May 15th is the day remembered in Palestine as the day of the Nakba in 1948.
On the first anniversary of October 7th, 2023, I posted that I was wrong about the events that happened on that day on Palestinian land. I call it Palestinian land because that’s what it is – the state of Israel is an occupying and genocidal state. To this day, Israel is torturing and killing people in horrific ways. The United States and other global powers are backing it because they benefit from it.
I just finished a book that helped inform me further about the Palestinian struggle for liberation. The book is Perfect Victims: and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed el-Kurd.
It took me six months to read because it was so full of gut-wrenching stories and harrowing analysis.
It was also one of the best books I’ve ever read in my life.
For its literary clarity and prose alone, it was incredibly precise and well-written. I was moved to anger, sorrow, grief, and passion when met with el-Kurd’s ability to clarify the dehumanization of Palestinian people. I was amazed to find fierce hope in the conclusion, too.
Palestine is an occupied land, and it is not the first. As I said in my previous post about this, the United States is like Israel in many ways. I don’t agree with those who claim that the US serves Israel. I think they work together because they both gain from genocide.
Oppressive powers love to oppress, yet hate to be called oppressive. There’s a lot of profit in weaponry. It takes a lot of work in dehumanization to justify the destruction those weapons do.
This book demonstrated that you can be perfectly logical, and it doesn’t matter when you’re being dehumanized. You can point out the utter fraudulence in claims made by oppressors, and yet they go on oppressing. It seems deeply hopeless, but if it was, such a book would never have been completed.
El-Kurd shows that he feels the immense grief and rage that comes from watching your family and people die “a lot,” as he says at the beginning. But things are changing. More people are joining the fight for a free Palestine than ever.
That is a good thing, because the world needs Palestine to be free. This is because until all of us are free, none of us are free. I take that phrase quite literally. Some people may be able to act like they are fine with others being oppressed and killed, as long as they get to enjoy nice things. Others enjoy it when someone else is suffering, especially when they get to participate. I don’t understand that.
In 2025, the second Trump administration in many ways went mask-off. Elon Musk saluted Hitler on day one. Opposition to Israel was defined as anti-Jewish hate in federal law. Silencing opposition has become more overt than ever. Advocacy accounts get demonetized and disappeared, while the people behind them can just as easily be kidnapped in broad daylight and on camera.
In fact, the censorship is backfiring. People are wondering why this information is being hidden. At least, I did. I’d assumed for so long that the “conflict” in so-called “Israel” was “too complicated.” I believed that lie for a long time. The least I can do now is speak up about what I’ve learned.
In late 2023, the videos on TikTok were shocking and impossible to forget. Within months, even under the Biden administration, these videos were being censored while the violence against Palestinian people escalated. The math on how many people have died still isn’t mathing, especially when you consider that everyone who is injured or ill has nowhere to go for treatment.
We went from “One hospital bombed was an oopsie or maybe Hamas did it” to “Gaza doesn’t have any hospitals left,” to “They’re capturing and torturing the doctors who would dare treat injured children.”
If you think I’m wrong about any of this, I challenge you to read this book.
If you don’t want to read what a Palestinian man has to say, ask yourself why.
His book offers this possibility: the Palestinian man is a threat according to dehumanizing propaganda.
One of the things I’ve tried to live by is a quote by Audre Lorde: “Your silence will not protect you.” Still, every day I struggle to speak up. I am afraid, admittedly. I am afraid, yet I have so much less to lose than so many other people. I hate the fear that holds me back. I hate that I care what people will say about me.
In this book, I gathered a tiny bit of courage from the immense courage Mohammed el-Kurd demonstrates every day. He has seen firsthand the horrific violence that oppressors will do. He is a Palestinian man, and he writes with both humor and defiance.
That humor and defiance in the face of power is a necessary threat. The powerful people in this world must lose their power, or we are all doomed. That is not jumping to conclusions. This is agreed upon by many scientists across a variety of fields.
Palestine is being destroyed because the Western militaristic powers want control of the region, as we’re seeing now with the invasion of Iran and Lebanon, among other areas. If we do not hear the suffering of our fellow humans in Palestine, we are all subject to the logical conclusion of this global situation.
This destruction is hastening climate change.
None of us survive if things continue in this direction.
In the last chapter of his book, el-Kurd paints two different pictures. One is the dream of oppressors, where the land is destroyed and littered with the corpses of children. The other is of a free Palestine: not a dream of destruction, but of enjoying the right to move freely, without fear, enjoying the fresh fruits that grow naturally in the region.
The imagery here is in direct contrast to the racist accusations made against Palestinians. Zionists say the phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a genocidal call against Jews.
Mohammed el-Kurd does a magnificent job of stripping away any pretense from such a claim. Israel is a genocidal state, and it blames its victims for the violence it is doing to them.
A free Palestine is necessary to get us out of this mess globally. We all need to do all we can to free ourselves from the greedy, bloodthirsty villains that run our world.
