Moving On: The Antidote To Victimhood Culture…
Been mourning the traumatic loss of a great man and wonderful friend of many years, a Palestinian family man with a kind and gentle soul. He passed away quite suddenly in his sleep some months ago, and I have been struggling to make sense of things ever since.
We talked about everything. He was a profound and contemplative man whose laugh exploded with life. No topic seemed beyond his reach: human nature, media, business, education, systems theory, the Middle East. Everything was fair game. He never tried to hide his disdain for Zionism or the Jewish state, despite his admiration for the Jews as a people and culture, and the fact that several of his dearest friends, including yours truly, were Zionists.
I remember one long discussion in particular about Israel and the Palestinians in which he suggested that the secular assimilation that infects diaspora Jews would eventually dilute and reduce their numbers until – lo and behold – no Jewish support outside the the state of Israel would remain. The Jewish state, he said, could not survive without the Jewish diaspora.
I agreed at the time about the eventual demise of diaspora Jewry, but suggested he might not want to celebrate the end of the Jewish state prematurely because the Jews outside Israel were not the main problem for the Palestinians. More problematic, I told him, are the 7.4 million Jews who live inside the state of Israel. More problematic for the Palestinians and the Muslim world at large is that almost half of all the Jews in the world now live inside Israel between the river and the sea. Worse yet, they are heavily armed, possess nuclear weapons, and have no patience whatsoever for their own victimhood, let alone someone else’s.
I had another conversation with another dear friend directly after the Hamas butchery of October 7th. I had just republished an essay written some years ago, The Tyranny of Victimhood Culture, with a brief note up front to acknowledge the October 7th massacre. My friend, a devout anti-Zionist, chided me for suggesting that the Palestinians were obsessed with their own status as perennial victims when, after all, the Jews never let anyone forget about the Holocaust. The Jews, he said, are the ultimate victims.
Again, I agreed, but – again – with a caveat. The difference, I responded, is that victimhood has evolved as the core defining feature of the Palestinian culture worldwide, largely because the Palestinians – not unlike the American blacks – are far more useful to the world elite as perennial victims.
For post-Holocaust Jews, however, victimhood is just an annoying sideshow, an unfortunate fact of life – something one needs to survive for the moment before moving on. Indeed, the Jews have always moved on – sometimes compelled, sometimes by choice – to ensure their own survival and the survival of the Jewish culture: exactly what happened with the Exodus from Egypt and the 19th-century Zionist migrations from Eastern Europe, exactly what happened in the direct aftermath of the Holocaust and the re-emergence of the Jewish State, exactly what happened with the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties and the Abraham Accords, and exactly what’s happening right now in Gaza: For now at least, the Israelis have moved on from the fantasy of any meaningful peace negotiations with the current Palestinian leadership.
In truth, the Jews as a people and a culture never dwelled much on their own status as easily vilified and victimized social pariahs. If it didn’t work out somewhere, they just moved on, set down roots somewhere else, opened at least two synagogues so everyone had at least one they didn’t choose to go to, and did what they could to contribute disproportionately to their host societies.
Nevertheless, the Holocaust followed by the birth of the Jewish state just a few years later marked both the apogee and functional end of Jewish victimhood. And of course, the same two historical events marked the beginning of Palestinian victimhood. So far, however, the Palestinians have shown no willingness or capacity to move on – in no small measure because the entire world community promotes, finances, and profits shamelessly from their status as perennial victims.
Still, there’s a simple reason why not one of the fifty Muslim-majority nations on the planet will provide sanctuary for them: An impossibly corrupt and entitled Palestinian leadership that promotes a nihilistic death-centered culture has proven – time and again – far too toxic and far too disruptive to every host nation who makes the lethal mistake of offering sanctuary to them. Non-Palestinian Muslim leaders saw what happened in Jordan and Syria and Lebanon and Tunisia and now Gaza. The same leaders may be insufferable ideologues (like most other leaders these days), but they’re not suicidal. Ultimately, they would prefer – like everyone else – to pursue their own self interests. Exactly what happened with the Egyptian and Jordanian peace treaties, and exactly what happened with the Abraham Accords – the moment Arab leaders in the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco decided to move on.
The victimhood industry that was weaponized by and somehow escaped academia – the Wuhan Lab of lethal ideas – is a sociopathic death cult that now pervades and threatens to destroy Western society. It celebrates blood lust, martyrdom, and mob rule whenever and wherever it emerges in force. The only things more venomous to Western culture than industrialized victimhood are laws that target racist or antisemitic or Islamophobic or transphobic “hate speech” (AKA free speech) – no matter who proposes them. Together, victimhood culture and hate speech laws are a toxic but immensely profitable brew, nothing less than a classic neighborhood protection racket of global proportion. In the end, the only real victims are freedom and civility.
Enough is enough. The world is full of victims. History is full of victims. That’s why the Palestinians, like the Jews and the blacks and indigenous people and non-cisnormatives, are entitled to exactly nothing that they don’t earn, build, or take for themselves.
No matter how you interpret the current situation in Gaza, what the world elite have done to promote and sustain Palestinian victimhood for the past four generations is criminal. To institutionalize and industrialize endless financial and emotional support for a nihilistic victimhood mentality is a crime against humanity, plain and simple. It steals dreams and opportunities from future generations and replaces them with poverty, death, and misery – at immense profit for elite leaders and institutions worldwide.
Soon – hopefully – Hamas will no longer be able to amass a meaningful resistance force. Still, another equally nihilistic and destructive organization will doubtless arise from the ashes of Gaza to replace them. History will doubtless repeat itself unless and until the Palestinian people reject the victimized martyr narrative wholesale. Unless and until they decide to say, “Fuck you!” to corrupt Palestinian kleptocrats ensconced in distant penthouses, and to all the others on college campuses and elsewhere who so casually promote Palestinian martyrdom and death at no risk whatsoever to themselves. Playing the victim card only guarantees another generation of martyrs, poverty, pain, and death. Enough is enough. Time to move on.
For now, I still miss and mourn my dear friend. But it’s time to move on…
Wrong Speak is a free-expression platform that allows varying viewpoints. All views expressed in this article are the author's own.
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beautifully written. I admire the fact that you can be a Zionist and still have beloved anti-Zionist friends. Sorry about the loss of your friend.
Unfortunately, the ignorance via oppression will likely keep the victimhood alive and growing in Gaza. There's too much money flowing in the region, that it becomes too overwhelming for the citizenry to change. It's their shackles and chains, so to speak. It's very difficult to rescue them when even our President succumbs to their ruling terrorist leaders.