52 pages • 1-hour read
Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal
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Chapter 9-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary: “Do You Want to Throw Israelis into the Sea?”
In this chapter, the author confronts a recurring accusation he often faces during public appearances: The question of whether he wants to “throw Israelis into the sea” (156). El-Kurd contextualizes the phrase as a long-standing, apocryphal trope used to portray Palestinians as “genocidal” aggressors. He references British MP Christopher Mayhew’s 1973 challenge, which offered a monetary reward to anyone who could produce credible evidence of “genocidal” rhetoric from Arab leaders. None could, and the accusation was denounced as a myth—yet it persists in popular discourse.
El-Kurd explains that such questions are rarely sincere inquiries. Instead, they function as hostile provocations that place Palestinians on the defensive and demand moral perfection before any claim to justice can be heard. He critiques the underlying presumption that simply wanting a future without Zionism is itself disqualifying, as though Palestinian dreams must first pass a settler-approved moral test. In the Zionist imagination, he argues, Palestinian aspiration itself—no matter how poetic, symbolic, or metaphorical—is reinterpreted as an existential threat.
The chapter draws attention to what El-Kurd regards as the double standards in public discourse: While Palestinians are accused of harboring genocidal fantasies, actual genocidal statements from Israeli officials are routinely ignored or excused. El-Kurd cites several documented examples, such as former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expressing a wish for Gaza to “sink into the sea” (158), and more recent officials proposing the forcible removal of Gazans under the guise of humanitarian aid. He contrasts these statements with the impossible standard of restraint imposed on Palestinians, whose humor, grief, or resistance are often criminalized.
El-Kurd explains that when confronted with these questions, he increasingly responds with humor and irreverence. This flippancy, he argues, is not only a coping mechanism but a form of rhetorical resistance. By mocking absurd and bad-faith premises, he seeks to shift the focus from imagined futures to the lived realities of airstrikes, checkpoints, massacres, and exile. He reflects on the strategic potential of satire, especially when used by the oppressed to unseat dominant narratives and reframe moral priorities.
The chapter also explores the emotional and professional toll this rhetorical battleground takes on Palestinian intellectuals, particularly those living in the West. El-Kurd notes that Palestinian advocates are held to impossible standards of civility and must constantly prove their legitimacy by disavowing resistance, distancing themselves from “terrorism,” and avoiding any misstep that could jeopardize their freedom, career, or reputation.
Ultimately, El-Kurd underscores the need for collective dignity and unflinching honesty in the face of dehumanizing rhetoric. He calls on Palestinians and their allies to refuse the terms of the oppressor’s debate, reject caricatured portrayals, and speak truth to power, even when doing so carries risk.
Epilogue Summary: “Rain Is Coming”
In the Epilogue, El‑Kurd turns from the catalogue of violence to gesture toward resilience and renewal. He begins by imagining a new kindergarten opening in northern Gaza—a “phoenix of sorts” (169)—and conjures the scent of jasmine as a symbol of life persisting amid siege. He reflects on how children learn their letters under the drone of warplanes, absorbing words more brutal than “invasion” or “Nakba,” yet still find reasons to nag, to joke, to grow.
El‑Kurd stresses that Palestinians are not merely passive subjects of dispossession. Alongside massacre and exile, there has always been struggle. He notes how women and men arm themselves with everything from slingshots to rockets, refusing to submit even as death and imprisonment mount. This dual narrative of brutalization and resistance underscores a deeper truth: Liberation is not only a distant dream but a claim rooted in lived defiance.
Turning to the settler‑colonial power, he argues that Zionism, though formidable, shows cracks. Citing shifts in global discourse, the resurgence of radical movements, and even the anarchic graffiti scrawled in airport bathrooms, he portrays the occupation as a “trembling beast” whose might depends on its mythic aura.
