Beyond intragroup betrayal during intergroup relational peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

This article addresses a neglected human cost of relational peacebuilding, identified in an earlier article on ‘peace as betrayal’. The focus here is how relational peacebuilders can respond to painful accusations of betrayal by family-type group members evoked by working with the ‘other side’. Continuing to draw on the reflections of experienced peace practitioners from South Africa, the Israel-Palestine region and the conflict in and about Northern Ireland, a contrasting distinction is made between two routes: a ‘clarification’ route that explains why working with ‘them’ is not a betrayal of ‘us’ vs a ‘counter-critique’ response that attempts to turn the traitor tables on the accusers. An evaluative discussion of the counter-critique route explores the pitfalls of political abuse, avoidance of shared responsibility and underestimating ‘thin’ relations (Margalit), as well as the complementary potential of the clarification and the counter-critique routes beyond peace as betrayal.

KEYWORDS:

• Betrayal
• morality of betrayal
• intragroup relational peacebuilding
• reconciliation

Introduction: two routes beyond perceived ‘family’ betrayal

When Chen Alon,¹ a former major in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and from a strong Zionist and Holocaust survivor family background, decided publicly to work with Palestinian ex-fighters towards a just peace, he was met with this reaction:

A very close friend of my parents said to my father, ‘I saw the name of your son in the newspaper, but let’s not get into it because you know what I think. I think they should put them against the wall and shoot all of them, all these traitors’.²

Other members of the Israeli-Palestinian NGO Combatants for Peace, as well as peace practitioners from South Africa and the conflict in and about Northern Ireland, who participated in our Beyond Dehumanisation research project testified to similar accusations from family, friends and members of their communities.³ This international research project included a total of 24 experienced peace practitioners, most directly involved in and/or affected by violent political conflict and became involved in NGO-based relational peace work. Facilitated reflective dialogues in each conflict region highlighted accusations of intragroup, ‘family’ betrayal as a neglected and under-explored aspect of the lived experience of peace practitioners reaching out to former outgroup enemies. To deepen our understanding of this human cost of intergroup relational peacebuilding, we drew on these practitioners’ reflections, and especially Margalit’s theory of betrayal as the ‘undermining of thick relations’.⁴

In this article, we focus on how these practitioners responded to the perception of their intergroup peacebuilding as a betrayal of the tightly knit, family–type groups to which they belonged. We identify two routes beyond perceived intragroup betrayal that emerged from the Beyond Dehumanisation project. The first route is alluded to in this statement by Bassam Aramin,⁵ co–founder of Combatants for Peace and leading member of The Parents’ Circle-Family Forum, an NGO formed by hundreds of bereaved Palestinian and Israeli family members to help break the transgenerational cycle of retaliatory violence⁶

It’s very important to know – not to accept the narrative of your enemy, of the other side, but to know it. As Netta said yesterday, ‘What do those Arabs, those Palestinians, what do they want from us?’ It’s the same how we think, ‘Why do Israelis occupy us? What do they want from us?’.⁷

This distinction between ‘knowing’ (understanding) and ‘accepting’ (agreement) is representative of what might be termed the clarification route beyond perceived intragroup betrayal – the emphasis is on carefully explaining to ingroup members why there is a need to understand and work with outgroup ‘enemies’, while stressing continuing (strong) disagreement with the ‘narrative’ of ‘the other side’.

The second beyond betrayal route came to the fore in Chen Alon’s response, which included this provocative challenge to his community:

That was another price – of not only doing this [work with Palestinian Combatants for Peace] secretly, but saying ‘I am standing, I am proud of what I am doing. I feel that I am the real patriot. I am saving my country, I am saving my people, I am doing the right thing not only for me…’.⁸

Instead of clarifying why he is not a traitor, he offers a profound moral and political critique of ingroup members who are not doing ‘the right thing’ and who do not share his newfound commitment to stop the unjust Occupation. This kind of moral turning of the tables on ingroup accusers represents what we term the counter–critique route beyond perceived intragroup betrayal.

In this article, we flesh out both routes with further examples and initial reflections from the Beyond Dehumanisation project. We then devote most of our attention to discussing the second route since this counter–critique route explicitly enters the rather tricky terrain of the politics and morality of betrayal.⁹ In support of peacebuilders like Chen Alon, who are committed to this counter–critique route, we begin to formulate a moral defence for this kind of response to painful accusations of intragroup betrayal. Firstly, we discuss the relevance of the pitfall of political abuse when ‘thick’ family relations are metaphorically extended to large groups. Secondly, we explore the potential connection between peacebuilders being accused of intragroup betrayal and those accusers’ avoidance of shared responsibility for harm inflicted on ‘the other side’. Thirdly, we apply Margalit’s prioritisation of ‘thin’ over ‘thick’ relations to peace practitioners in the Beyond Dehumanisation project who have taken the counter-critique route. This moral defence of the counter–critique route, aimed at peacebuilders who are members of dominant or oppressive groups, is followed by a comparative discussion of both routes that addresses some of the pitfalls of the counter-critique route. In the concluding section we highlight the relevance of these routes beyond (perceived) ‘family’ betrayal for the sustainability of intergroup relational peacebuilding and reconciliation.

But first, we clarify our use of the concepts ‘relational peacebuilding’, ‘reconciliation’ and ‘betrayal’, followed by more background on the Beyond Dehumanisation project and the methodology used to identify the clarification and counter–critique routes beyond (perceived) intragroup betrayal.

Relational peacebuilding, reconciliation and the transformation of ‘family’ betrayal

We use the term ‘relational peacebuilding’ to refer to civil society–driven, grassroots-level work with groups within divided societies specifically aiming to build or rebuild relationships fractured by political conflict. Our understanding of relational peacebuilding has elements of what others have termed ‘people–to–people peacebuilding’,¹⁰ and can be contrasted with peacebuilding approaches that focus more on macro-level structural and institutional forms of peacebuilding focused on statebuilding.¹¹

‘Reconciliation’ can be narrowly defined as the goal of all forms of peacebuilding that seeks ‘transformed social identity’¹² and improved intergroup relationships where shared beliefs, attitudes and emotions maintain conflict.¹³ However, given the strong relational nature of this goal, whatever progress is made towards this goal requires protection. To this end, reconciliation although a goal or desired outcome is simultaneously a process that is non–linear and arguably continuous as a society seeks to redefine relations.¹⁴ We see ‘relational peacebuilding’ as a method or approach that supports the ongoing process of sustaining reconciliation.

