Jewish victimization should not be dismissed as unbeatable. It must be fought harder and better.
A lively debate is underway in the Jewish world about whether Jews are wise to present themselves as victims.
In the Jewish Journal, Rabbi Amitai Fraiman has written that Jewish victimization is now an outdated paradigm. Jews are no longer seen as vulnerable and marginal, but ever since Israel’s iconic victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, they’ve been associated with force, power and agency.
The Hamas-led atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, may have slaughtered innocent people, says Fraiman, but this was met by a “ferocious response from a Jewish army.” Portraying it as a story of pure victimhood is therefore “a conceptual failure.”
