Mohammed El-Kurd

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...

Each day after school, Mohammed El-Kurd's grandmother welcomed him at the door of his home with a bouquet of jasmine. Her name was Rifqa—she was older than Israel itself and an icon of Palestinian resilience. With razor-sharp wit and glistening moral clarity, El-Kurd lays bare the brutality of Israeli settler colonialism. His poems trace Rifqa's exile from Haifa to his...