As posted on Goodreads:

“We die a lot. We die in fleeting headlines, in between breaths. Our death is so quotidian that journalists report it as though they’re reporting the weather: Cloudy skies, light showers, and 3,000 Palestinians dead in the past ten days. And much like the weather, only God is responsible - not armed settlers, not targeted drone strikes.”


Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal is my introduction to the work of poet, writer, journalist and organizer Mohammed El-Kurd. Written from personal experience and the headlines, the content is both eloquently written and devastatingly raw - breaking your heart with not only the brutality, but also the beauty.

Discussing the expectations we (as a society/global witnesses of genocide) place on Palestinians to be “the perfect victim”, the facts are laid bare and the question asked: How would you feel if it was you? And how can you expect someone to put aside their feelings and be docile and compliant in the face of such violence and suffering, “a suffering that is denied and disputed, despite being relentlessly televised”?

Do I think you should read this book? Yes I do. I think you should read it and take notes. And then I think you should read as many of the sources listed in the back of the book as you can. And then I think you should share this book with the other people in your circle.

This book is the kind of content that needs to be read and shared, to shift perspectives and culture, and to keep us honest and factual.

I am incredibly grateful to NetGalley for providing me with an advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I think this book is really informative and also reflective as it raises many moral, political, and ethical parts as well as historical aspects to the conflict in the Middle East. The book dives into a lot of intense topics but does so in a way that the reader can easily follow and understand which helps readers learn.

This author has written a book that is way out of bounds! His biggest flaw is that he almost totally ignores the history of Palestine before 1917, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, and the beginning of the British mandate in Palestine as authorized by the League of Nations. Looking much further back into history, one learns that the Jews have lived in Palestine (Judea and Samaria) for the past 3,500 years. During the 7th century CE, the Arabs arrived and drove many of the Jews from their ancestral homeland. Thus, it was the Arabs who were the settlers and colonizers, which is precisely the opposite of what the author contends.

Mr. El-Kurd also completely misstated the truth about the Nakba (when many Palestinian Arabs fled from their homes in 1948). Commands from the invading Arab armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria triggered this sudden departure and were not attributable to any actions by the Jews.

I examined all of Mr. El-Kurd's footnotes and can safely say that almost none came from reliable sources.

In sum, this is a dreadful book that was penned by a far-left Palestinian champion and not by a serious scholar.

I got this as an arc on Netgalley and it will come out in February. This is going to be one of the Palestinian must read books of next years. This book really goes deep into the deep prejudices we can all hold about the Palestinian people and the high expectations we put on them. Especially in correlation of propaganda. This needs to be on every activists tbr.