ABSTRACT
The common assumption of victims is that they are acted upon, with little to no agency of their own. IR scholars have reinforced this understanding to some extent, by focusing on the victimization of social groups (for example, in wars and mass atrocities) or on how victim-groups deal with their condition as victim. But in international conflicts, victim-groups can achieve a measure of agency and power by utilizing specific discourses to connect both their status as victims and their demands for redress into the dominant feeling structures and political-legal structures of the international system. A brief examination of the Palestinian case provides evidence for the effectiveness of this argument.
