Yahia Lababidi is an Arab-American writer of Palestinian background. He is the author of 12 books of poetry and prose, including most recently What Remains To Be Said (2025) a collection of his aphorisms composed over three decades. Lababidi’s new collection of poetry, Palestine Wail, is available from Daraja Press.
Mohammed El-Kurd's "Perfect Victims" is not a book that seeks permission. It does not explain or apologize. It stands, instead, as a piercing intervention—a record of how the world looks when you are spoken about far more often than you are listened to. A Palestinian born and raised in Israel-occupied East Jerusalem, El-Kurd brings the urgency of lived experience and the sharpness of a poet who knows language can be both weapon and shield.
At just 26, El-Kurd writes with the precision of someone far older. Yet, his clarity derives from never having had the luxury of naivety. The impossible and contradictory expectations thrusted upon Palestinians are central to this book. They must meet the standard of saintliness in the face of theft, display grace while their homes are demolished and perform moral perfection while every gesture is politicized. El-Kurd articulates the painful reality of being punished for speaking out, and yet, never rewarded for being right. This reality represents a lifetime of lessons learned under occupation.
A life lived under occupation means your testimony is only deemed credible if it confirms the narrative others have already constructed. Palestinians are expected to speak with calm and gentleness, lest their anger be used against them. El-Kurd reveals how, in this climate, they are taught that the only way they will be heard is by tempering their emotions—as if they were not raised amidst the rubble of their own homes.
This pressure to constantly manage how one's suffering is presented is another form of control. To be taken seriously, Palestinians must embody the role of the "perfect victims," always distinguishing between Jews and Zionists, appeasing a media ecosystem quick to smear or silence them and transforming their pain into something more palatable for the outside world. This is a burden no other people living under military occupation are asked to carry.
In "Perfect Victims," El-Kurd refuses to perform that role. His writing is fierce—at times furious—but always lucid. His dual function as poet and journalist enables him to shift seamlessly between beauty and rigor. El-Kurd's critique of dehumanization is sharp: "Our massacres are only interrupted by commercial breaks. Judges legalize them. Correspondents kill us with passive voice."
In this, he underscores the horrific normalization of Palestinian suffering, where even their deaths are reduced to soundbites. He also challenges the very authority of those who dominate the narrative: "Why do we give the authority of narration to those who have murdered and displaced us when the scarcity of their guilt means honesty is unlikely?"
El-Kurd's critique of dehumanization is sharp: "Our massacres are only interrupted by commercial breaks. Judges legalize them. Correspondents kill us with passive voice."
- Yahia Lababidi
El-Kurd does not offer his grief as a spectacle. He writes with the understanding that dignity is found in telling the truth plainly, even when that truth is unwelcome. His resistance is unapologetic. He refuses to soften his anger.
Palestinians are not performing their pain for the world's absolution. They are here to live. To love. To resist. His words carry the weight and pain of lived experience: "There is no uniform way to grieve the killing of your loved ones. Sometimes it is graceful, other times it is vengeful."
There is something profoundly generous in this refusal. It reclaims the right to speak without catering to the biases of an international audience conditioned to hear only certain kinds of pain. El-Kurd's book is a direct challenge to the systems that demand Palestinians speak within predetermined confines.
It forces the reader to confront essential questions: What does it mean to be heard? Who decides which voices are credible?
He further pushes back against the expectation that the oppressed must "earn" their dignity, writing, "This misplaced focus insinuates that the oppressed must earn what they are already entitled to: liberty, dignity and human rights."
"Perfect Victims" is a blend of testimony, indictment and call to conscience. El-Kurd's writing insists on being taken seriously on its own terms and in its own idiom. As I read his work, my impression of El-Kurd is that of someone walking barefoot over glass unflinchingly.
In an era where Palestinian voices are often filtered, misrepresented or erased, El-Kurd's book matters deeply. It rejects euphemism and the safety of distance, speaking directly and with profound moral clarity. El-Kurd challenges the world to see Palestinians not as passive victims, but as active agents in their own resistance, determined to "invent a new future, to break out of the hamster wheel."
This is not a gentle book. Rather, it is a necessary one.