In earlier work, we have defined ‘reconciliation’ as the ‘building or rebuilding of trust … in the wake of tension and alienation’ in relationships,¹⁵ and as addressing psychosocial, psychopolitical, and emotional dimensions underlying and feeding specific conflicts.¹⁶ In the process we avoided the pitfall of associating reconciliation too strongly with forgiveness, as was the case with Tutu-aligned discourse around the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).¹⁷ Centring forgiveness and apology in reconciliation discourse tends to elicit opposition to reconciliation and relational peacebuilding, given the (perceived) neglect of individual and/or social justice.¹⁸ The Beyond Dehumanisation project furthermore highlighted how insistence on forgiveness and apology can undermine intergroup peacebuilding and reconciliation by evoking (perceived) intragroup betrayal.¹⁹

To clarify our focus in this article we find it useful to draw on Aiken’s differentiation between three strands of ‘social learning’ involved in reconciliation.²⁰ ‘Instrumental reconciliation’ is about ‘rebuilding trust, cooperation, understanding and better relations between divided communities through the promotion of positive contact and dialogue’; ‘socioemotional reconciliation’ more directly confronts ‘the emotional and perceptual legacies of past conflict’ such as ‘existing feelings of victimization, guilt, distrust and fear between groups’; ‘distributive reconciliation’ involves ‘sustained attempts to reduce structural and material inequalities and limit perceptions of inequitable power relations between former antagonists’.²¹

Our betrayal emphasis, firstly, draws attention to a neglected dimension of ‘socioemotional reconciliation’, namely the intense relational conflict arising within (tightly knit) groups that are likely to arise from attempts to promote reconciliation ‘between groups’. Secondly, the potential interplay between ‘socioemotional’ and ‘distributive reconciliation’ is highlighted, as we will show, by the counter-critique route beyond intragroup betrayal.

The dynamics of family-type betrayal within relational peacebuilding in political contexts has received little attention in the literature on betrayal.²² However, mainstream understandings of the concept clearly place it within the framework of relationship building. There is a strong emphasis on defining betrayal in terms of the violation of trust.²³ Others have called betrayal breaking the rules of communal relationships²⁴ or denying the most elementary of social ties.²⁵

Margalit’s multi–layered notion of ‘thick’ relations is particularly relevant when applying the concept of betrayal to political settings. ‘Thick’ relations are characterised by exclusive mutual care, a deep sense of belonging and existential meaning, and shared memories.²⁶ These thick relations, modelled by family and friends, are contrasted with ‘thin’ relations, defined as the basic respect one owes to all persons in their capacity as human beings. Margalit’s central claim is that the home of betrayal is ‘thick’ relationships, and that betrayal involves the undermining of thick relationships. The wider literature on betrayal also stresses the intense affective dimension of being betrayed, with feelings of indignation, contempt and revenge typically evoked.²⁷

It is important to stress that our focus is not at the macro–political level, i.e. political treason and betrayal at the state level²⁸ or what Shklar calls public treachery.²⁹ Nor are we interested in betrayal as a concern within formal negotiations or peacemaking, where often suing for peace is seen as a betrayal of previous principles. We want to continue deepening our understanding of the underestimated microdynamics of intragroup betrayal that can be evoked by civil society–based relational peacebuilding.³⁰ We also want to learn how this kind of (perceived) betrayal can be transformed and contribute to peacebuilding. It is this gap in peacebuilding and reconciliation theory and practice that this article aims to contribute to.

Learning from relational peace practitioners

Between November 2012 and May 2014, Verwoerd, Little and Hamber used their professional networks to bring together 24 experienced relational peace practitioners for a series of reflective workshops. There were three region-specific, two–day workshops, held in Ireland (7 participants), South Africa (8 participants) and Palestine (West Bank) (9 participants). Three to four follow–up interviews were also carried out in each case with some of the participants in these workshops. This reflective process culminated in an international, three–day workshop held in Northern Ireland, for 6 participants from the three region-specific workshops.

A prominent feature of this group of practitioners is that most of them were directly involved in and/or affected by their respective conflicts and have subsequently deeply engaged with former enemies in attempts to build peace. The primary purpose of the residential workshops and interviews was to gather and share practical wisdom around the challenges of such work. Together, we explored the promise and the pitfalls of widely used concepts in relational peacebuilding and reconciliation such as love, forgiveness, apology, compassion, healing.

This project’s focus emerged from the work of Verwoerd, Little and Hamber who together and independently worked for nearly two decades as relational peace practitioners, mostly with those affected by and participating in violent political conflict.³¹ However, this work and the project we draw on here notably emerged from professional experience and real–life challenges. Before becoming a peace practitioner, Alistair Little was immersed in loyalist (Protestant) paramilitary violence as a teenager in Northern Ireland and, over time became committed to cultivating peace with former enemies.³² Personal and professional peacebuilding also overlapped for Hamber as an English–speaking white South African (and a clinical psychologist who works with a range of individuals affected by the conflict in different countries) and Verwoerd as a white Afrikaner (and reconciliation facilitator and researcher): both share the troublesome legacy of their ‘whiteness’ in the South African context alongside their professional work.³³

Several factors influenced our decision to mostly use the format of small group, multi-day reflective workshops to gather the real–life and practical knowledge we were looking for. Firstly, this facilitated dialogue methodology was familiar to the authors who had used this format in previous dialogue work, knowing that it evoked deep and reflective responses often facilitated by participants and facilitators sharing their lived experiences.³⁴ Secondly, we aimed to make the reflective process as authentic as possible, carefully selecting participants in each country/region to ensure a diversity of conflict–related backgrounds.

The inductive coding methodology that allowed us to focus on specific themes for the writing stage of the reflective process included the transcription of the multi–day country-specific and international reflective workshops and the interviews. We then systematically worked through the 689 pages of these transcripts and coded each page. This coding allowed us to identify main themes and sub-themes, including dehumanisation, forgiveness, apology, compassion, responsibility, promising relational peacebuilding processes, such as storytelling and dialogue, and self-care practices, among others. In the process the dynamics of betrayal emerged as a prominent cross–cutting theme, including the two routes beyond intragroup accusations of betrayal that is the focus of this article.

