Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

Omar is a close friend of El-Kurd’s and a recurring figure in Perfect Victims, serving as a symbol of unrelenting political commitment and the personal cost of resistance under Israeli occupation. Though we are not given Omar’s full biography, El-Kurd details his arrest and imprisonment without charge under administrative detention—a legal mechanism that allows the Israeli state to detain Palestinians indefinitely based on undisclosed evidence. Omar’s capture is described not only as a moment of personal loss but as a political parable for how the Israeli regime systematically targets those who refuse to submit or remain silent.

Omar’s significance extends beyond his individual story, becoming an embodiment of collective resistance and principled refusal. Unlike the upwardly mobile Palestinians El-Kurd critiques elsewhere in the book—those who temper their politics to preserve their careers or assimilate into elite institutions—Omar chooses to stay in the streets. He organizes jail support, attends protests, and remains visible, even when visibility means becoming a target. His example prompts El-Kurd to question the moral compromises that often accompany platforming in the West, especially when the cost of mainstream acceptance is silence or complicity.

In describing Omar’s detention, El-Kurd contrasts his fate with the relative safety of those—including himself—who live outside the occupied territories or who possess Western affiliations that provide them with a degree of protection. Omar, by contrast, cannot be protected by rhetoric, credentials, or international advocacy. His arrest sparks an internal reckoning for El-Kurd about the limits of symbolic resistance, the hollowness of performative outrage, and the deep inequities of who gets remembered and who gets erased. El-Kurd acknowledges that while Omar has all the “qualifications” that might typically seduce a Western audience into solidarity—a compelling narrative, an admirable character, a clear injustice—he would have likely rejected any campaign focused solely on him, because to do so would isolate his case from the larger struggle.

Through Omar, El-Kurd brings into sharp focus one of the book’s central tensions: The gap between the real, often invisible cost of resistance and the filtered, often depoliticized way Palestinian suffering is consumed in the West. Omar’s role in the book is not ornamental; he is both comrade and conscience. His presence invites readers to move beyond identification or pity, and toward a clearer understanding of what sustained, principled solidarity might require.

Israeli state institutions, particularly the military, intelligence apparatus, courts, and political leadership, are central antagonistic forces throughout Perfect Victims. Though El-Kurd often focuses on individual moments of injustice, such as the imprisonment of Omar or the bombing of Gaza, these events are consistently framed within a broader institutional structure designed to maintain what he regards as Zionist supremacy and to suppress Palestinian resistance. These institutions are not treated as malfunctioning bureaucracies or bad-faith actors within an otherwise functional system; they are instead portrayed as working exactly as intended. He argues that their violence is not accidental but systemic, deliberate, and strategic.

One institution that figures prominently is the Israeli military, particularly in its role enforcing occupation and carrying out targeted killings. El-Kurd references numerous examples, including the airstrike that killed journalist Issam Abdallah, to show how Israeli forces act with near-total impunity. Administrative detention, home demolitions, and the use of American-made weapons against civilians are all seen as extensions of a military doctrine that views Palestinian life as disposable. The courts, including the Israeli Supreme Court, are portrayed not as neutral arbiters but as complicit extensions of the occupation, rubber-stamping the theft of Palestinian land and the expulsion of Palestinian communities, such as in Masafer Yatta.

Israeli politicians and public officials are also central figures in shaping and legitimizing this violence. El-Kurd quotes high-ranking leaders, such as former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and current government ministers, who openly express what he calls “genocidal” sentiments. He argues that these statements, often invoking metaphors of drowning Palestinians or erasing Gaza entirely, are not fringe opinions but part of a normalized political discourse. The rhetorical violence from Israeli officials is matched by policy: The blockade of Gaza, the criminalization of protest, the mass incarceration of Palestinians, and the stifling of political expression through surveillance and censorship.

In El-Kurd’s framing, these institutions do more than dominate Palestinians physically, aiming to dominate them narratively as well. Through press briefings, global PR, and partnerships with Western media, Israeli state bodies shape the international discourse, often portraying themselves as victims while casting Palestinian resistance as terrorism. This narrative control is part of the same machinery of occupation, allowing for the justification of further violence and for the erasure of context, history, and culpability. El-Kurd insists that true resistance requires naming this institutional violence for what it is—not aberration, but architecture.

Western media is one of the most frequently critiqued and analyzed forces in Perfect Victims, functioning as both an enabler of Zionist violence and a gatekeeper of global narratives around Palestine. El-Kurd explores how major news outlets, including The New York Times, Reuters, and other legacy institutions, report on Palestinian death and resistance with a consistent bias. He argues that they minimize the violence of the Israeli state while amplifying any Palestinian act of resistance as “extremism” or “terror.” This distortion, according to El-Kurd, is not merely negligent but ideological.

A central argument in the book is that Western media does not passively reflect the world, but actively shapes it. Through framing, omission, euphemism, and editorial decisions, media outlets influence public opinion, political discourse, and international responses. When Palestinian journalists are killed, as in the case of Issam Abdallah, their deaths are softened through vague language or framed as collateral damage. When Israeli civilians die, headlines are immediate, personal, and saturated with emotional urgency. El-Kurd critiques this asymmetry as a function of power, where the voices of the colonized are filtered, mistranslated, or silenced altogether.

El-Kurd also grapples with the paradox of participation. Many Palestinian journalists, artists, and intellectuals—including himself—are invited into these same media institutions for coverage or commentary, often under the guise of inclusion or balance. This inclusion, he argues, is frequently conditional. One must speak with “couth,” temper one’s critiques, and avoid language deemed too radical or confrontational. He believes that in doing so, participants risk becoming complicit in their own erasure. The media’s performative pluralism, in this sense, serves to legitimize its broader structural bias.

Finally, the book takes aim at how Western media upholds the “perfect victim” standard, with El-Kurd arguing that only the most passive, moderate, and palatable Palestinians are allowed public empathy. Stories of resistance, armed or otherwise, are filtered out or condemned, while stories of victimhood are often drained of their political context. In doing so, the media reinforces the very power structures El-Kurd seeks to dismantle. To him, the problem is not just bad reporting, but an entire media ecosystem built on colonial logic and false equivalencies. To confront injustice, the media must be recognized not as a neutral player but as an active participant in the conflict it claims to merely document.