This book deals comprehensively with different aspects of collective victimhood in contemporary Israel, but also with the wider implications of this important concept for many other societies, including the Palestinian one. The eight highly-diverse, scholarly chapters included in this volume offer analysis of the politics of victimhood (viewing it as increasingly dominant within contemporary Israel), assess victimhood as a focal point of the Jewish historical legacy, trace the evolution and changes of Zionist thought as it relates to a sense of national victimhood, study the possibility of the political transformation of victimhood through changing perceptions and policies by top Israeli leaders, focus on important events that have contributed to the evolvement of the victimhood discourse in Israel and beyond (e.g. the 1967 Six-Day and 1973 Yom Kippur wars in the Middle East), examine the politics and ideology of victimhood within the Palestinian national movement, and offer new ways of progressing beyond national victimhood and toward a better future for people in the Middle East and beyond. The insights of the eight authors and their conceptualization of Israeli victimhood are of immediate relevance for numerous other national groups, as well as for a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. This volume has been inspired by the universality of victimhood among humans, reflected in King Lear's words ("I am a man more sinned against than sinning"), as well as by the words of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, telling the Knesset in Jerusalem: "No longer is it true that the whole world is against us". While the book sums up the state of the field in regard to collective victimhood, it invites the readers to engage in contemplating the far-reaching implications of this important concept for our lives.

This book deals comprehensively with different aspects of collective victimhood in contemporary Israel, but also with the wider implications of this important concept for many other societies, including the Palestinian one. The eight highly-diverse, scholarly chapters included in this volume offer analysis of the politics of victimhood (viewing it as increasingly dominant within contemporary Israel), assess victimhood as a focal point of the Jewish historical legacy, trace the evolution and changes of Zionist thought as it relates to a sense of national victimhood, study the possibility of the political transformation of victimhood through changing perceptions and policies by top Israeli leaders, focus on important events that have contributed to the evolvement of the victimhood discourse in Israel and beyond (e.g. the 1967 Six-Day and 1973 Yom Kippur wars in the Middle East), examine the politics and ideology of victimhood within the Palestinian national movement, and offer new ways of progressing beyond national victimhood and toward a better future for people in the Middle East and beyond. The insights of the eight authors and their conceptualization of Israeli victimhood are of immediate relevance for numerous other national groups, as well as for a variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. This volume has been inspired by the universality of victimhood among humans, reflected in King Lear's words ("I am a man more sinned against than sinning"), as well as by the words of the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, telling the Knesset in Jerusalem: "No longer is it true that the whole world is against us". While the book sums up the state of the field in regard to collective victimhood, it invites the readers to engage in contemplating the far-reaching implications of this important concept for our lives.

With the Holocaust resonating as the "thick background," historical redress processes in Israel render a particularly challenging case. The simultaneous concern the Jewish community has with past, present and future redress campaigns, as both victim and perpetrator, is unique. 'Who is Afraid of Historical Redress? analyzes three cases of historical redress in Israel: the Yemeni children affair, the tinea capitis irradiations and the claims for the return of native land of the two Christian Palestinian villages of Iqrit and Bir'im. All three cases were redressed under the juridical edifice of legal thought and action. The outcomes suggest that these processes were insufficient for achieving closure by the victims, atonement by those responsible and reconciliation among social groups.

The current surge of displaced and trafficked children, child soldiers, and child refugees rekindles the virtually dead letter of the Genocide Convention prohibition on transferring children of one group to another. This book focuses on the gap between genocide as a legal term and genocidal forcible child transfer as a catastrophic experience that disrupts a group's continuity. It probes the Genocide Convention's boundaries and draws attention to the diverse, yet highly similar, patterns of forcible child transfers cases such as colonial genocide in the US, Canada, and Australia, Jewish-Yemeni immigrants in Israel, children of Republican parents during the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, and Operation Peter Pan in Cuba. The analysis highlights the consequences of the under-inclusive protection granted only to four groups. Ruth Amir argues effectively for the need to add an Amending Protocol to the Genocide Convention to protect from forcible transfer to children of any identifiable group of persons perpetrated with the intent to destroy the group as such. This proposed provision together with Communications and Rapid Inquiry Procedures will highlight the gravity of forcible child transfers and contribute to the prevention and punishment of genocide.