ABSTRACT
In Chapter 1, I identified the Jewish, Irish, Palestinian, African and Armenian diasporas, which, through self-description or construction by others, can be labelled with the preceding adjective of ‘victim’. Writers and political leaders representing these peoples reinforce this classification with their constant crossreferences and comparisons to one another. Readers with literary leanings might, for example, remember one of the characters in James Joyce’s famous novel Ulysses talking of the Irish peasants in the ‘black 1847’ as being driven out ‘in hordes’. ‘Twenty-thousand of them died in the coffin ships’ (a description frequently used of the African slave ships). ‘But’, his character continues, ‘those who came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage’ (a clear reference to the way the biblical Jews conceived ancient Egypt).
