Sweet illusion

[Violet_Crumble]

By Sayed Kashua

What joy. At long last we have a terror attack of our own, at long last we are on the side of the good guys. True, deep mourning and terrible sadness descended on Shfaram this weekend, but still, for the Arab sitting in front of the screen there was also a kind of achievement in the terror attack, a consolation.

How long was it before MK Azmi Bishara (Balad) was interviewed on television? And not only Bishara, but all of them were there: MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash), MK Abdulmalik Dehamshe (United Arab List), Ahmed Tibi (Hadash-Ta'al). And they weren't even invited to condemn and to defend themselves. When was the last time an Arab MK who appeared on television wasn't there in the role of the accused who is attacked by a skeptical broadcaster?

And now this weekend it happened, because of the blood that was spilled in vain in Shfaram. Now we are on the map, in the role of the victim, purely the victim. By virtue of the terror attack maybe they will let us alone a bit, because of the blood that was spilled in Shfaram, thinks the naive Arab. Maybe they will regard us differently.

After all, every group has to pay the blood tax, and everyone knows that there is nothing like a terror attack that claims lives to create a sense of belonging. At long last we are part of the family of blood. True, it wasn't a Palestinian, someone from Islamic Jihad or Hamas, who blew himself up in a bus in the middle of an Arab neighborhood, knowing without a doubt that he was killing only Arabs. In that case, the situation would have improved immeasurably.

But still, even a Jewish terror attack is something. Perhaps now they will let us alone a bit, perhaps we will stop being a security threat for a moment. Perhaps now they will have pity on us a bit, will say to themselves those poor Arabs, we didn't know that they also get sad when their sons are killed. And they even showed restraint, no doubt about that. The police were there, there was a strike and a funeral and they behaved all right. Maybe after all they aren't all that dangerous. That is to say - most of them.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/609629.html

[xchrom]

1. good read.

[eyl]

2. A bit heavy on the self-pity n/t

[Igel]

3. Being a victim doesn't make you good.

It just makes you a victim. It says something about the virtue (or lack thereof) of the victimizer, but is value-neutral concerning those victimized.

And "collective victimism" is no more a valid concept than "collective virtue".

[bemildred]

4. As long as that is true of Jews as well as Palestinians, and anybody else,

I must agree. More to the point in this forum would be the
question whether being a victim entitles one to something,
and if so what?

[Igel]

5. I don't care who it applies to. Jews aren't rendered "the good guys"

when they're killed any more than Arabs or Igbos are. Whether or not the Israelis, Arabs, or Hamas are good or bad depends on their actions, not on what actions that are done to them.

No. Being victims would entitle them to something; but the majority aren't victims, so they're entitled to nothing, except better security.

"Vicarious victimhood" I think is a dangerous idea, and yet seems to be very ... appealing ... to many people, many of whom also seem to like imputing "vicarious oppressorhood" to others. I'm not a big fan of communalism.

[bemildred]

6. Yeah, OK.

I brought it up because there is a good deal of "vicarious victimhood" here. The whole Holocaust thing is "vicarious victimhood". It has merit as an example of the ugliness of bigotry, but one commonly sees it used to justify a lot of other things too, if you see?