Recognizing Israel Is High Treason

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

It is shameful before God, before people, before history, and before the generations to come, for a Palestinian to stand boasting of his recognition of Israel, and to call on others to recognize it too. This is not one individual — it is an army, a whole faction, that has fallen into the mire of the Americans and clutched at Israel’s coattails, so as to be blessed with the stinking filth pouring onto their heads from the drains of its bowels. What has befallen Palestine? Columns of men who have lost their honor, for whom the dignity of the nation counts for nothing, feel no shame in defending Israel and recognizing it, and do not hesitate to invite others to join them at this degrading bottom.

Who in history is more base and vile than these tyrants who have raised the banners of treason over their heads and hold in their hands the shame of towels at the gates of the sacred homeland? Who is that most contemptible, reckless fool who sees in his own nation nothing but a tool that produces for him a day’s sustenance or less? Even the Native Americans, few and weak as they were, were ashamed to concede to the arrogance of the white newcomers. You may be weak, you may be driven into exile, you may be imprisoned or killed, but the shame, the utter shame, is to concede to your enemy’s aggression and to bestow legitimacy and glory upon all his atrocities.

Treason has its own philosophy in their eyes. The world has changed, they say, and one must be realistic and acknowledge reality, while those who insist on their rights see nothing of the world but illusions that only bring them more grief and pain. Now is the age of economics and money, not of honor, dignity, and rights. What matters is that you obtain money so that you can satisfy your desires, while the pursuit of illusory human dignity will only make material life harsher, more wretched, more miserable. Words like bowing down and humiliation have no meaning, because what matters is getting the money. There is no homeland without money, so let the homeland go if money is its substitute.

This is why these fallen scoundrels, wallowing in the pus of their own rotting souls, feel no shame in calling on the Palestinian people to recognize Israel, and do not hesitate to wage psychological and financial war against the people, in the hope that this might achieve the aims of their masters in Tel Aviv and Washington. And so the scarcity of money is not caused by America and Israel, but by those who live in the Stone Age and refuse to recognize Israel.

Can a Palestinian, an Arab, a Muslim imagine that Palestinian academics, intellectuals, factions, parties, leaders, veterans of the struggle, former prisoners, children of martyrs and of the wounded, and refugees who have lost their lands and homes, would ask those who do not recognize Israel to hasten to do so? Can anyone imagine how the Palestinian situation has deteriorated to reach such a point? How has the Palestinian situation reached the point where recognizing Israel has become a national demand? The traitor used always to search for a hole to hide in; today’s traitor, though, has platforms, podiums, and satellite channels, and is surrounded by hypocrites waiting for some of the fodder the Jews and Americans have bestowed on him.

And on top of this, they tell us it is not permissible to brand anyone a traitor. These are merely patriotic judgment calls, they say — our actions are only meant to serve the homeland and its citizens. Many people and factions have bowed before their demands. There are factions that whisper in your ear about their own treachery and their conspiring against the homeland and its citizens, yet in public they turn into the obedient student before his insolent teacher. We have seen with our own eyes this prostitution committed against our homeland and our people, and we said it was policy, not prostitution, and so we all paid the price. Some of us thought the matter was just a passing cloud that would end, only to find that cloud raining down upon us seasoned spies and agents receiving money, training, and media and military support.

They do not want us to describe them as traitors and agents, and they say that branding people as traitors is impermissible. No. They are agents, traitors, killers, criminals, degenerates, and scoundrels. They have sold the homeland, relinquished its rights, and will continue in this “occasion” to bargain over the women of Palestine, the Arabs, and the Muslims. And if we do not apply the word “traitor” to one who recognizes Israel, relinquishes the rights of the refugees, coordinates security with Israel, shakes the hands of the butchers of the Palestinian people, meets with them, and receives money from them, then who is the traitor? Is the traitor only that petty, contemptible little spy who informs Israeli intelligence about one individual or a handful of individuals, or is the traitor the one who sells the homeland wholesale? If this small-time spy deserves execution, what then does this treacherous agent deserve, who brings ruin upon the people and the homeland?

These traitors, spies, and agents draw in thousands of young men who are devoted to their homeland, mislead them, and set them to work against their own homeland in the service of its enemies. Blooming young men and young women with the faces of angels walk astray behind these brokers who recognize no god for themselves but their own appetites and pleasures, singing sweetly over the sufferings of the Palestinian people and the destruction of the Arabs and Muslims.

We ourselves have fallen short in confronting these successive waves of the fallen and these herds of traitors, but it is not too late. We must show courage and call things by their true names. We must not be ashamed before a traitor — and how could we be, when he is a shameless, fearless broker of the homeland? We must speak with clarity in our articles, our conversations, our seminars, and our political and social positions. We must continually agitate against them and call on those who engage and meet with them to stop doing so. Meeting with the unclean is support for him, and understanding with him is nothing but encouragement of his uncleanliness.

I direct myself to the writers of Palestine and the Arab world — men such as Ibrahim Hamami, Abdel Bari Atwan, Adel Samara, Sawsan Barghouti, Ibrahim Alloush, Nasser Qandil, Fawzi al-Shu’aibi, Mustafa Bakri, Abdel Halim Qandil, Muhammad al-Misfer, Abdullah al-Nafisi, and other giants of thought and letters — to sharpen their resolve and their pens to confront this terrifying treasonous apostasy, which will spare neither homeland nor citizens.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “الاعتراف بإسرائيل خيانة عظمى” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.