Just through the authors note and partway through chapter 1 and I'm already really moved by how insightful, clear-eyed, confrontational, poetic, and raw his writing is. I will come back to add more of substance later, hopefully.

Talking about how Palestinian men are treated as worthy of killing while the women and children are stripped of all agency, as if the women and children don't want and need their men, their fathers, their uncles, their brothers, their sons, alive.

Talking about how the focus is not just on "civilians" but on fighters as well, because Palestinian fighters deserve to live. Their fight is righteous, justice is on their side, and I love how he already counters the genocidal idea that people who defend themselves from colonization and genocide deserve to die for defending themselves.

Here are some passages I pulled, I’ll add my analysis later when I have time

“raise the ceiling of what is permissible.” I believe this to be our primary job in the discursive war on the Palestinian People. We’ve already seen support for armed resistance rise drastically in the last two years, and while that’s primarily due to the heroic videos posted by Al-Qassam, it is our duty to force the west past the “women and children” to confront the liberation of the entire Palestinian nation

Thank god. While many of the arguments before and after Al-Aqsa Flood have relied on international law, the UN charter, the Geneva Conventions, etc, these arguments have limited utility and shift the debate away from reality and into an arena constructed by the very forces dedicated to Palestinian immiseration. I’m glad to see El-Kurd will not be doing the Finkelstein rules and laws argument

“Our journalists are poets… and our poets write with knives” incredible.

While the Carlo submachine gun is a general symbol of modern Palestinian armed resistance, its specific origin is with Martyr leader Imad Aqel, of Jabaliya. He pioneered the “zero-distance” tactic that has claimed so many settler lives in the last years, eliminating the advantages of technology, surveillance, and long range weaponry. As a result, the Carlo has earned a notoriety among zionist press for its ease of construction, concealment, and deployment.

“ Aqel formed the martyrs brigade wing of Al-Qassam due to harsh security and surveillance: resistance or martyrdom was the only way.

He spent time and effort training the resistance in both Gaza and the West Bank and was referred to as the General of Qassam. One of his operations against zionist army jeeps in Gaza is said to be one of the first recorded resistance attacks. His weapon of choice was the Carlo. Imad engaged and led over 40 operations that killed at least 15 zionist soldiers and injured dozens.”

https://t.me/Palresistmirror/82509

Finally, I’ll leave you with this 2022 article by Musa Al-Sada on the weapon, its history, and its use, titled “The Carlo Emerges From Wounds”

https://medium.com/@resistancenewsnetwork/the-carlo-emerges-from-wounds-ad12d8dc43c7

2025/09/09 08:05:51 UTC+01 ⚫️ Saraya Al-Quds: — They wanted a devastating storm for Gaza... But Al-Quds struck them like a thunderous spear.

Saraya Al-Quds – Military Media — Notes: The graphic portrays a resistance fighter holding the Palestinian-made "Carlo" submachine gun, in reference to the recent operation in Al-Quds.

https://t.me/Palresistmirror/80533

Finally, throughout the book, there is a disproportionate use of masculine pronouns. That is done on purpose. For far too long the Palestinians have been reduced to “women and children.” One implication here is robbing women and children of their agency and their political or revolutionary contributions. Another is the further demonization of Palestinian men as deserving of death and unworthy of mourning, exiled from their loved ones’ embrace. I often use “he” in reference to “the Palestinian” because I want to force the reader to come face to face with the Palestinian man. I want the reader to contend with that complex and contradictory demographic, and not just those assumed to be the gentle or generous among us—not only the fathers, but the fighters as well.

Reminds me of this important short article: Palestine and the Distorted Lens of Intersectional Feminism

I wanted to say that I am reading along it but I don't have much to add. Except the writing really reminds me of Sarah Schulman. I searched to find if they have anything to do with each other and just found a facebook post she made of a short quote of his. And they have both written for Mondoweiss, which I don't know much about.

Technical question: Does anyone know what is the intended difference between end/footnotes, asterisks notes, swirls § and the little crosses †, and ‡? And any tricks to reading pdf/epub where you are in 3 different locations (main text, astersisk/cross notes, and endnotes) all together? They aren't just citations, there is meat in them.

(I don't know if it is polite to talk about zionism in the anti zionism reading group and if not please forgive me I will refrain in the future and remove this.) Probably due to the specifics of how I came to know about this struggle, I have always found their snipers so especially repellent. That's just an emotional thing on my part, not a rational argument. For many years I have this recurrent thought: Among israelis, what is the per capita rate of people who have blown the knee off a child? Is there any other place on planet earth where you are more likely to have a friend or family member who has committed that specific crime? And more or less openly. Consider the social requirements of the situation.

