SCHOLAR ISLAND

"….once Victimhood is understood to endow one with special claims and rights, the scramble to attain that designation for one’s own interest group is as heated as any other race for legitimacy and power. Victimhood, one needs to remember, is scarcely a fixed term, and there is something truly depressing in the clamor of competing voices to prove whose distress has been more persistent and devastating, and whose claims to compensatory rectification are therefore more worthy."

Michael Andre Berstein

Foregone Conclusions

"We must bear in mind that our having been victims does not accord us any special moral standing. The victim does not become virtuous for having been a victim. Although the Holocaust inflicted a horrible injustice upon us, it did not grant us a certificate of everlasting righteousness. The murderers were amoral; the victims were not made moral. To be moral you must behave ethically. The test of that is daily and constant."

A.B. Yehoshua