Why People Feel Like Victims

>This is just my hypothesis, but there are certain societies, particularly those with long histories of prolonged conflict, where the central narrative of the society is a victim-oriented narrative, which is the Jewish narrative. It’s called “perpetual victimhood.” Children in kindergarten learn to adopt beliefs that Israelis suffer more than Palestinians, that they always have to protect themselves and struggle for their existence. What’s interesting is the way in which this narrative enables people to internalize a nation’s history and to connect past and present suffering.

I don't think Palestinians would agree with that. This particular dichotomy is fascinating, but impossible to discuss because you're discarded as an antisemite immediately if you disagree that Israelis are victims.

We get what we reward, kids do what works for them, and while there is a massive amount of prior art on solutions to mitigating this, I think we're in a spot where we never thought there would be such an acute need to explain to adults what this issue is, and so we've been culturally backfooted in producing critical tools for dealing with it.

I guess I'd reject the whole victim/perpetrator dichotomy and say that people's conditions are contingent on forces largely out of their control. That's a factual statement. Lots of people and societies find this very uncomfortable - we generally like the cosmos to be largely about us, down to our decisions, both for the better and for the worse.