The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
nytimes.com
The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
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Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#2Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#3I love how he thinks that Israel bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods and killing civilians doesn't count as oppression because there's more Arabs than Israelis in the general area.
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#4one page view http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi...
We've changed to that from http://www.nytimes.com/1989/07/02/magazine/the-joys-of-victi.... Thanks!
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#5I love how he thinks that Israel bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods and killing civilians doesn't count as oppression because there's more Arabs than Israelis in the general area.
"Arabs like to say that there are two conflicting narratives of the conflict. The facts are far simpler.
It starts in the end of the 19th century. At the time millions of Jews were fleeing Russia and flooding Europe with refugees because of Czar Alexander III "Russia for Russians" program which sanctioned pogroms in order to evict the Jews from the country. This was only the latest in a long history of expulsions of Jews. The Jews, at the time were just beginning to be emancipated in a handful of countries, and both the Jews themselves and the affected countries had an interest in solving the Jewish Problem. What everyone recognized at the time was that the Jewish People started out in the "Holyland", from which they were expelled in the first century CE.
A group of influential Jews organized a movement with the intention of solving the Jewish Problem by restoring the Jewish Homeland. That movement was called the Zionist Movement. However the Holyland was at the time a province of the Ottoman Empire, and the Ottomans had no intention of allowing a Jewish autonomous entity to be established in their land.
Then came World War I. The Ottomans joined the war on the losing side and the British saw the opportunity to conquer the Ottomans and insert themselves as the influential power in the area. Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary and ex-Prime Minister was intrigued by the idea of creating a Jewish Home in Palestine and expressed in a letter to the British Zionist Organization that the British government would support the establishment of such an entity if Britain gained control of Palestine. In 1922 (5 years later) the League of Nations divided the former provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East into "Mandates" and instructed the British to execute the creation of a "Jewish National Home in Palestine". It also instructed the British to do so in a way that did not infringe upon the rights of the Arab population of Palestine. How that was to be achieved was unclear, and as it turned out, not possible.
From an objective point of view the League of Nations and the British created an untenable situation, with Jews, on the one hand, having been given the internationally sanctioned green light to rebuild their home and thereby resolve the humanitarian disaster that defined the Jewish People in the diaspora, and with Arabs, on the other hand, looking forward to independence (whether as part of a greater Arab union or as individual States), with no interest whatsoever in the Jewish Problem or Jewish History or commitments made by other countries to people who don't even live there.
25 years and another World War later the problem had snowballed to the point where the British were unable and unwilling to continue to deal with it. A new international organization, the United Nations had been formed, and as its first project it took upon itself the task of resolving the Palestine problem. It sent a team called UNSCOP to present a solution to the UN members and UNSCOP returned with a carefully balanced plan to allow a small predominantly Jewish State to be formed, with the remainder of the country to become a predominantly Arab State, with the exception of Jerusalem which would be administered by the UN with access to both Jews and Arabs equally. This plan was voted on and ratified by the UN members on November 29, 1947. It was a compromise that the Jews were willing to accept. The Arabs however saw no reason they should have to compromise, and instead initiated a civil war.
The Jews proceeded to put the Partition plan into effect despite the Arab rejection of the recommendation and the war that was being waged against them. Five months later the British withdrew and Israel was proclaimed. The combined forces of five neighboring countries invaded Palestine with the intention of conquering all of Palestine and establishing an Arab State in the entirety of what was the British Mandate for Palestine. Reportedly around 700,000 Arabs who were in the war zone created by the invading Arab armies fled. Israeli forces succeeded not only in defending the territory allocated to it in the Partition Plan but to push the invaders deep into the territories that would have been part of the Arab State had the Arabs accepted resolution 181.
The UN negotiated a cease-fire and subsequently armistice treaties between Israel and the invading countries, and admitted Israel as a full member. The Armistice agreements put the area to the East of the Armistice demarkation line, including East Jerusalem (known as the West Bank) into Jordanian control, and the Gaza Strip into Egyptian control. From 1948 through 1974 the "Palestinians" were not considered a party in the conflict. The conflict was between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries who did not recognize Israel's proclamation of independence, and continued to proclaim their own intention to conquer Palestine and establish an Arab State in the entirety of Palestine.
