I’m going to make this post and kick off this reading group to get it moving. If I try to plan it perfectly, it will never get done, so let’s just start and see how it goes, adjusting if needed.

The first book for this reading group will be Perfect Victims, by Mohammed El-Kurd. I’ve pasted the summary below.

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.

This book touches a lot on how Palestinians are constantly expected (especially by Europeans, who invented anti-semitism) to apologize for being Palestinians, and for being victimized by Jewish people.

We’ll start this week by reading and discussing the following article by the same author, which introduces some of his perspective on anti-zionism as a Palestinian.

https://mondoweiss.net/2023/09/jewish-settlers-stole-my-house-its-not-my-fault-theyre-jewish/

This article is just over 2000 words. Let’s discuss in the comments. I’ll keep this post up until next weekend, then we can move on to Perfect Victims. Please let me know in the comments if you think any changes are needed to this plan.

  • sodium_nitride [she/her, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    21 days ago

    What’s really damming about all this is that the zionists themselves don’t give a fuck about anti-semetic tropes or hateful language.

    They want their benefits, and all they need to do to get their material benefits (military and economic aid, trade, training, intelligence, etc) is to play the game of fooling the white American and white European. And it’s really easy to fool a people who want to be fooled.

    All three of those examples deal with aesthetics. Ben-Gvir’s statements were factual and true: Jewish life is worth more than ours under Israeli rule, but it was his explicit oration that triggered outrage rather than the institutionalized policies that have made his racist remarks the material reality on the ground. Even the physical deformation of a Palestinian’s face was only of note because of what the etching symbolized, not the etching itself—had the soldiers cut inconspicuous lines on his cheek, I doubt it would have garnered any attention at all.

    What makes these examples stand out is that they make the whole game that westerners play visible, and look completely absurd. “Liberal zionists” want the game to be played according to rules, it’s bad for their business if people make a mockery of it.