Victimization: Some Comments by an Israeli

This paper considers several aspects of victimization, including its three basic dimensions and its relationship to sacrifice and to the acquisition of a sort of omnipotence. It examines Biblical cases of victimization Cain and Abel, and Abraham and Isaac. It also examines the position of Jews as perpetual victims and of Palestinians as victims with an unlimited grievance, and examines how Jews and Palestinian Arabs, both descendants of their forefather Abraham, proceed with mutual human sacrifice. And it considers whether, for Jews and Palestinians, a breakthrough is at all possible whether or not, here, both victim and victimizer can be extricated from what seems to be their fate: an endless cycle of successive role reversals.