‘I am not betraying us’: a patient clarification of purpose

Rachel McMonagle is a Protestant woman in her thirties, from Londonderry (Derry) in Northern Ireland. Her father was in the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) of the British Army and narrowly escaped a number of attacks by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and related armed groups. As a five-year-old, she once rushed in between her father and a masked man with a gun, pleading, ‘please don’t shoot my daddy, please don’t shoot my daddy!’ Years later, she became a youth worker in the ‘interface’ neighbourhood she grew up in – with only a ‘peace wall’ separating (British) Protestants and (Irish) Catholics. She realised that she could not expect young people to reach across this pervasive divide if she was not willing to do the same:

[For] me it was a real personal choice and a real personal journey that I needed to go and sit down with people to understand why things happened and why things were the way they were in Northern Ireland. So that’s when I went on my first storytelling workshop.³⁵

During the Beyond Dehumanisation reflective process, Rachel McMonagle referred to her ‘internal struggle of betrayal’ arising from this ‘personal journey’ of understanding: a feeling of betraying her father and herself. She feared participating in a storytelling workshop that included former enemies would result in losing ‘a wee, tiny bit of my identity’. She had to stress to herself and her father: ‘[I]t wasn’t about going in and agreeing with everybody and accepting what they had done or what they had said or what they had stood over. It was trying to understand where that person was coming from at that time in their life’.³⁶

Her attempt to draw a clear distinction between ‘trying to understand’ while not ‘agreeing with everybody and accepting what they had done’ is like Bassam Aramin’s contrast between ‘knowing’ and ‘accepting’ the ‘narrative of the enemy’. For both, close family relationships were at stake. Rachel McMonagle was most concerned about her former soldier father’s perception of betrayal arising from her sitting in the same room with people from armed organisations who tried to kill him and succeeded in killing some of his fellow soldiers. Bassam Aramin was confronted with his son’s anger and disillusionment because his father dared to work with people from similar backgrounds as the Israeli border police who killed his sister, Abir³⁷

My son was thirteen years old when we lost his sister. He skipped three times from his school – he went to throw stones as part of revenge. I didn’t know about that, but when I [found out] I went like crazy – ‘My son’s going to die [as well], for nothing!’

When I started to talk to him, he started to argue with me: ‘You spent seven years in Israeli jails, so you are a hero. It’s good for you, but it’s not good for me. Why? I am also Palestinian; I am [also] against the Occupation’.

So I said, ‘It’s not your responsibility’.

He said, ‘Yeah, it’s your responsibility to take revenge [for] your daughter’s blood. I see you don’t care about your daughter’s murder, so I go to throw stones’.³⁸

While trying to convince his son (and fellow Palestinians) to replace (the desire for) violent revenge with non–violent ‘combat’ for just peace, Bassam Aramin continuously stressed the difference between the latter route and becoming too understanding towards those enemies who have inflicted and are still causing harm to his family and community: ‘Always I said when I start to believe in nonviolence, it’s not to be kind or soft to the Occupiers or to the Settlers, because it doesn’t work for me, for the Palestinians, for my side. It harms me’.³⁹

For if loved ones interpret an attempt at understanding – ‘to know the narrative of your enemy’ – as agreeing with that narrative, then understanding becomes a further, even more painful insult: a wounding by ‘one of us’, added to those injuries already inflicted by ‘the other side’.⁴⁰

However, the risk of further wounding is inherent in trying to see, as Rachel McMonagle put it, ‘where that person was coming from at that time in their life’. Genuine attempts at understanding ‘the other side’ at some point require one to move closer, literally ‘enter the same room’, and come within deep listening distance. This need for (physical, emotional) closeness stands in tension with the need for (moral, political) distance. This tension between moving closer and maintaining distance helps to explain why understanding across conflict divisions can so easily be misunderstood as ‘softening’, as condoning what ‘the other side’ did/is doing to ‘our side’, thus feeding into a sense of intragroup betrayal.

To reduce the risk of this kind of intragroup misunderstanding, practitioners like Bassam Aramin have stressed the ultimate purpose of working with someone like Chen Alon. Bassam Aramin explicitly framed his involvement in Combatants for Peace and The Parents Circle-Family Forum as a way to ‘remember the beloved ones’, noting ‘the message must be that we don’t want to repeat it. For their memory, we must achieve peace and achieve reconciliation’.⁴¹

A similar emphasis on purpose can be found in Ralph Burrows’ response to his two surviving sons’ initial outrage when he became involved in dialogue with survivors and former combatants on the island of Ireland. Ralph Burrows’s son Stephen was killed in the Coshquin bombing on 24 October 1990.⁴²

My two sons thought that I was betraying their brother for a long time. And they said things like, ‘*** IRA ex-prisoners…How could you? How could you do that?’ I said to them, ‘What I’m trying to do is talk about peace there, so that other peoples’ brothers will not be killed’. It took a couple of years. And one day my son David said, ‘I know what you’re doing, Dad. Keep it up’.⁴³

A striking feature of this clarification route beyond alleged intragroup betrayal is the time and effort it took to change family members’ initial perceptions. For Ralph Burrows, it took ‘a couple of years’, and for Bassam Aramin, it took even longer: ‘So, it was a long journey with him to convince him that he was not on the right path. Not to force him, because we cannot force anyone. [I]t took a long time, three or four years’.⁴⁴

Rachel McMonagle also stressed the importance of patience, including with oneself, in transforming the initial sting of a family member or friend feeling betrayed:

[H]aving patience with yourself and knowing that you’re doing it for you but knowing that everybody coming behind you, should they be family or friends, that they’ll do it in their own time. But being patient and being willing to walk beside them. And hope that they may come along as well.⁴⁵

Rachel McMonagle provided a glimpse of what this patient ‘walking beside’ her father involved. She first explained using a ‘lifeline’ activity to tell one’s life history during the storytelling workshop she referred to earlier. Then she relayed what happened when she returned home.

I opened [the lifeline] and me and him sat together. And for the first time, he actually…he actually cried. He said that he never was aware of what I went through as a child, because he thought that he had protected us as much as possible.⁴⁶

However, understanding what she went through as a child proved to be easier for her father than accepting her peace work, especially the trusting relationships that she began to develop with some former enemies. Four years later, her beyond betrayal route fortunately did reach a hope-giving point:

The highlight for me was whenever he stood up at my wedding day and acknowledged the fact that there was a table at my wedding that consisted of Republican and Loyalist ex-prisoners. And the majority of the people at my wedding were nearly all Protestants and members of the security forces. Especially for my father to stand up and acknowledge the work that I have been a part of was so, so important for me. It was only then that that feeling of betrayal towards him started to disappear.⁴⁷

Rachel McMonagle, Bassam Aramin and Ralph Burrows thus provide examples of the positive potential of the clarification route beyond perceived intragroup betrayal. Even though they eventually developed some friendships with former enemies, this emotional proximity did not lead to a fundamental questioning of their political convictions, their intragroup identity, or their side’s ‘narrative’.

