Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: wretched, raging, fraught, and fragmented. On fire. Stubborn.

Ineligible. Dignified. The lens we lend the Palestinian reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else.

The world continues to witness perverse violence unfolding on our screens; broken limbs, homes and futures permeate our dreams. In this context of numbing horror, Mohammed El-Kurd writes a defiant elegy, an ode to the indelible existence of his nation, to the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal. With lyrical precision, El-Kurd dissects ‘humanization’ as a deeply misguided tactic of the marginalized, revealing the perplexing logic at its heart: the desire to make humans out of humans.

Rather than shrinking the scope of Palestinian humanity to victimhood, El-Kurd demands that friends and foes look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing condemnation and deference. Instead, solidarity with Palestine requires recognizing it as a universal cause, irreverently mocking the delusions of its oppressors, and building movements rooted in dignity. Perfect Victims plunges into the depths of heartbreak to sculpt language for the brutality of genocide, resurfacing as a steady, inextinguishable flame.