Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal (2025) is a nonfiction work by Palestinian poet, journalist, and activist Mohammed El-Kurd, whose personal and professional life is deeply rooted in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. El-Kurd is best known for his outspoken advocacy and literary work that foregrounds the lived experience of Palestinians under occupation, particularly in East Jerusalem. This book—a genre-defying blend of political commentary, personal reflection, and poetic provocation—describes what El-Kurd sees as the pressure on Palestinians to appeal to Western sensibilities in order to be seen as worthy of empathy or protection. Through essays and fragments that interweave memoir, literary critique, and polemic, El-Kurd interrogates the mechanisms of narrative control, media complicity, and the politics of representation. 

The book situates itself at the intersection of decolonial literature, anti-imperialist discourse, and testimonial writing, encompassing themes such as The Burden of Performative Victimhood, Resistance as Refusal and Reclamation, and Media Power and the Politics of Legitimacy. It draws heavily on historical, political, and philosophical contexts, challenging readers to reconsider assumptions about objectivity, justice, and power. 

This study guide uses the 2025 Haymarket eBook edition.

Content Warning: The book includes graphic descriptions of state violence, incarceration, displacement, and discussions of the systemic marginalization and loss of Palestinian life and identity.

Language Note: This study guide references terms such as apartheid and genocide in alignment with the language used by the author and several major human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These terms are politically and legally contested, and the Israeli government strongly rejects both characterizations. Their use in this guide reflects the framing adopted by El-Kurd in the text and is not presented as an objective legal judgment.

Summary

Perfect Victims is a hybrid work of essays, polemics, poetic fragments, and memoir that challenges prevailing Western narratives surrounding Palestinians and the ongoing occupation of Palestine. While the book lacks a traditional narrative arc or plotline, its thematic structure builds over the course of 10 chapters and an Epilogue, advancing a central argument: El-Kurd claims that Palestinians are systematically dehumanized and politically disempowered in the global imagination, particularly through media representation and institutional gatekeeping, and are thus compelled to appeal to their occupiers and audiences for recognition, empathy, and justice. El-Kurd dissects the expectations placed on Palestinians to be “perfect victims”—nonviolent, polite, and photogenic in their suffering—to be considered credible or deserving of support.

In the opening chapters, El-Kurd recounts the experience of watching a protest outside the New York Times headquarters during the 2023 Committee to Protect Journalists awards, which honored members of the press while the Times itself had recently editorialized against a ceasefire in Gaza. The juxtaposition serves as an entry point into the book’s primary critique: That major Western institutions—from newsrooms to human rights NGOs—operate within a framework that devalues Palestinian life and agency. The spectacle of respectability, he argues, often distracts from the systemic complicity of such institutions in upholding settler-colonial narratives.

As the book unfolds, El-Kurd alternates between first-person narrative, reportage, historical context, and poetic reflection. He examines how Palestinians must constantly perform their trauma in a palatable way, suppressing anger, resistance, and cultural complexity to appeal to Western sympathies. The cost of this performativity is a political and psychic disfigurement, as Palestinians are incentivized to mute their demands for liberation and instead focus on suffering as spectacle. Throughout these meditations, El-Kurd explores the tension between visibility and erasure: The more Palestinians are seen through the lens of mainstream media, the more their image is shaped by external expectations, distortions, and editorial censorship.

The middle chapters investigate how proximity to power—through elite academic institutions, media access, or affiliations with liberal organizations—can corrupt the language of resistance. El-Kurd describes how Palestinians who “make it” in these spaces often do so by downplaying their politics or criticizing their own communities in ways that align with dominant Western ideologies. This assimilation, he warns, does not guarantee protection and often results in tokenization. He recounts the story of Omar, a fellow activist and friend who was detained without charge by Israeli authorities. Rather than focusing on Omar’s unique personal qualities (which might win over a Western audience), El-Kurd reflects on the moral risk of centering individual stories in a context of mass suffering. He argues that the constant search for exceptionalism undermines the collective nature of Palestinian resistance.

Later chapters delve into the role of language and irreverence in confronting power. In Chapter 9, El-Kurd responds to the frequently posed question, “Do you want to throw Israelis into the sea?”—a provocative, bad-faith accusation used to conflate criticism of Zionism with genocidal intent. Instead of offering earnest rebuttals, El-Kurd adopts a tone of derision and satire, using humor to dismantle the question’s racist premises. He argues that Palestinians should not be required to constantly prove their innocence or humanity before speaking of their own oppression. By refusing to play the role of the defendant, he shifts the conversation from abstract hypotheticals to concrete violence: The real displacement, surveillance, bombardment, and imprisonment inflicted on Palestinians daily.

The final chapter and Epilogue mark a shift in tone. While much of the book emphasizes outrage and critique, the concluding sections turn toward possibility and resolve. El-Kurd describes seeing signs of endurance and even joy amid ongoing devastation, such as the news of a new kindergarten opening in northern Gaza despite the destruction. He affirms that even in the face of unrelenting violence, Palestinians continue to fight, create, and live. The figure of the jasmine plant—resilient, fragrant, and native to the land—emerges as a recurring symbol of resistance and renewal. These closing pages balance mourning with affirmation, emphasizing the multiplicity of Palestinian experience and the enduring potential for collective liberation.