After "colonizing us to the bones, they also monopolize victimhood!"

Against Paranoid Nationalism (2003),
by Ghassan Hage
Chapter 8 - pg 133

http://www.kabobfest.com/2007/11/quote-of-week.html


"What we end up having [in Palestine] is the most unusual situation. The Israelis monopolize everything. They monopolize nuclear weapons, they monopolize tanks, planes, what else ... They monopolize the land, they monopolize the water ... what else ... They even monopolize moral virtue ... you know, democracy and freedom of speech, and they monopolize the capacity to write the history of our land ...

"...But they are not only content with this; after monopolizing all this and colonizing us to the bones, they also monopolize victimhood! To my knowledge, no colonizer has ever succeeded in monopolizing even victimhood ... just our luck! We say: 'Hey, you're hurting us', and they say, 'Don't you know how hurt we are? Haven't you heard of the Holocaust!' They are suffocating us, and when we try to push them away a little bit so we can breathe, they say, 'We're being victimized. You don't recognize we exist.' How on earth can you not recognize the existence of someone as fat as Sharon sitting on top of you suffocating you, I don't know!"


--Palestinian man interviewed in Sydney, Australia, in Hage's book.

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