there is nothing in the world as morally binding as belonging to a minority. - Shulamith Hareven

If my only identity is that of the victim, the world's deterministic and doomed victim, I may (or so it seems) commit any atrocity, including exiling Arabs from their homes (excuse me, dear hawks, "relocating" them) and taking possession of their land, because I am the victim and they are not; because this is the only way I define myself and my identity-forever. But if I also define myself as the son, or daughter, of a people with a splendid four-thousand-year history of responsibility, of conscience, of repairing and improving, of appealing for social order and justice, of a legal system nearly unparalleled in the world, and of the protection of these traditions; if I have indeed learned and internalized all these, so that they define my identity; then even if often in history I have been the victim of others, I will never oppress those weaker than myself and never abuse my power to exile them (excuse me, dear hawks, "bus them out"). I will not have to define my uniqueness in terms of the past alone.

Sara, attuned to the vibrating city, went back to work. Not to the hospital: the thought of that great dungeon of suffering oppressed her. She looked for, and found, a job as a field worker, visiting needy homes on welfare all over the city. The work came to several hours a day. She was usually paired with another nurse, a Christian Arab named Thérèse. Neither of them had known before what depths of misery there were in the city, what poverty holed up in burrows, buried in mildew, stirring amid the huge stones covered with slobber and moss. An age-old underworld of poverty. Holes in the walls. Stinking puddles on the ground. (chapter 7 p144)

The first things that get lost in charismatic leadership are facts.