Link to last week's reading group post.
Summary of this book.
The first book for this reading group will be Perfect Victims, by Mohammed El-Kurd. I've pasted the summary below.
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
This book touches a lot on how Palestinians are constantly expected (especially by Europeans, who invented anti-semitism) to apologize for being Palestinians, and for being victimized by Jewish people.
Comrades who can't afford to buy the book should definitely not go to annas-archive (dot) org and find a digital copy there, since that would be wrong and we are all law-abiding, copyright-respecting citizens.
I'm making this post a double-chapter one and keeping it up for two weeks, since I tend to forget to update them. We'll see how that works. This is now past where I've read the book, so I'm going to do my best to join the discussion more for this one. Thanks to everyone who has participated so far!
It’s aimed at radlibs who might support a two state solution but condemn violence against the Zionist entity imo. If you already understand that Judaism isn’t a sacred belief that transforms European colonizers into oppressed minorities trying to survive amongst barbarous Arabs, you’re probably good. A lot of this site has internalized Zionism, but unfortunately they won’t be reading this along with us
Ya I did think of giving it to someone else to read. "Here, maybe this'll help your fucked up brain." could consolidate if really close already. I liked the "Jewish settlers stole my home. It's not my fault they're Jewish" article/chapter when I read it before. It was useful to see someone articulating fearlessly in a way that was palatable to libs. But not sure how much more the book adds compared to that, except for repetition, which could be useful in some case I suppose. I'd be more likely to share the article than the book.
I am wondering why nobody has anything bad or critical to say of this book. It is all praise. performative? Or too mushy to claw into? Difficult to engage with discussion. But I don't know what else there would be having never done this before. So maybe this is par.
With you on that. Maybe it’s a thesis with little to disagree on, but you’ve inspired me, I’m going to try to find a point of friction
Good I will read it.
I'd be sad if I wrote a book and a discussion only had agreeable comments. Especially a book like this that is seemingly intended to change minds.
I know for me, when I know the target audience is someone more lib or right wing than I am, I will tend to gloss over political issues of weak analysis because it's sort of required to sacrifice one point to make another. In order to not get bogged down. Like "this is fine" or "good enough".
So I guess the question is what standard
if any
should be applied? What is this book for in this context? Is it for us to sharpen our understanding, or are we reading it so that we can say we read it and tell someone else to read it? Which is really how I felt.