Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

“Our massacres are only interrupted by commercial breaks. Judges legalize them. Correspondents kill us with passive voice.”

El-Kurd critiques the systemic erasure and minimization of Palestinian suffering by institutions of law and media, introducing the theme of Media Power and the Politics of Legitimacy. His use of sharp, declarative sentences mimics the rhythm of news headlines, underscoring the irony of routine atrocities. The reference to “passive voice” is a direct indictment of language as a tool for sanitizing violence.

“Zionism is the leading cause of death in occupied Palestine, through both direct, state-sanctioned violence and indirect, consequential violence.”

This blunt statement repositions Zionism from an abstract ideology to a material threat. El-Kurd’s diction—“state-sanctioned,” “consequential”—traces a chain of causality and challenges notions of neutrality. The line’s diagnostic tone mimics medical language, redefining violence as structural and ongoing.

“Dehumanization has situated us—ejected us, even—outside of the human condition, so much so that what is logically understood to be a man’s natural reaction to subjugation is an uncontained and incomprehensible, primal behavior if it comes from us.”

El-Kurd argues that there is an inherent hypocrisy in how Palestinian resistance is pathologized. The contrast between “natural reaction” and “primal behavior” highlights the rhetorical devices used to strip Palestinians of rational agency. Syntax and repetition drive home the alienation and projection at the heart of dehumanization.