Perfect Victims

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Mohammed El-Kurd has written a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century."
-Robin D. G. Kelley

Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal-an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured-the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.

author's note(s)

one: the sniper's hands are clean of blood
on dehumanization

two: the politics of defanging
on "humanization"

three: shireen's passport
on the invention of the civilian

four: a life in cross-examination
on forbidden sentiments

five: tropes and drones
on discursive land mines

six: mein kampf in the playroom
on propaganda

seven: miraculous epiphanies
on testimony

eight: are we indeed all palestinians?
on identity

nine: "do you want to throw israelis into the sea?"
on irreverence

epilogue