Ron Jacobs
CounterPunch / February 7, 2025
There’s a section titled “Concerning Violence” in Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial masterwork The Wretched of the Earth where he writes “colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state….” He goes on to describe the daily violence of the overseer and the police officer, the prison camp guard and the employment market. He explains this violence and the violent reaction it brings from some colonized individuals, usually in the form of criminal activity—assault, theft, even arson. Then he begins to write about the anti-colonial struggle itself, which historically has required violence of its own. Fanon was writing from his experience in Algeria and its war against the settler-colonial state installed by the French there. Mohammed El-Kurd is writing from a similar position in Palestine. Consequently, it is this understanding that Mohammed El-Kurd brings to his new text Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal. It is also this understanding that violence is the essence of colonialism that explains the genocidal slaughter by the Israeli military in Palestine more clearly than any other explanation.
The book is a substantial expansion of his similarly named lecture which he presented under armed guard in Princeton and was banned from presenting on the University of Vermont (UVM) campus out of what the university administration termed “safety concerns.” As it ended up, that act by the UVM administration resulted in some quick manoeuvring by the hosting organization and technical support from Haymarket Books resulting in the lecture being broadcast online and reaching more than 11,000 viewers so far. As a member of the hosting group, I can vouch for the veracity of that statement.
The text itself is a series of contemplation and observations about colonialism—especially as it pertains to Palestine—and history. The reader is welcomed into El-Kurd’s mind as he considers the meaning of being Palestinian and being a subject of a brutal occupation supported by the most powerful governments in the world. It is a testimony that is both personal and universal; thoughtful yet angry, introspective yet formidable. The power of his argument is tempered by discussions of the role of humour and impressions of family, friends and strangers from the resistance. Unlike the so-called humanization demanded by the oppressor—a humanization that removes the agency of the colonized—El-Kurd’s writing humanizes his people as much as their artists, poets and writers.
El-Kurd does not beg the reader to understand his anger; his refusal to be a good victim. He doesn’t ask for approval to defend the fighters of Hamas or the other groups that make up the resistance. He asks why must those, especially those who are Palestinian, preface their support for the struggle against the occupation with some kind of statement distancing themselves from resistance actions like the attacks of October 7, 2023 or the suicide bombings of the past. Why must they point out every time they speak about the occupation that they oppose Zionism, not Judaism? More importantly, why aren’t the supporters of Israel and Israel itself ever expected to decry the everyday violence of the occupation, the ongoing brutalization of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and camps, the genocide itself? Why are they able to celebrate their victories of blood and death openly and loudly yet those whose lands they destroy in order to steal are asked to distance themselves from the fighters who share their victories, defeats and lives?
During the later years of the international movement against the US war on the Vietnamese, many protesters openly supported the victory of the anti-imperialist forces. During the US wars on Central America, many openly supported the revolutionary forces. Of course, they were met with angry cries and accusations. My response to the charges was that those who supported the US side openly cheered atrocities; those that weren’t as vigorous in their support excused them, usually saying something excusing the acts as just something that happens in war, you know.
This is a lot of what El-Kurd’s book is about. Palestinians, like all colonized people, have a right if not a responsibility to resist the colonizer. Even with weapons and even with offensive tactics. Yet, even their right to self-defense is challenged, ridiculed and rejected by those who want them to disappear. The writing in Perfect Victims demands empathy while rejecting victimhood. It echoes with anger and discards pretense. El Kurd deplores the insistence on humanizing Palestinians by denying them their rage. He calls this phenomenon the defanging of Palestinians. Then he bears his fangs.
Like Fanon, El Kurd does not celebrate violence, but acknowledges its existence in relation to the anti-colonialist struggle. Likewise, he decries the parameters of debate demanded by Israel and propagated by the West that has always defined Palestinians as less than human, as animals of some kind. Fanon wrote about this with these words: “The native knows all this, and laughs to himself every time he spots an allusion to the animal world in the other’s words. For he knows that he is not an animal; and it is precisely at the moment he realizes his humanity that he begins to sharpen the weapons with which he will secure its victory.”
Ron Jacobs is the author of several books, including Daydream Sunset: Sixties Counterculture in the Seventies published by CounterPunch Books