For Israeli Combatants for Peace, like Chen Alon and Netta Hazan, and for Wilhelm Verwoerd as a white South African from a strongly entrenched pro-apartheid family, the above clarification route was not an option. They embarked on the more confrontational, prophetic counter-critique route in response to accusations of intragroup betrayal.

Who are the real betrayers? Countering accusations of intragroup betrayal

How did someone like Chen Alon reach the point of understanding his involvement in Combatants for Peace as ‘saving my country’, as ‘saving my people’, as ‘doing the right thing not only for me’? How is it possible for him to stand up in public and declare ‘I am proud of what I am doing’, rather than hide in shame for being branded a traitor?

The unsettling, conflictual process he went through shows significant similarities with that of Netta Hazan:

I am coming from a very right-wing family. It’s part of my childhood in Jerusalem – the years of the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005. I remember myself as a young teenager wanting to go somewhere in a bus or something and [being] really afraid to go on a bus – ‘Maybe someone will come and blow themselves up or will bomb the bus’ … I went to the army and I did not meet a Palestinian for two years. After that I went to work in a hotel as a waiter. It was the first time that I met Palestinians from East Jerusalem. It was my first year in university also. I studied Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic. I chose to learn this because I wanted to know my enemy better. [T]hrough my studies and through my work in this hotel and meeting Palestinians face to face, I started to change my mind. [I] saw that there are things that are not right. There is no justice. And I took this mission on me: to change what I can because I didn’t like what I saw.⁴⁸

During the Beyond Dehumanisation reflective process Verwoerd strongly resonated with the journeys of people like Netta Hazan and Chen Alon. In a recent in–depth attempt to articulate his ongoing ‘journey through family betrayals’ he made the counter–critique route explicit:

I’m far from finished with my current attempt more fully to understand my father’s experience of me as disloyal to his father and even as betraying family and volk. I have some sense of why it will always be very difficult for my father to understand me in turn, but that does not mean I can avoid disagreeing with him. Or fail to point out, humbly, why I really do not see myself as a traitor. Racial classification, forced removals, the migrant labour system caused the intergenerational disruption of the family lives of people of colour. This is the family betrayal that me and my ancestors share responsibility for: the betrayal of the [black] family as an institution; apartheid also amounted to systemic family betrayal.⁴⁹

A key theme in all the above examples is the insistence that the counter–critique route beyond accusations of intragroup betrayal is not intended as rejection. Chen Alon, Netta Hazan and Verwoerd did not want to leave their ethnic ‘family’ behind while building bridges to those on ‘the other side’. They still deeply loved their respective communities. Bassam Aramin’s outsider perspective helpfully clarified this core motivation for their peace work:

We cannot continue living under the Occupation – not us…and not the Israelis. I was very happy to hear that for many Israelis the Occupation is killing the moral fabric of the Israeli society. It means [ending the Occupation] is also for Israel. And those people, they love Israel, they are Israelis, they love their country and they refuse to continue this illegal Occupation, these illegal practices, BECAUSE they love Israel, they love their country. This is more convincing for me as a Palestinian.⁵⁰

However, getting members of family-type groups to accept this ‘love’ has proved to be an uphill struggle. Netta Hazan shared some of the typical intragroup fallout of peacebuilders taking the counter–critique route:

… when I started to believe in new ways and to believe in dialogue and changing of reality, so all of my friends were against it. Because… ‘You’re a dreamer. What are you talking about? They want to kill us. They want to throw us into the sea’. And I continued with my truth. And I just lost them on the way.⁵¹

One way to understand this unresolved intragroup conflict is highlighted by Margalit’s reference to the ‘clash of loyalties’:

It is an obvious yet highly significant fact about our life that we are given over to many loyalties. These loyalties may clash and often do. On occasion the clash is so severe that each side demands total loyalty and views dual loyalty as betrayal.⁵²

Instead of listening to the intragroup moral challenge in the counter-critique route – ‘the Occupation is killing the moral fabric of the Israeli society’ – Netta Hazan’s Israeli friends saw her ‘believe in dialogue’ and references to new Palestinian ‘friends’ as an intolerable clash of loyalties. For most Israelis, the political situation in which ‘they want to throw us into the sea’ clearly ‘demands total loyalty’. Netta Hazan and Chen Alon’s apparent ‘dual loyalty’ therefore amounts to intragroup betrayal. However, from Netta Hazan and Chen Alon’s point of view, the real betrayers are the Israelis who are ‘killing the moral fabric’ of their own society.

The counter–critique route thus tends to result in a painful clash of betrayal–of–us accusations. While the eventual achievement of some intragroup ‘family’ reconciliation associated with the clarification route is unlikely for those embarking on the counter-critique route, these peacebuilders can at least avoid becoming morally and emotionally bogged down in this clash of accusations. The following section explores how the truth of the betrayal–of–us accusation can reasonably be evaluated by those who have embarked on the counter–critique route.

Beyond a clash of intragroup betrayals?

In this section, we sketch some contours of how the counter–critique route beyond perceived ‘family’ betrayal can be morally defended. We do this by highlighting the pitfalls of political abuse of betrayal, avoidance of shared responsibility, and treating ‘thick’ relations as morally more important than ‘thin’ relations.

Exposing the politics of alleged ‘family’ betrayal

During the Beyond Dehumanisation project, Gerry Foster⁵³ drew attention to the politics of betrayal as grounds for scepticism about the truth of intragroup accusations of betrayal. For him, the first genuine encounter with someone like Ralph Burrows – coming face to face with the grieving father of a British soldier killed by his side – raised difficult questions about his own and his organisation’s use of political violence.⁵⁴ He highlighted how risky this kind of questioning can be:

If we were to stand in our community and say ‘let’s examine the thing’, those that don’t want change [will say]: ‘Whoa! You’re disrespecting the dead. Hang on, these people died for you!’ [I]f you actually push too hard, they’ll push back. And push you right out.

But then he went on to suggest what might really be going on:

And some people just don’t want to ask those questions, because…they’ve got power, and they don’t want change; they’re pursuing a political agenda and if you start questioning that way it could undermine their political stand.⁵⁵

In other words, accusing those ‘sitting with the enemy’ of betraying those who ‘died for you’ can be seen as a manipulation of ‘sacred’ memories to maintain a power base. It is about ostracising those raising critical questions because their questioning and example might undermine others’ commitment to a political cause.

