I have talked about Israeli’s sense of victimhood quite often, most recently just a few days ago. Akiva Eldar (one of Ha’aretz great journalist) has a piece on some recent research into precisely this topic:
Israeli Jews’ consciousness is characterized by a sense of victimization, a siege mentality, blind patriotism, belligerence, self-righteousness, dehumanization of the Palestinians and insensitivity to their suffering.
This research also reinforces another point I have made recently:
This infrastructure gives rise to the culture of conflict in which we and the Palestinians are deeply immersed, fanning the flames and preventing progress toward peace. Bar-Tal claims that in such a situation, it is hard even to imagine a possibility that the two nations will be capable of overcoming the psychological obstacles without outside help.
Tags: Nationalism, Xenophobia