inventory: a book review of perfect victims by mohammed el-kurd

and why you need to read it asap.

the book cover.

Mohammed El-Kurd is the author of Rifqa, a resilient poetry collection named after his grandmother who was forced out of her home by Israeli settlers on the establishment of the apartheid state. Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal is his next book, releasing on February 11, 2025. i received an e-arc of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review and am thankful to the author and publisher for the free copy.

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if you are someone who has been watching the Palestinian genocide unfold on social media since last year (or longer), read this book asap!

Perfect Victims answers the questions we’ve all been thinking—why is it always “women and children”? why are the victims of genocide presented as saints? what happens to the angry ones? those who fail to fit the mold of the colonizer’s tongue? those who defend themselves while the IOF murders their family? those who throw stones? why don’t they qualify for sympathy in the same way? why don’t we get to hear their stories? why are they always asked their opinion of Hamas? is their non-whiteness the only target here or are there other factors at play? how does the genocide affect children’s psyche? what is it like speaking for Palestine publicly?

true to the title and the description, the main message of Perfect Victims is that the Palestinian People must fit into the mould of a “non-partisan” and “neutral” civilian to qualify for sympathy in the Western media. this “humanisation” has robbed them of their wholeness and created an image of passivity and hyperindividualism. the author calls out this ethnocentrism of not just the West but also the Palestinian elitists that push the narrative of relatability.

and no, he does not solely focus on the oppressors, but on the allies as well. a plethora of overtly supportive stances often play right into the coloniser’s trap, turn apologists and are guilty of shifting focus from their brutalities to justifications about the victims’ innocence. there is a lesson here for you and i, to recognise and call out propaganda and to “debunk with dignity”.

the book uses concrete examples from popular news outlets (and the stories they reject), the stories and writings of the martyrs as well as references to contemporary injustices such as the student protests. the author expands on the truth: to the West, decolonisation is theoretical. they do not want to face its “material manifestation”, they avert their eyes from freedom fighters and focus solely on the victims that are the closest to whiteness or sainthood—altruistic medical professionals, fathers, women and children.

the author also talks about language as a landmine, one that the Palestinian People have to tiptoe around, and where the antisemitism (notedly incorporated into AI), Islamophobia, capitalism, and racism fit in this discussion. he points out how books by non-Palestinian writers and academics are given preference in the West, exacerbating the narrative that the words of Palestinians are “suspicious or subpar”. the only ones who free from this suspicion are the poets but even their works are aestheticised, such as Mahmoud Darwish's.

Perfect Victims is a book that knows its readers — what lines will be taken out of context and what counterarguments might play in their heads. yet, it persists with a deep and eloquent intelligence.

while the book does not go into detail about what the west has to gain from these perfect victims, it remains an unapologetic tribute to the imperfect—the ones who harbour hatred and resentment alongside their pain, the ones who refuse to be polite in their suffering. Perfect Victims is a pivotal text on the world’s interaction with the Palestinian genocide. if we take a minute to learn from it, this book can transform how we support the resistance and the language we use to do so.