Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal

El-Kurd interrogates what he regards as the pervasive expectation that Palestinians must present themselves as passive, meek, and morally spotless in order to be deemed worthy of global sympathy. This construct—what El-Kurd and others have referred to as the politics of “performative victimhood”—demands that Palestinians suppress grief, anger, and resistance, especially in public discourse, lest they be framed as complicit in their own oppression. El-Kurd challenges this logic head-on, arguing that it is not only dehumanizing, but a form of emotional and political control that maintains colonial hierarchies while denying Palestinians their full humanity.

El-Kurd argues that, “if you want to humanize the Palestinian, you have to defang the Palestinian” (35). The language here is stark and strategic—”defanging” evokes the image of a wild animal subdued for safety, a creature made harmless for the comfort of spectators. This figurative language crystallizes the contradiction at the heart of performative victimhood: Palestinians are granted recognition only to the extent that they appear docile, grateful, or apolitical. By demanding compliance as a prerequisite for empathy, dominant narratives deny Palestinians the right to speak with anger, to resist, or to claim justice on their own terms.