El‑Kurd concludes by insisting on the necessity of holding both realities in view: The rubble-strewn landscape of what El-Kurd frames as a present-day “genocide,” and the jasmine‑scented promise of regeneration. He recalls his mother’s simple prophecy—“rain is coming and God is almighty” (170)—as a benediction that, like seeds sprouting in a furnace, affirms the possibility of revolution and the end of the Nakba.
Chapter 9-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapters of Perfect Victims, El-Kurd foregrounds imagination and rhetorical performance as contested political terrains. Rather than ending with a conventional summation, he extends his interrogation of narrative framing into a meditation on dreaming, dignity, and defiance. In doing so, he reveals how Palestinian futurity—envisioning a world without occupation—is rendered not just implausible by dominant discourse, but criminal.
El-Kurd emphasizes the role of narrative in offering a deconstruction of the perennial accusation that he or other Palestinians “want to throw Israelis into the sea” (156), which he associates with The Burden of Performative Victimhood. This rhetorical trap, long since debunked as apocryphal, remains a powerful tool of deflection. “The decision to answer a derailing question becomes a political act” (162), he writes, underscoring that the question itself is less about inquiry than implication. Palestinians are asked not what they believe, but why they believe something inherently illegitimate. The burden of constant disavowal creates a situation in which legitimacy is always provisional, always earned through rhetorical containment. Even answering in earnest risks reinforcing the premise that Palestinian aspirations are inherently “genocidal.”
To counter this dynamic, El-Kurd adopts irreverence as both tactic and tone, offering Resistance as Refusal and Reclamation. His flippant rejoinders—such as joking that those afraid of drowning should learn to swim—reject the moral terms set by the interrogator. While some may see humor as undermining seriousness, El-Kurd wields it as a strategic refusal. This tonal shift becomes a form of rhetorical resistance, turning the absurdity of the question back on itself and exposing its inherent bad faith. His satire destabilizes the expectation of mournful compliance, re-centering Palestinian voice not around apology or petition, but around audacity.
The act of imagining a free Palestine without settlers or drones emerges as one of the most politically charged gestures in the text. “To simply imagine Palestine without settlers… is genocidal” (157), he writes, highlighting the inversion by which colonized desire is rendered threatening. This reframing reflects a central paradox: The act of dreaming becomes incriminating when the dream excludes one’s oppressor. By equating poetic imagination with violence, dominant narratives foreclose even symbolic alternatives. El-Kurd’s irony highlights this contradiction, while also claiming imagination itself as a form of resistance.
This pivot from critique to construction continues in the Epilogue, where El-Kurd evokes metaphor to shape a vision of resilience beyond rubble. “There is jasmine because seeds do not need permission…” (169), he writes, using organic imagery to suggest that resistance—like flora—requires no institutional sanction to take root. In this shift, metaphor becomes the primary mode through which futurity is imagined. These closing passages rely less on confrontation and more on grounded lyricism. Rather than rely on declarations, El-Kurd conjures symbols of regrowth, continuity, and insistence through images of jasmine, rain, and seeds germinating in fire. “If seeds can germinate in the inferno, so can revolution” (170) he concludes, tying natural persistence to political regeneration.
These metaphors do more than beautify devastation; they invert the logic of dehumanization. If Zionism is a “trembling beast,” it is not because it lacks power, but because its violence has become unsustainable. By personifying it as aging, unstable, and ignorant of its own significance, El-Kurd shifts the rhetorical scale. The imagery does not deny reality, but reframes the terms by which power is understood. El-Kurd reclaims language not merely as a defensive tool, but as an imaginative act that defines its own parameters.
By refusing to respond on imposed terms and by insisting on the legitimacy of both rage and reverie, El-Kurd closes Perfect Victims with a form of political authorship that refuses conclusion. The final note—his mother’s prophecy that “rain is coming”—echoes the jasmine’s defiance, invoking a natural, intimate knowledge that resists erasure. It is not closure he offers, but an opening.
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