Margalit agrees with this rather large question mark behind accusations of intragroup betrayal by drawing attention to several pitfalls when ‘[t]ribes, ethnic groups, and nations view themselves as extended families, claiming for themselves the intensity that the model of the nuclear family provides’.⁵⁶ One of these pitfalls is the political abuse of this ‘intensity’, with accusations of ‘family’ betrayal becoming an effective and widespread strategy to maintain group boundaries and political control.

In addition to the binding power of loyalty, Margalit underlines a second highly problematic tendency of family–type large group relations: ‘a perceived threat to relations that are like relations to family and friends justifies any brutality in response’.⁵⁷ This defensive tendency to deny responsibility for ‘our’ wrongdoing draws attention to the blinding potential of family–type group loyalty.

Beyond blind loyalty – disrupting intragroup denial of shared historical responsibility

Meeting Palestinians face–to–face, venturing into East Jerusalem and seeing the impact of the Occupation firsthand was profoundly unsettling for someone like Netta Hazan. Verwoerd had a similar experience when he was viscerally confronted with the brutal realities of apartheid outside the tightly protected walls of white, Afrikaner South Africa. These experiences exposed their ethno–religious, socio-political blind spots and raised disturbing questions about their own and their communities’ responsibility for the suffering of those regarded as political enemies.⁵⁸ The kind of self-critical questions, when raised amongst family and friends and in public, that contributed to accusations of ‘family’ disloyalty and ingroup betrayal.

Their rejection of these accusations was grounded in a growing conviction that sustainable, just peace for everyone sharing the same geographical area required a deeper disloyalty – a betrayal of an unjust system within which their own group came to occupy a dominant, oppressive position.

This counter–critique turns the accusation of ingroup betrayal on its head by using the language of ‘treason’ in a morally and politically defensible sense. This positive, social justice-based understanding of the need for betrayal finds support in the literature on anti–sexism and anti-racism. For example, Baily encourages ‘insiders’ in privileged positions within dominant sexist and/or racist systems to develop ‘traitorous identities’:

Traitors choose to try to understand the price at which privileges are gained … and they take responsibility for them. [P]rivilege-cognizant whites actively examine their ‘seats in front’ and find ways to be disloyal to systems that assign these seats.⁵⁹

In the process, she draws on a key distinction in feminist standpoint theory between a ‘perspective’, which refers to ‘the unreflective account of one’s subject location’, and a ‘standpoint’ – a ‘political position achieved through collective struggle’, as indicated by the word ‘anti-racist’.⁶⁰

This shift from an unreflective ‘perspective’ to a self–critical ‘standpoint’ clearly applies to an anti–apartheid peacemaker such as Verwoerd. Standpoint theory can arguably be used more broadly in support of ‘traitorous’ peacemaking by any ‘insiders’ within groups occupying unjust, dominant positions in contexts of intergroup conflict. In these contexts, the accusation of ingroup betrayal can be exposed as a typical defensive strategy of dominant groups to protect their privilege by ostracising those insiders who dare to critique ‘our’ oppression of ‘them’.⁶¹

It remains upsetting to see beloved group members struggle with this kind of profoundly disruptive self-critique. It is also understandable that they would rather ‘shoot’ the messenger by accusing him or her of betrayal. But unmasking this accusation as a classic defence mechanism to avoid uncomfortable shared responsibility for systemic injustice does help peacebuilders, in our experience, not to allow this painful accusation into the core of their identity, to avoid the temptation to run back into the shortsighted, blinkered warmth of group belonging, to remain committed to conflictual intergroup peacebuilding.

The moral basis for this commitment to ‘traitorous’ intergroup peacebuilding by ‘insiders’ of dominant groups can be fleshed out by returning to Margalit’s theory of betrayal and his prioritisation of ‘thin’ over ‘thick’ relations.

Prioritising betrayal as the undermining of ‘thin’ relations

Underlying the initial accusation of intragroup betrayal evoked by intergroup peacebuilding is the assumption that certain intragroup relations, say with fellow Israelis or fellow Afrikaners, are deserving of loyalty. Intergroup peacebuilders such as Netta Hazan, Chen Alon and Verwoerd have reached a point where their exposure to the suffering of former enemies has led them to question this assumption.

We would argue that this kind of questioning is supported by Margalit’s foundational distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ human relations. The universalist reach of ‘thin’ relations (the basic respect one owes to everyone in their capacity as human beings) ultimately carries more moral weight for Margalit than the more localised, intragroup ethical requirements of ‘thick’ relations, such as family loyalty, care, protection, and gratitude.⁶²

Margalit’s counter–cultural prioritisation of ‘thin’ relations builds on his earlier defence of the need for minimum societal standards of ‘decency’.⁶³ The notion of radically inclusive ‘thin’ relations is supported by Shue’s advocacy for a ‘morality of the depths’, a sensitivity to ‘the line beneath which no one is allowed to sink’.⁶⁴ Margalit’s approach is similar to Bhargava’s defence of the ‘moral justification of truth commissions’.⁶⁵ Bhargava interprets, for example, the South African TRC’s sustained public focus on gross violations of human rights in terms of the need to stress minimum protections for human dignity.

Even though thick relations are subjectively experienced as coming first (chronologically and psychologically speaking), this does not mean that these relations should be the yardstick in deciding if an intragroup loyalty is ‘deserving’ or not. When faced with the tricky evaluative question ‘[i]n light of what, and in light of whom, should judgement about a deserving loyalty be made?’, Margalit argues that ‘morality should be a main source of light’ and ‘[a] thick relation that … doesn’t meet certain moral constraints is not a thick relation that deserves loyalty’.⁶⁶

The classic case of a thick relation that, without doubt, does not meet the foundational moral constraint of respect for human dignity and therefore does not deserve loyalty is intragroup relations in Nazi Germany. The same can be said of loyalty amongst nationalist Afrikaners during Apartheid South Africa. An accusation of ‘family betrayal’ from someone like Verwoerd’s father is understandable at the familial level but morally blind to the foundational crime against humanity constituted by the system of apartheid.⁶⁷

Underlying the counter-critique route used by peace activists faced with, for example, the former apartheid state or the current Israeli state, is a shift from specific examples of ‘thin’ relations being damaged to a more systemic understanding of their group’s implication in injustice. For example, the South African TRC acknowledged that gross human rights violations were also committed by liberation movements such as the Pan African Congress and the African National Congress. But these findings regarding specific actions did not cancel the foundational moral distinction between actions carried out, ultimately, in defence of apartheid and those opposed to this crime against humanity.⁶⁸

These contextual applications of Margalit’s prioritisation of ‘thin’ over ‘thick’ relations are done in broad brushstrokes. Our limited purpose here is to point towards a promising, though still contested, way to begin articulating relatively firm moral ground for those peacebuilders who have taken the counter–critique route within, for example, the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and South African anti-apartheid contexts. Faced with a ‘clash of loyalties’ the bottom line for Margalit is this: ‘thin’ trumps ‘thick’. This means that peacebuilders’ counter–critique that appeals to the priority of ‘thin’ relations should take precedence.

