Israel's Cult of Victimhood http://www.counterpunch.org/cook06092010.html

...Israelis are engaged in a Kafkaesque conversation in which the military attack on the civilian ships is characterized as a legitimate “act of self-defence”...and the killing of nine aid activists is transformed into an attempted “lynching of our soldiers” by terrorists...

This strange discourse can only be deciphered if we understand the two apparently contradictory themes that have come to dominate the emotional landscape of Israel. The first is a trenchant belief that Israel exists to realise Jewish power; the second is an equally strong sense that Israel embodies the Jewish people’s collective experience as the eternal victims of history.