Perfect Victims

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.

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

'El-Kurd is a wordsmith with the power to change the minds of all but those with a heart of stone.' — Louise Adler, Sydney Morning Herald/The Age

'El-Kurd has become a critical voice in colonial discourse, especially at a time where people are prone to either demonising or fetishising Palestinians. Perfect Victims is Mohammed El-Kurd refusing to exist in this binary, challenging depictions of Palestinians on our phones and in our minds which insist they perform perfect victimhood in order to deserve liberation.' — Soaliha Iqbal, Missing Perspectives