From experience, we know that it is easier for this moral appeal to the priority of ‘thin’ relations to be rejected when it is seen as the imposition of an ‘external’ standard, such as the UN Charter for Human Rights or International Humanitarian Law. Within the counter–critique route, it is therefore important to stress that respect for ‘thin’ relations – for basic human dignity and decency – also lies at the heart of a healthy moral fabric within one’s society or community. This explains why, for example, an Israeli Combatant for Peace such as Chen Alon can prophetically proclaim: ‘I am saving my country, I am saving my people, I am doing the right thing not only for me … ’, for he came to share Bassam Aramin’s conviction that the Occupation’s undermining of ‘thin’ relations with Palestinians, also amounts to ‘killing the moral fabric’ of his own Israeli society.⁶⁹

Beyond moral arrogance: on the need to combine counter-critique and clarification

The preceding three sections drew attention to the clarification and counter–critique routes available for intergroup peacebuilders when confronted with accusations of intragroup betrayal.

There is limited room for self-critique within the clarification route, emphasising understanding for the sake of peace (‘no more dying of our loved ones’). There might be some disagreement about specific political strategies (such as defensive violence), but no fundamental, moral intragroup questioning exists. The emphasis is on ‘our’ suffering (victimhood), with some compassionate sensitivity to the suffering of ‘the Other’. The perception of intragroup betrayal arising from this outgroup compassion and the willingness to work with ‘our enemies’ is addressed in a patient, pastoral fashion.

Within the counter–critique route, the emphasis shifts from intragroup victimhood to perpetration and implication. This prophetic route amounts to a moral intragroup self-critique, given a growing awareness of the impact of ‘our’ policies and actions on ‘them’ and the need to accept shared responsibility for our wrongdoings during intergroup conflict. Along this route, the binding and blinding power of unreflective group loyalty is challenged while advocating for ultimate loyalty to inclusive human dignity.

However, along this prophetic route the pitfall of counter-productive moral arrogance looms large. To avoid this pitfall, key features of the clarification route can be applied to the counter–critique route. Firstly, central to the clarification route is the distinction between the need for understanding the ‘other side’, without agreeing with the enemy’s ‘narrative’. This distinction must be applied to ‘our side’ within the counter–critique route. This route – challenging literal and/or metaphorical ‘families’ with their betrayal of ‘thin’ relations – must be rooted in a humble awareness of how incomplete the peacebuilder’s intrapersonal and intergroup journeys of truly humanising former enemies are. Interpreting the accusation of intragroup betrayal as a defence mechanism comes with an experiential understanding of the seductive power of these forms of avoidance and denial,⁷⁰ given one’s own earlier participation in similar avoidance and the persistent temptation to run away from shared responsibility when the intergroup going gets tough.

Secondly, the clarification route’s emphasis on the need for patience and time can also fruitfully be applied to the counter–critique route. The challenge posed by this route – translating acute intragroup discomfort into sustained shared responsibility – will require even more time and patience than the less confrontational clarification route. Such an approach, echoing the socio-emotive approach to reconciliation,⁷¹ acknowledges ‘the complex, arduous, prolonged, and many–faceted’ psychological task involved in changing entrenched beliefs and attitudes.⁷²

However, an emphasis on the need for intragroup patience runs the risk of losing sight of intergroup purpose, given the potential for ‘single identity’ peace work to become a self–centred goal rather than a means towards intergroup peacebuilding.⁷³ The more space is allowed for having patience and promoting slow change with those ‘family’ members who feel betrayed, the greater the tension with the urgency of addressing ‘distributive reconciliation’ can become in deeply unequal societies. In the concluding section we therefore return to some of the ways in which the transformation of (perceived) intragroup betrayalcan contribute to intergroup relational peacebuilding.

Truth and reconciliation? Beyond intragroup betrayal, towards sustainable intergroup relational peacebuilding

The preceding broad articulation of the counter-critique route beyond intragroup betrayal shows remarkable similarities to how some see the key rationale of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs). For example, in South Africa, for the sake of national reconciliation, we need to uncover and acknowledge painful truths of our collective involvement in harming people we are sharing the same country with.⁷⁴ But, as demonstrated by the South African TRC, this kind of ‘truth’ intervention does not by itself lead to ‘reconciliation’.⁷⁵ The peace practitioners who participated in the Beyond Dehumanisation project provide valuable bottom-up insights into why it is so difficult to connect ‘truth’ and ‘reconciliation’ in societies deeply divided by bloody political conflict. These insights include the intragroup dynamics of ‘peace as betrayal’ and the formidable challenge of finding a way through the clash of betrayals evoked by the counter–critique route beyond (perceived) intragroup betrayal. Both beyond betrayal routes also point to promising connections between intragroup and intergroup relational peacebuilding that can contribute to bridging the gap between truth and sustainable reconciliation. These connections can be articulated by returning to Aiken’s differentiation between instrumental, socioemotional and distributive reconciliation.

As we have shown instrumental reconciliation (rebuilding trust and cooperation)⁷⁶ can take place through processes such as relational peacebuilding. However, as demonstrated by the Beyond Dehumanisation project, engaging in instrumental reconciliation leaves peacebuilders not only more vulnerable to potentially harmful actions from the other side,⁷⁷ they also run the risk of being accused of betrayal by members of the family-type groups they belong to. The pain-staking intragroup clarification required for a peacebuilder like Rachel McMonagle highlights the need for this kind of emotional work within instrumental reconciliation processes such as relational peacebuilding. The clarification route beyond betrayal is a reminder that intragroup socioemotional reconciliation is a requirement for sustainable instrumental reconciliation at the wider group level.