In 1967 the Arab States mobilized their forces and advanced towards their border with Israel, threatening to push Israel into the sea. Israel reacted with a preemptive strike that resulted not only in defending Israel's territory but in the withdrawal of the Syrians from the Golan Heights, Egypt from the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula, and Jordan from the West Bank. The UN passed resolution 242 which called for the return of these territories to the countries that had withdrawn from them. Israel was willing to do so in exchange for Peace treaties and modifications to ensure Israel's defensibility. The members of the Arab League met in Khartoum to discuss their response and declared that no Arab nation would recognize, negotiate with, or make peace with Israel. As a result Israel had no alternative but to administer the territories, as their former occupiers were unwilling to reoccupy them.
Seven years later the Arab League marched Yasser Arafat into the UN General Assembly and the UN proclaimed the "inalienable right of the Palestinian People to self-determination" and that the PLO is the Palestinians' sole legitimate representative. At that point the conflict ceased to be between Israel and the neighboring Arab countries, and the "Palestinians" became once again a party in the conflict. The UN supported the idea of a Palestinian State to be established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PLO, who they considered the Palestinians' representative, rejected the idea and insisted upon the dismantling of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian State in the enitre area of Palestine, and the return of all Palestinian refugees, resulting in a single predominantly Arab country. The Israeli public saw no prospect of a resolution and a group of Israelis began to insist upon being allowed to begin settle within the occupied territories. After a heated internal conflict the Israeli government relented and allowed settlements to be established.
In 1978 Egypt's president Anwar Sadat and Israel's Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords returning the Sinai to Egypt and committing Israel to an Interim arrangement with the Palestinians granting them autonomy in the Occupied Territories. In 1993 Yasser Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles (Oslo Accords) accepting the principle of a two-State solution and interim Autonomy arrangement.
In 1995 the PLO took control of the Palestinian Autonomy which governs 97% of the Palestinian population of the Occupied Territories and 40% of the West Bank. In 2005 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon withdrew all Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and expelled all Israeli settlers, rendering the Gaza Strip entirely independent. The Hamas offshoot of the Moslem Brotherhood, an Islamic Jihadist organization, took control of the Gaza Strip and proclaimed itself not bound by any agreement signed between Israel and the PLO, and proclaimed its commitment to the destruction of Israel. Hamas proceeded to attempt to smuggle arms into the West Bank and to develop and manufacture rockets with which to attack Israel. Israel reacted by cutting off the routes by which arms and materials for their manufacture could be brought into the Gaza Strip. On at least three occasions Hamas initiated hostilities against Israel firing thousands of rockets indiscriminately into Israeli cities.
Meanwhile at least two attempts were made to negotiate a Final Status agreement between Israel and the PLO. Both attempts failed to reach a settlement acceptable to both parties.
This is the whole story in a nutshell. Every word is objective fact. Undoubtedly there will be a long stream of objections about omissions and recriminations meant to invoke sympathy for one side and to vilify the other. But moving forward will require focusing on the facts and not continuing to justify resistance to reconciliation."
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https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-most-neutral-explanation-o...
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#6The number of parallels between now and 1989 are striking: victimhood == top social currency, etc... It really is almost like we have these 20-30 year social cycles... Perhaps this is known to the sociological literature - but that's not my area. Just the same I find it fascinating.
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#7I love how he thinks that Israel bulldozing Palestinian neighborhoods and killing civilians doesn't count as oppression because there's more Arabs than Israelis in the general area.
"Arabs like to say that there are two conflicting narratives of the conflict. The facts are far simpler. It starts in the end of the 19th century. At the time millions of Jews were fleeing Russia and flooding Europe with refugees because of Czar Alexander III "Russia for Russians" program which sanctioned pogroms in order to evict the Jews from the country. This was only the latest in a long history of expulsions of…
I don't see how this can be called the most neutral explanation when it mentions nothing about how the UN considers Israel's occupation illegal or mentions anything about illegal settlements.
This is also not even the highest ranked answer from the question you linked from Quora.
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#8Here in the South, there is this air of hospitality. But there is an irony because everyone always rejects each others volunteer assistance out of pride for their ability to take care of themselves. I see charity directed towards me almost as an insult, or subtle attempted ownership, and there is this competitive air about needing less than others.
But I suppose in more densely populated areas, there is more victimhood at play. This is an education problem, because these people were never raised to take care of themselves. Instead, they want to be owed something. This "something" usually comes in the form of tax handouts, and when it is distributed, I'm certain it is quite mismanaged. Think of all the impulse-buy items near checkouts that are purchased with food stamps, when these people could be combining this resource to buy in bulk and get much more out of it.
My mantra is to be a provider, not a consumer. It's not about how much you make, it's about what you choose to spend it on.
It seems like these types of problems can only exist when there are too many people living in close-proximity.
