Pro-peace Palestinians and the ‘traitor’ libel

“Traitor,” “kaffir,” “Mossad agent,” “race traitor,” “sellout,” “Nazi,” “genocidal Zionist,” “liar,” “Jew.”

These are some of the epithets leveled at Palestinians and other Arabs that call for reconciliation with Israel, and criticize Hamas for its intractable and devastating role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Hamza Howidy, 26, from Gaza, is an illustrative case. He is one of a minority of Palestinians, who, at considerable risk to their own personal safety, are outspokenly pro-reconciliation. In an interview with The Times of Israel, Howidy described how over the years he had secretly been speaking with Israelis on social media. He said, “[Israelis] are normal people. There is a small minority of extremists, but with most of them, you can reach a reconciliation. You should just understand their concerns – particularly when it comes to security. Just look at their history.”

After Howidy participated in a protest in 2019 against the lack of employment in Gaza, Hamas arrested and tortured him several times. He eventually found asylum in Germany, where he lives today and advocates for reconciliation and criticizes Hamas.

In an editorial in June 2024 he argued that atrocities Hamas commits against ordinary Gazans are grossly underreported in the West: “If their heart bleeds for Gaza, why are they not outraged at all of the violence that Gazans face—including the violence of Hamas?” Following its publication, detractors quickly unsheathed the traitor libel. For instance, one X user (and there are many more) said, “Shame on you for lying and betraying your own Palestinian people and joining the Zionist enemy! Your articles are filled with so many lies it’s not even funny you Zionist traitor.”

You’re just another collaborator . Collaborators are worse than the oppressors. Collaborators are traitors.

— Charlie the unicorn (@Chargambder) July 3, 2024

Of course, Western commentators using the traitor libel against a Hamas critic that actually grew up in Gaza and advocates for Palestinian rights is the pinnacle of pretentiousness. Jews would call this chutzpah. But this behavior is just a manifestation of the broad tendency of many Westerners to vilify and romanticize opposing parties in complex conflicts, reducing sets of issues to two-dimensional cartoons.

This topic warrants a comprehensive analysis (which some have carried out). But in short, many Westerners on the Left view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a zero-sum struggle between the oppressor and the oppressed, where Israel is the former. Peering through the lens of the Western anti-colonial/anti-racist discourse, Israelis are seen as white colonizers of the native Palestinians and their lands. Any acts of violence the oppressed commit is legitimized in the name of resistance.

Deep misconceptions aside, one can quite easily observe that this black-and-white view struggles immensely to digest the multilayered reality. For example, as Howidy points out, many Westerners simply evade the fact Hamas inflicts massive harm on the Palestinians. Some of the same people that for years have argued that “words are violence” are indeed quite verbally violent when they brand people traitors and champion groups that commit mass murder. And many who have argued for the primacy of the “lived experience” fail to live up to their professed ideals. Does Howidy’s lived experience of being arrested and tortured for peacefully protesting not count as evidence that Hamas is not aligned with the pursuit of human flourishing and social justice?

For Howidy’s accusers from the Arab and Muslim world, the analysis is separate. For starters, it’s worth noting that historically, in the Middle East, accusations of treason for pro-reconciliation initiatives are nothing new. The high-profile cases are well-documented.

In the pre-state days of the 1920s and 1930s, Al-Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, incited riots against Jews, labeled Arab moderates as traitors, and ruthlessly silenced them. These anti-pragmatic tendencies were prominent leading up to the set of decisions ahead of the 1948 UN Partition Plan and in the aftermath of the War of Independence and the Nakba. Going forward, six years after Egypt’s catastrophic defeat in the Yom Kippur war of 1973, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signed the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, ending decades of bitter and bloody hostilities between the two nations. The majority of ordinary Egyptian citizens reacted positively, but several Arab leaders and many Islamist fundamentalists denounced Sadat as “treacherous,” and accused him of “selling out” the Palestinian cause for personal and political gain.

Hafez Al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, Yasser Arafat, among others, condemned Sadat. In Sidon and in Damascus, protesters burned effigies of him. Anti-Sadat protests erupted in the West Bank, Gaza, and in other cities across the Middle East. Two and a half years later, Sadat was assassinated by a member of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, his “treason” is often cited as a key motivator for the killing.

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Nonetheless, the peace treaty has held for forty five years and counting.

Arafat, too (though the claim that he was pro-reconciliation would be dubious at best), was branded with the traitor libel, when he signed the Oslo Accords in 1993, by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, among others. The same goes for King Hussain of Jordan, one year later, when he reached a peace agreement with Israel. Today, the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Egypt are all derided as traitors – both by fellow Arabs and Muslims and also anti-Israel Westerners in the streets, on social media, and on college campuses.

Throughout the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, accusations of treachery have been a significant tool in the Arab and Muslim worlds to enforce ideological conformity and suppress dissent. This libel has often emerged during crucial moments when factions have considered reconciliation or compromise with Israel. One example we saw is the tension between Islamists and moderates during the Al Husseini era, who targeted those within the Palestinian community open to concessions with the Zionists. Similarly, when the PLO transitioned into the Palestinian Authority (PA), conceding the goal of eradicating Israel for state-building, Islamists branded them as traitors. In 2006, the Islamists (Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad) waged a bloody civil war against Fatah in Gaza and managed to expel it. 

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In this Middle Eastern conflict, the traitor libel thus serves a dual purpose: legitimizing violence against those advocating for reconciliation and entrenching anti-reconciliation sentiments within society. It reinforces a collective anti-Israel ideology by discouraging dialogue and compromise. This dynamic illustrates how deeply intertwined accusations of betrayal are with the political and cultural fabric. The traitor libel is one little tool in the anti-reconciliation propaganda tool-kit, but it can do damage. As one unnamed, pro-reconciliation Palestinian man from West Bank recently said on an episode of the Honestly podcast, “In the West Bank, when they call you a traitor, it means they’re going to kill you.”

By wielding this libel, hardliners prevent emerging and alternative voices from gaining a platform and a foothold in the discourse. They try (and often succeed) to ensure that fear and conformity prevail over reconciliation-oriented dialogue, fostering an environment where violence is seen as the only viable path forward. This path has led both Israelis and Palestinians to disaster.

Whether in the Middle East or in the West, for quite different historical reasons, proponents of the “dismantle Israel” ideology are quick on the trigger with accusations of treachery against Palestinians and other Arabs who call for reconciliation or criticize Israel’s enemies. But if these people truly want a better future for Palestinians, as they often claim, they should amplify the reconciliatory voices, instead of trying to silence them. One day, hopefully, these voices will play a role in clearing the rubble on the elusive road to a better shared future between Israelis and Palestinians.