The passage that stands out the most to me from chapter 1:

To practice a politics of appeal is to utilize all the tools made available by the institution, “the master’s tools,” often haplessly, though sometimes with moderate success. And always in line with the institution’s logic. Not only have we been taught to “ignore our differences” and indulge “in the pathetic pretense” that they do not exist, but also to mimic an impossibly congruous, mythical creature—the innocent civilian—in hopes to be acquitted of the crime of being Palestinian. Now and then, every once in a while, the judge—the thief! the burglar!—might decide an execution is bad optics or that a robbery does not justify the headache. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Though rare, such a deviance is bound to happen.† However, the day the judge sets the court on fire is the day “the donkey goes up the minaret.”‡

But then again we have seen stranger things than a donkey braying the call to prayer. We have seen a nation punished for another nation’s genocide. And we have seen God employed as a real-estate agent, bestowing Jerusalem houses to Brooklynites.18 So nothing is impossible. It might be true then: if we trim our bushy eyebrows and extract our canine teeth, if we pluck the thorny and offensive from our lexicon, if we renounce the Quran and its boisterous Arabic, and if we would only leave those rocks and planes alone, we will be set free. Free to be depicted in documentaries and plastered on newspapers. Free to be grieved. To speak of Palestine, from Palestine, from Palm Springs, from Prichsenstadt. From podiums and pulpits (never from minbars, of course). Free to pronounce our Ps at last.

APPEALING TO THE MORAL SENSE of the people who are oppressing us is not the nucleus of the politics of appeal; rather, it is one facet among others. One that some would argue was once historically necessary. Other tactics include ingratiating oneself with traditional and nontraditional structures of power, exploiting certain social and political phenomena, or appealing to socioeconomic interests. Etcetera. One tactic I find myself using often is reminding US taxpayers that the Zionist regime receives an annual gift of billions of their dollars in the form of military aid. Emphasizing the subordinate clause, that the weapons used to subjugate Palestinians are American-made, is a sad attempt at refocusing the issue or beautifying my rationale: most Americans might not think much of Palestinians, but their money is always on their mind.

The list of tactics goes on. Appealing to authority, emotion, purity: “Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention says ...” † “Imagine if this Palestinian kid was your child ...” “No true Jew would support Israel ...” Intersectionality: highlighting police exchange programs, cyber warfare, climate change, the arms trade, “tested on Palestinians, used in Kashmir,” “there are Christians in Gaza,” and so on. Diplomatic maneuvers: sending delegations of children to speak to politicians, talking about your “Israeli friends” on international platforms, anti-antisemitism disclaimers before every speech, “security coordination,” peace accords. And one should not forget how the politics of appeal has shaped cultureand knowledge-production: for every radical work of literature, there are several more Palestine-related books with children, ragamuffin and smiling, on the cover, no matter the specific topic of the book; for every unabashed, unfiltered film, there are several more desperately persuasive documentaries that border on “trauma porn” and movies whose protagonist is a docile, doe-eyed young girl. Some of these tactics are effective to an impressive degree, others not so much, and all are (almost) always applied sincerely.

...

The tactics and strategies, or, more frankly, the attitudes that I am mostly interested in and engrossed by are those that rely on “humanization” (or: defanging) and what I will refer to as miraculous epiphanies. The latter, in short, are characterized by an obsessive curation of “reliable narrators,” whose testimonies are unthreatening, authoritative, or impartial. To illustrate: favoring Jewish and Israeli sources (books, human rights organizations, rabbis, historians, ex-soldiers, soldiers, cops, government officials, political analysts) over Palestinian sources, not based on the content of their contributions but on an identitarian basis, a choice rooted in the farcical, though deep-seated notion that the former are somehow more credible, more reliable. As if they are unbiased bystanders, as if they have no horse in the race. As for humanization, which I discuss in the following pages, one example is the fine, often mandatory art of making hagiographies for the living and the dead, to manufacture for them a solemn reverence, a remedy to the profanity of their perceived affiliations. Simply put, the perplexing demand to make humans out of humans.

@CARCOSA@hexbear.net can we get a site pin for this week's thread? This is the first thread for the book.

Anti-zionism reading group Week 2!

I'll probably trim some of the people I initially added as "potentially interested" who don't end up participating after another thread or two.

i would be comfortable with the pace you’ve described or slightly increasing it.

i was especially struck by the section after the subheading “The thief holds a gavel,” in which El-Kurd says that those who engage in a politics of appealing to morality are proceeding from an analysis that power is immutable and built on stone instead of “an imposing yet tenuous entity resting on sand”. i think this is correct, and also an important thing to consider with the Palestine Action members currently engaged in a hunger strike in the UK. In the words of Kwame Ture, in order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. Palestinians can, through the power of idealism, sometimes change their role to ‘victim’. This still exists within and reproduces the Zionist and Western narrative, though. It reinforces on the one side the image of the victim, and on the other side does not challenge the image of the terrorist. As a Westerner, i think the official “victim” narrative essentially amounts to saying “something sad but completely unavoidable has happened, please give money or volunteer with a church or NGO”. It’s how people make ads for malaria nets and hurricane relief, and pretending that 2000 lb bombs and cement checkpoints are as natural as mosquitoes and monsoons completely washes the hands of the USA and “israel”. This also connects to the author’s consideration of how the constant discussion of Palestinian death is naturalized, both in the sense of it being commonplace and in the sense of it being compared to natural disaster or disease.

To engage with the airs and masks the West puts on (in narrative, in interviews, in the academy, in the discussion of so-called human rights) is to use “the tools made available by the institution, . . . in line with the institution’s logic.” El-Kurd also says that the above engagement with power is one tool or facet among many. It’s all but necessary to shop around your arguments and positions to try and make them sound appealing. It seems to me that he saying that the error is assigning supreme significance to the politics of moral appeal, and specifically the tactics associated with casting one’s self as a better victim. There was obviously a lot more in the chapter, but i don’t know if i have coherent thoughts about it.