Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

El‑Kurd explores the semantic minefield Palestinians must navigate under occupation, where words carry more peril than drones. He opens with a James Baldwin epigraph highlighting the impossibility of equating Palestinian suffering with that of Black Americans, setting the tone for a critique of imposed rhetorical limits. 

El‑Kurd recounts childhood memories in occupied Jerusalem. Jewish settlers and state officials—soldiers, bureaucrats, judges—carved his family’s expulsion into law and daily life, while he was taught to distinguish “Jews” from “Zionists” to avoid collective blame. Despite living under a “Jewish state,” Palestinians were pressured to sidestep visible markers of colonial power, like the Star of David on flags and court documents, and to self‑censor any language that might be deemed tropes of antisemitism.

He argues that this linguistic policing effectively shifts the onus of violence onto Palestinians’ words, not the settler state’s material brutality. From childhood, Palestinians learn that misusing terms can render systemic oppression invisible, whereas ignorance becomes a luxury. To secure international solidarity, young activists memorize hieroglyphics of acceptable discourse: Denouncing global antisemitism takes precedence over naming the settlers who demolished their homes. This preemptive defensiveness, El‑Kurd contends, is a survival tactic born of fear that any rhetorical misstep will strip Palestinians of credibility and humanity.