Furthermore, it is clear to us that neither instrumental nor socioemotional reconciliation can be sustained if there is a need for distributive reconciliation, such as is the case in post-1994 South Africa and contemporary Israel-Palestine. In settings of ongoing structural violence it is typically peacebuilders from dominated/oppressed groups that carry most of the emotional burden of distributive reconciliation, giving rise to calls for ‘emotional justice’ in, for example, anti-racism work.⁷⁸ The commitment to intragroup counter-critique by peacebuilders who are members of dominant/oppressing groups is also about accepting shared responsibility to raise awareness, change the normative ethos that supports systemic injustice, and mobilise more ingroup members to become involved in intergroup solidarity networks.⁷⁹ The counter-critique route beyond betrayal thus draws attention to a ‘distributive’ dimension of socioemotional reconciliation that is vital to sustain the long relational intergroup process of transforming unjust structures, institutions and laws.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge The Fetzer Institute for financial support (Projects 3186 and 3291), which enabled the empirical research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wilhelm Verwoerd

Wilhelm Verwoerd is a Senior Research Associate and Facilitator, AVReQ (Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest) (https://avreq.sun.ac.za/), Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Alistair Little

Alistair Little is a Northern Ireland-based peace practitioner with over 25 years of local and international experience, including as a former director of Beyond Walls Ltd.

Brandon Hamber

Brandon Hamber is the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace at Ulster University (INCORE) and a Clinical Psychologist and Facilitator.

Notes

¹ https://cfpeace.org/chen-alon/.

² Chen Alon, interview by Wilhelm Verwoerd, December 2, 2013.

³ This Beyond Dehumanisation (BD) project was funded by The Fetzer Institute (https://fetzer.org/), Projects 3186 and 3291. For more detail see section 3 below. Quotations are from workshop and interview transcripts. We have chosen, with express permission, to use the individuals’ real names. Approved by the Ethics Filter Committee at Ulster University (2010; 2013).

⁴ Avishai Margalit, On Betrayal (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). See Wilhelm Verwoerd, Alistair Little and Brandon Hamber, ‘Peace as Betrayal: On the Human Cost of Relational Peacebuilding in Transitional Contexts’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 16 (2022): 1–16.

⁵ https://cfpeace.org/bassam-aramin/.

⁶ https://cfpeace.org/; https://www.theparentscircle.org/en/pcff-home-page-en/.:

⁷ Bassam Aramin, BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014.

⁸ Chalon interview.

⁹ See Margalit, On Betrayal; and Malin Åkerström, Betrayal and Betrayers – The Sociology of Treachery (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1991).

¹⁰ Michelle Gawerc, ‘Peacebuilding: Theoretical and Concrete Perspectives’, Peace & Change 31, no. 4 (2006): 435–78.

¹¹ C. T. Call, The Evolution of Peacebuilding: Improved Ideas and Institutions (Tokyo: United Nations University – Centre for Policy Research, 2015).

¹² David Mitchell, ‘Rescuing Reconciliation: Finding its Role in Peace Research and Practice’, Third World Quarterly 44, no. 8 (2023): 1737–53.

¹³ D. Bar-Tal, and G.H. Bennink, ‘The Nature of Reconciliation as an Outcome and as a Process’, in From Conflict Resolution to Reconciliation, ed. Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 11–38.

¹⁴ Ibid. See also Arie Nadler, Thomas E. Malloy, and Jeffrey D. Fisher, eds., The Social Psychology of Intergroup Reconciliation: From Violent Conflict to Peaceful Co-Existence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

¹⁵ Trudy Govier and Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘Trust and the Problem of National Reconciliation’, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32, no. 2 (2002): 178–205.

¹⁶ Brandon Hamber and Elizabeth Gallagher, eds., Psychosocial Perspectives on Peacebuilding (New York: Springer, 2014).

¹⁷ Archbishop Tutu was the chair of the TRC, see Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (London: Rider, 1999); Brandon Hamber, Transforming Societies After Political Violence: Truth, Reconciliation and Mental Health (New York: Springer, 2009); and Wilhelm Verwoerd, Equity, Mercy, Forgiveness: Interpreting Amnesty within the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Leuven: Peeters, 2007).

¹⁸ Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘Social Justice, White Beneficiaries and the South African TRC’, in Trading Justice for Peace? Critical Perspectives on the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa, Canada, and Norway, eds.Sigríður Guðmarsdóttir, Paulette Regan, and Demaine Solomoneds (Cape Town: AOSIS, 2021), 223–40; and Susan Forde, Stefanie Kappler, and Annika Björkdahl, ‘Peacebuilding, Structural Violence and Spatial Reparations in Post-Colonial South Africa’, Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding 15, no. 3 (2021): 327–46.

¹⁹ Wilhelm Verwoerd and Alistair Little, ‘Beyond a Dilemma of Apology: Transforming (Veteran) Resistance to Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and South Africa’, in Reconciliation in Global Context, ed. Bjorn Kröndorfer (New York: SUNY Press, 2018), 47–82.

²⁰ Nevin Aiken. ‘Learning to Live Together: Transitional Justice and Intergroup Reconciliation in Northern Ireland’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 4, no. 2 (2010): 166–88.

²¹ Aiken, ‘Learning to Live Together’, 183, 171, 172.

²² An exception is Cheryl Lawther, ‘The Truth about Loyalty: Emotions, Ex-Combatants and Transitioning from the Past’, International Journal of Transitional Justice 11, no. 3 (2017): 484–504. Her focus, like the literature on betrayal trauma, is on those who feel/are betrayed, not those accused of betrayal.

²³ See, for example, Åkerström, Betrayal and betrayers; Nachman Ben-Yehuda, Betrayal and Treason: Violations of Trust and Loyalty (Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, Perseus Books Group, 2001).

²⁴ Julie Fitness, ‘Betrayal, Rejection, Revenge, and Forgiveness: An Interpersonal Script Approach’, in Interpersonal rejection, ed. M. Leary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 73–103.

²⁵ Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).

²⁶ Margalit, On Betrayal.

²⁷ Åkerström, Betrayal and Betrayers; Lawther, ‘Truth about Loyalty’; and Margalit, On Betrayal.

²⁸ Ben-Yehuda, Betrayal and Treason; and Rebecca West, The New Meaning of Treason (New York: The Viking Press, 1964).

²⁹ Shklar, Ordinary Vices.

³⁰ Verwoerd, Little, Hamber, ‘Peace as Betrayal’.

³¹ Brandon Hamber, Alistair Little and Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘Cultivating Peace: An Exploration of the Role of Nature-based Activities in Conflict Transformation’ (paper presented at the 29th Annual Nobel Peace Prize Forum, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Augsburg University, September 15–16, 2017); and Alistair Little, and Wilhelm Verwoerd, Journey through Conflict Trail Guide (Bloomington, IN: Trafford Publishing, 2013).

³² Alistair Little, with Ruth Scott, Give a Boy a Gun: From Killing to Peace-making (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2009).

