and in response to which the IBA has taken no disciplinary action.” Responding to the suspension, Ighbaria stated that it amounted to racism, and that “I have never supported, and will never support, any act of violence.” (Ighbaria’s appeal was ultimately successful, and in January 2026, the a higher disciplinary tribunal ordered a stay on her suspension.)
Last week, Israel’s politicized Central Elections Committee, mostly staffed by representatives of the outgoing Knesset, approved a petition to disqualify Balad chairman Sami Abu Shehadeh – third on the Arab Joint List’s parliamentary list – from running in the upcoming Knesset elections. The suspension derived from an article he wrote on October 8, 2023, where he called the Hamas attack on Israel “an important historical event in the military, political and strategic sense.” Shehadeh’s Arabic-language article – called “The Al-Aqsa Flood: Preliminary Observations” – also stated: “The important thing here is that Israel and its intelligence services are human beings like us. They do not know everything. They can be prevented from penetrating our countries, our parties, and our political movements – and this is if the will exists and we organize ourselves in the right way. Moreover, if small, besieged Gaza managed to do this and at this level, then others can do it more effectively and simply.”
A day after Israelis were tortured, raped, slaughtered, and kidnapped, Shehadeh does not hide his satisfaction at a massacre that “was not supposed to surprise anyone” and was “completely in line with the laws of physics” as a natural reaction to years of “occupation, siege, assassinations of leaders, daily killing of people, and violence to the sanctity of the Palestinian people.” Shehadeh criticizes the “arrogance” and “racist mentality” of both Israelis and Americans, and looks forward to the “political harvest” of the attack.
Put simply: a more hateful article could scarcely have been imagined, much less from a leader in a political party that aims to participate in the Israeli Knesset. Shehadeh does not hide his disgust with “Israelis,” who he needs to remind readers are “human beings like us.”
In the hearing for his expulsion, Shehadeh expressed remorse for his statements, saying that he “should not have written the article and should have condemned it clearly.” He said that, for him, “historic event” meant “an event where what comes after was not what was before,” and that he has always advocated for peaceful and political solutions. Backed by Arab and far-left parties, Shehadeh asserted that “the attempt to disqualify me is an attempt to silence the voice of Arab society,” and denounced the expulsion petition – initiated by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party – as blatantly racist. Democrats Party Chairman Yair Golan, who supported Shehadeh’s expulsion, was, according to these parties, “standing behind the ‘minister of the noose.’”
Golan defended his support of Shehadeh’s expulsion by saying that “true democratic partnership also requires red lines. The statements by Sami Abu Shehadeh just one day after October 7 are grave. Someone who wants Jewish-Arab partnership does not express themselves that way, period.” Golan is right.
Both Ighbaria and Shehadeh’s October 2023 statements clearly expressed hate. Not opposition – hate. Hate is wishing violence and death upon an enemy that is debatably human. Hate is a friendly “good morning” to Hamas, and an eager anticipation of the “political harvest” coming from the massacre, mutilation, sexual abuse, and hostage-taking of Israelis by the terror group. Neither Ighbaria nor Shehadeh could adequately defend their statements as legitimate within democratic discourse. Their defenses essentially amounted to, “well, Jews have said the same or worse about Palestinians.” There is no doubt that, after October 7, Israeli Jews – some of them in the outgoing Knesset – said terrible and hateful things about Palestinians without facing meaningful censure. Some of the more prominent statements, like those aired on the far-right Channel 14 news, were publicly opposed by media outlets or factions of Israelis more attentive to human rights and sympathetic to Palestinians. Most were not. This is unfortunate, and unfair. But it does not justify their own hate.
Hate is not opposition. “Opposition” is a democratic term: it is rule-based, moderate, and presumes a dialogue. Opposition does not dehumanize. It does not draw people to violent demonstrations. It does not lead people to kill or vandalize or harm others. Opposition does not excuse terror, or call for resistance “by any means.” Opposition does not call for the total elimination or removal of an ethnic or religious group from a piece of land. Opposition does not incite strong and powerful feelings of outrage. Hate does.
Hate is therefore a most potent tool for the populist. Populists don’t “oppose” policies, parties or people. They hate them. Hate requires no dialogue, no critical examination, and no particularly profound relationship to truth or history. Outside of Israel, and in limited circles within it, hatred of Israel is an essential policy and campaign tool for the international, progressive left. What’s not to hate? Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, settlements, occupation, hilltop youth, the flawed Gaza security “concept” which included a blockade, millions to Hamas in suitcase cash and regularly “mowing the lawn,” killing hundreds of Palestinians. The destructive Gaza war. The list goes on. Propagators of Israel-hate say: look at this mess! Let’s get rid of it. Forget internal peaceful opposition, forget national identity, forget incompetent leadership. This is unreformable. Jews can’t have a state – the world gave them one and look what happened. What a mistake.
Hate against Palestinians is also very useful for the strategic populist, within Israel and conservative circles abroad. What’s not to hate? Sinwar, Arafat, Leila Khalid, the PLO, the PFLP, starting civil wars in neighboring Arab countries, blowing up buses, restaurants, businesses, clubs, killing hundreds of Israeli and foreign civilians. The Hamas massacre on October 7, with sexual abuse, mutilation, and killing of Israelis reminiscent of the brutality of the Rwanda and Yazidi genocides. The list goes on. Propagators of Palestinian-hate say: look at this mess! Let’s get rid of it. Forget internal peaceful opposition, forget national identity, forget incompetent leadership. This is unreformable. Palestinians can’t have a state – Israel tried to give them Gaza and parts of the West Bank and look what happened. What a mistake.
Populism – and the hate it thrives on – has no place in good politics, which always includes a degree of measured opposition and a necessary willingness to compromise. Hatred is uncompromising, and it is inexcusable. Ben-Gvir’s hate does not excuse Hamas’ hate, Khameini’s hate does not excuse Smotrich’s hate, the hate of Columbia student activists does not excuse the hate of the hilltop youth, and so on. Alleged antisemitism within German conservative parties – like the CDU – does not excuse alleged antisemitism in the populist left. The immigrant-hatred of the AfD does not excuse the Israel-hatred of Die Linke. The countering of right-wing populism is not left-wing populism. The countering of Palestinian-hate is not Israel-hate.
The inconsistent application of rules that attempt to exclude hate and populism from political and professional life does not render them invalid, nor less urgent. There should always be a close examination of the legitimacy and breadth of such rules. Is an Arab lawyer who initially defended the Hamas attack on Facebook less capable of practicing law than, say, a Jewish lawyer who wrote in a public Whatsapp group: “…I want to see a crater in Gaza… for me, there are no innocents there”? Probably not. But both statements, in the words of the Disciplinary Court, “offend the dignity of the legal profession,” and, really, any profession.
The current information environment is characterized by an almost total blurring of the personal and the political, or the personal and the professional. Government officials transmit statements directly through their personal social media accounts, not through spokespeople or the press, to the public. White-collar professionals confess their feelings or document their day-to-day online or in public chat forums. The problem is not necessarily that there is no longer a clear distinction between the private and the public realm, but rather that people have become too dependent on documenting their private views on public platforms, particularly when those views are hateful, provocative, and likely to engender a strong response.
However, elected representatives should still be held to a higher standard than laypeople, even lawyers. Whether Shehadeh’s hatred will result in his disqualification from the Knesset list is a matter for the High Court. Sadly, petitions to disqualify Ben-Gvir and his Otzma Yehudit – paragons of hateful populism on the right – did not get through the politicized elections committee. Hopefully one day they will.
