By Mohammed A. Nurhussein
Photos: YouTube Screenshots
A book that profoundly influences one’s mind and intellectual growth is rare. For me, such a book was “The Wretched of the Earth” by Frantz Fanon published in 1961 when I was a cadet at the Harar Military Academy in Ethiopia. It became a bestselling book and a key text for student activism in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in Africa and all over the world. Fanon, from the French colony of Martinique was a psychiatrist sent to Algeria by French authorities to work in the clinic of the overcrowded, violence-ridden neighborhoods of Algiers where mental health problems were high. He was able to observe the psychopathology of the oppressive settler colonialist; and the physical, psychological and emotional trauma it inflicted on the oppressed, eliciting rage and violence, often turned inwards.
“We die a lot. We die in fleeting headlines, in between breaths.” So begins the opening paragraph of Mohammed El-Kurd’s Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal, challenging readers to reflect on their empathy for those enduring daily struggles for self-determination since the Nakba. Their fight for freedom spans nearly a century when you include the Palestinian uprising against British rule in Palestine mandate in the 1930s.
No other book has touched me as deeply since The Wretched of the Earth, as this one. Perfect Victims is published by Haymarket Books in 2024 amid the Gaza genocide.
Like many Palestinians of his generation and his parent’s and in some cases, grandparent’s generation, Mohammed El-Kurd was born into a life of stifling occupation, unrelenting harassment and humiliation at every turn, home demolitions, child incarcerations and killings by the settler colonial state.
He writes- “the militant confronts his own Nakbas every day, his fury is resuscitated each time he is strip searched on the streets of Jerusalem or beaten with rifle butts at the Qalandiya military checkpoint. Each displacement, each demolition, each premature funeral adds fuel to his fire”.
His cris de Coeur, articulated with soaring eloquence is an indictment of all of us, supporters included. He dares us to take the blinders off and confront the truth. We witness a horrific genocide in Gaza perpetrated by IOF (he calls it by its proper name), streamed to our cell phones and tv screens in real time, as tens of thousands of Palestinians are being slaughtered. We see the repeated displacement of people whose homes have been flattened, leaving homeless residents with nowhere to go. We witness the brutal daily carpet bombardments on Gaza civilian dwellings, hospitals, schools, houses of worship and humanitarian agencies, using 2000-lb bombs, complements of the US government using our tax dollars- yes, we are all complicit. This horrific brutality is referred to by the Western mainstream media as no more than airstrikes at Hamas targets.
The use of language in framing the narrative is where Mohammed El-Kurd is at his best.
Terrorist is the term the oppressor ascribes to anyone that resists oppression whether it is the PLO in the past or Hamas in Palestine today. The Land and Freedom Army of Kenya in the 1950s or the FLN in Algeria were similarly demonized. Dehumanization and demonization of the indigene is a time-tested strategy of the settler colonialist (Read Milton Allimadi’s excellent book on this subject- Manufacturing Hate published in 2021) The massacres and dispossession of land were justified by European settler colonialists as a civilizing and Christianizing mission, even if they must exterminate the natives to save them. So heavy is the white man’s burden!
Mohammed El-Kurd writes “Our reaction to brutality whether violent or nonviolent, altruistic, or vengeful will be what gets printed in the newspaper headline. Politicians will always frame our response to brutalization, especially if it is militant, as the rationale behind their latest sordid policy, the reason why the earth spins on its axis.” He correctly describes the way the Western establishment media frame the Palestinian issue focusing on ancillary matters never addressing the root cause. We are fed endless lies about the Palestinians who are bent on destroying the ‘only democracy in the region without addressing the inconvenient truths such as the Nakba, the continuation of ethnic cleansing, stealing of land and home demolitions by an apartheid state, and now genocide in Gaza.
A Palestinian who accepts humiliation with expressions of love for his/her oppressors is deemed a ‘good Palestinian,’ unlike those who resist who are labeled ‘vicious terrorists’. The writer mentions a Palestinian journalist who lost 21 family members in Gaza and felt compelled to declare on social media that he does not hate Jews, highlighting that his grief and loss are treated as incidental.
Mohammed El-Kurd is a dedicated Palestinian journalist, a talented writer and a recognized poet. He writes about difficult topics with clarity, wit, and sarcastic humor to effectively convey his message. His ‘perfect victim’ needs to be an extraordinary human being endowed with unnatural capacity to love and forgive his/her tormentor to gain acceptance as human.
This book prompts readers to investigate the reality behind the David versus Goliath conflict. It encourages exploration beyond mainstream media, which often portrays the oppressed as aggressors when they resist. Instead, it advocates for independent research and finding one’s humanity to support the oppressed. There should be no hierarchy in the value of human life.
This book is a crucial call to action that everyone should read to understand the key issues of our era and take a stand for future generations.
Mohammed A. Nurhussein MD