³³ Wilhelm Verwoerd, Verwoerd: My Journey through Family Betrayals (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2019); Louis R. Van der Riet and Wilhelm J. Verwoerd, ‘Diagnosing and dismantling South African whiteness: “white work” in the Dutch Reformed Church’, HTS Theological Studies 78, no. 4 (2022): 1–9.

³⁴ See Scott Drimie and others, ‘Facilitated Dialogues’, in The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods for Social-Ecological Systems, eds. Reinette Biggs and others (New York: Routledge, 2022), 136–47.

³⁵ Rachel McMonagle, BD workshop, Ireland, November 9–11, 2012.

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ In Bassam Aramin’s words: ‘on 16 January 2007, my ten-year-old daughter, Abir, was shot and killed in cold blood by a member of the Israeli border police while standing outside her school with some classmates. There were no demonstrations or violence or intifada’. https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories/bassam-aramin/.:

³⁸ See note 7 above.

³⁹ Ibid.

⁴⁰ See Trudy Govier and Wilhelm Verwoerd, ‘The Promise and Pitfalls of Apologies’, Journal of Social Philosophy 33, no. 1 (2002): 67–82.

⁴¹ Bassam Aramin, BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014. Space does not allow us here to explore the complex, counter-cultural renegotiation of ‘sacred bonds’ with ‘our dead’ underlying his statement. For more detail on his profound, joint ‘renegotiation’ work with his Israeli counterpart, Rami Elhanan (who daughter was blown up in a suicide bombing), see Colm McCann, Apeirogon (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020); www.theparentscircle.org.

⁴² See Eamon Baker, ‘Remembering Ralph Burrows, whose son Stephen died in the Coshquin bomb’, Derry Journal, September 1, 2016 (https://www.derryjournal.com/news/remembering-ralph-burrows-whose-son-stephen-died-in-the-coshquin-bomb-1205385).

⁴³ Ralph Burrows, BD workshop, Ireland, November 9–11, 20212.

⁴⁴ See note 7 above.

⁴⁵ Rachel McMonagle, BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014.

⁴⁶ Ibid.

⁴⁷ Rachel McMonagle, BD workshop, Ireland, November 9–11, 2012; and BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014.

⁴⁸ Netta Hazan, BD workshop, Palestine, November 2013; and BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014.

⁴⁹ Verwoerd, My Journey, 212–3.

⁵⁰ Bassam Aramin, interview by Wilhelm Verwoerd, November 28, 2013, Palestine.

⁵¹ Netta Hazan, BD workshop, Palestine, November 28–30, 2013.

⁵² Margalit, Betrayal, 33.

⁵³ A former member of the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army), a more militant splinter from the IRA (Irish Republican Army).

⁵⁴ See Verwoerd and Little, ‘Beyond a Dilemma of Apology’.

⁵⁵ Gerry Foster, BD workshop, Northern Ireland, May 16–18, 2014.

⁵⁶ Margalit, Betrayal, 55.

⁵⁷ Ibid., 53.

⁵⁸ On the tendency of groups in conflict to form selective ‘collective memories’ that deny responsibility for the outbreak and continuation of the conflict, see Daniel Bar-Tal, ‘Collective Memory of Physical Violence: Its Contribution to the Culture of Violence’, in The Role of Memory in Ethnic Conflict, eds. Ed Cairns and Michael D. Roe (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 78.

⁵⁹ Alison Bailey, ‘Locating Traitorous Identities: Toward a View of Privilege-Cognizant White Character’, Hypatia 13, no. 3 (1998): 36–7.

⁶⁰ Ibid. Her references to ‘political position’ and ‘collective struggle’ draws attention to the contested politics of ‘traitorous’ opposition to systemic injustice, which goes beyond the scope of this article. See, for example, how the language of ‘Race Traitor’ is used in the British context within a particular political strategy that draws on Marxism, anarchism and critical race theory, in John Preston and Charlotte Chadderton, ‘Rediscovering “Race Traitor”: Towards a Critical Race Theory Informed Public Pedagogy’, Race, Ethnicity and Education 15, no. 1 (2012): 85–100.

⁶¹ For a good overview of common defensive strategies see Kiyoteru Tsutsui, ‘The Trajectory of Perpetrators’ Trauma: Mnemonic Politics Around the Asia-Pacific War in Japan’, Social Forces 87, no. 3 (2009): 1389–422.

⁶² Margalit, Betrayal.

⁶³ Avishai Margalit, The Decent Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).

⁶⁴ Henry Shue, Basic Rights (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 18–9.

⁶⁵ Rajeev Bhargava, ‘The Moral Justification of Truth Commissions’, in Looking Back, Reaching Forward: Reflections on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, eds. Charles Villa-Vicencio, and Wilhelm Verwoerd (London: Zed Books, 2000). See also the Report of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Cape Town: Juta, 1998).

⁶⁶ Margalit, Betrayal, 26.

⁶⁷ See TRC Report, vol. 1:94–102. The language of ‘crime against humanity’ can be seen as a legal, international protection of the priority of ‘thin’ relations.

⁶⁸ See TRC Report, vol.1:66–70; vol. 3:325–392.

⁶⁹ This profound diagnosis is supported by the growing literature on (agency-related) ‘moral injury’, see, for example, Robert Meagher, Killing from the Inside Out: Moral Injury and Just War (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014).

⁷⁰ Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2013).

⁷¹ Aiken, ‘Learning to Live Together’.

⁷² Bar-Tal and Bennink, ‘Nature of Reconciliation’, 23.

⁷³ C. Church, A. Visser & L.-S. Johnson, ‘A Path to Peace or Persistence? The “Single Identity” Approach to Conflict Resolution in Northern Ireland’, Conflict Resolution Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2004): 273–91.

⁷⁴ Tutu, No Future; SA TRC Report.

⁷⁵ Hamber, Transforming Societies.

⁷⁶ See note 71 above.

⁷⁷ Govier and Verwoerd, ‘Trust and National Reconciliation’.

⁷⁸ Esther Armah, Emotional Justice: A Roadmap for Racial Healing (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 2022); and Van der Riet and Verwoerd, ‘Diagnosing and Dismantling’.

⁷⁹ Our emphasis on the need to combine the counter-critique route with the clarification route can also be seen as a contribution to a ‘pedagogy of the oppressor/privileged’, see Anne Curry-Stevens, ‘New Forms of Transformative Education: Pedagogy for the Privileged’, Journal of Transformative Education 5, no. 1 (2007): 33–58.