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Arabs like to say that there are two conflicting narratives of the conflict. The facts are far simpler. It starts in the end of the 19th century. At the time millions of Jews were fleeing Russia and flooding Europe with refugees because of Czar Alexander III "Russia for Russians" program which sanctioned pogroms in order to evict the Jews from the country. This was only the latest in a long history of expulsions of…
I don't see how this can be called the most neutral explanation when it mentions nothing about how the UN considers Israel's occupation illegal or mentions anything about illegal settlements. This is also not even the highest ranked answer from the question you linked from Quora.
Welcome to HN. I love seeing new members expressing passionate views.
Couple of quick questions: Do you always agree with every dictate of the UN? Does objectivity always garner the most votes?
Re: The Joys of Victimhood (1989)
#10Epstein's powerful prose captures well the New York intellectual views of a certain culture and a certain generation. It's a fascinating perspective on what people were thinking then. I was equally fascinated by the deep view of the popular psyche shown in his September 1970 essay for Harper's Magazine, featured on its cover ( https://harpers.org/archive/1970/09/homohetero/ ):
> Yet if heterosexual life has come to seem impossibly difficult, homosexual life still seems more nearly impossible. For to be a homosexual is to be hostage to a passion that automatically brings terrible pressures to bear on any man who lives with it: and these pressures, which only a few rare homosexuals are able to rise above with any success, can distort a man, can twist him, and always leave him defined by his sexual condition. The same, I think, cannot be said about heterosexuals. With the possible exception of prostitutes and heterosexuals driven by abnormal appetites, the general run of heterosexuals are not defined by their sexuality at all. Although the power of sex is never to be underrated, in the main for most heterosexuals sex beyond adolescence becomes a secondary matter, a pleasure most of the time, a problem only in its absence. Homosexuality, on the other hand, is a full-time matter, a human status—and that is the tyranny of it.
> …
> I am not about to go into a liberal homily here about the need for private acceptance of homosexuality, because, truth to tell, I have not privately accepted it myself—nor, I suspect am I soon likely to. In my liberal (or Liberal's) conscience, I prefer to believe that I have never done anything to harm any single homosexual, or in any way added to his pain; and it would be nice if I could get to my grave with this record intact. Yet I do not mistake my tolerance as complete. Although I have had pleasant dealings with homosexuals professionally, also unpleasant ones, I do not have any homosexuals among my close friends. If a close friend were to reveal himself to me as being a homosexual, I am very uncertain what my reaction would be—except to say that it would not be simple. I clearly do not consider a man's homosexuality, as certain ihomosexuals would argue, merely a matter of sexual preference on his part, something vestigial to him, but instead I think it goes deep within him, that it cannot but have affected him strenuously, making him either a stronger man or a weaker, a better man or a worse—whichever, at all events, an essentially different man than he would be if he were not a For this reason, and from an absolutely personal point of view, I consider it important o know whether a man I am dealing with is a homosexual or nut. Not long ago the BBC did a retrospective on the art of Sergei Diaghilev. Every aspect of Diaghilev's illustrious career was covered from every possible angle, when the last man to be interviewed for the show, an aged Russian homosexual who was a friend of Diaghilev's from the 1920s, said: "Ze ting you must remember about Servei vas dat he vas a very aggressive homosexual." I think anyone who would ignore a fact of this kind in intellectual criticism or in life, is a fool.
> If I had the power to do so, I would wish homosexuality off the face of this earth. I would do so because I think that it brings infinitely more pain than pleasure to those who are forced to live with it; because I think there is no resolution for this pain in our lifetime, only, for the overwhelming majority of homosexuals, more pain and various degrees of exacerbating adjustment; and because, wholly selfishly, I find myself completely incapable of coming to turns with it.
> …
> They are different front the rest of us. Homosexuals are different, moreover, in a way that cuts deeper than other kinds of human differences—religious, class, racial—in a way that is, somehow, more fundamental. Cursed without clear cause, afflicted without apparent cure, they are an affront to our rationality, living evidence of our despair of ever finding a sensible, an explainable, design to the world. One can tolerate homosexuality, a small enough price to be asked to pay for someone else's pain, but accepting it, really accepting it, is another thing altogether. I find I can accept it least of all when I look at my children. There is much my four sons can do in their lives that might cause me anguish, that might outrage me, that might make me ashamed of them and of myself as their father. But nothing they could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual. For then I should know them condemned to a state of permanent niggerdom among men, their lives, whatever adjustment they might make to their condition, to be lived out as part of the pain of the earth.