Perfect Victims

Mohammed el-Kurd is a Palestinian poet, writer, and activist from the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem.

In February 2023, el-Kurd addressed the concept of perfect victims in his lecture "On 'Perfect Victims' and the Politics of Appeal" delivered as the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Princeton University.^[5] In November 2023, the lecture was adapted and published as "The Right to Speak for Ourselves" in The Nation.^[6] The book Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal was published by Haymarket Books February 11, 2025.

The book contains nine chapters^[7] and an epilogue. In the book, he critically interrogates the strategy of emphasizing Palestinian victimhood in order to make the Palestinian cause palatable to a liberal audience that professes to care about human rights.^{[1][2][3][8][7][9][10]}

According to Jackie Wang in Jewish Currents, "By emphasizing victimhood as the condition for sympathy, he argues, this strategy grants the moral authority of those in power—those who preside over the world structured by colonial brutality—and requires Palestinians to maintain a posture of pitiable powerlessness."^[1]

Perfect Victims is Mohammed el-Kurd's first non-fiction book.^[7] Historian Robin D. G. Kelley described it as "a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century." It debuted at 9th on The New York Times Best Seller for paperback nonfiction the week of March 2, 2025.^[11] It was also awarded the 2025 Palestine Book Award.^[4]