Reading Group Week 12
We're continuing to read Perfect Victims by Mohammed el-Kurd
Readings
This week, let's read
- Chapter 2 ("the politics of defanging")
- Chapter 3 ("shireen's passport")
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Reflections
I'm going to share a few quotes from each chapter that stuck with me, and reflect to the whole chapter. I don't know if that'll be easier to follow or think about, but we'll find out.
chapter 2 - "the politics of defanging"
Humanization diverts critical scrutiny away from the colonizer and onto the colonized, obscuring the inherent injustice of colonialism, the shielding of the colonial project. [...] advocates insinuate that the oppressed must demonstrate their worthiness of liberty and dignity, first and foremost. Otherwise occupation, subjugation, police brutality, dispossession, surveillance, and "extrajudicial executions," would be excusable or even necessary.
Appealing to a "moral universality" cannot save us, for there is no room for us within that morality. Zionism's objection to the Palestinian People isn't about how we exist but that we exist at all.
To attempt to eulogize a Palestinian man in the colonizer's lexicon is to self-flagellate.
You are a prodigy—unlike the others. But what about the others? The others who suffocate under this shrinking definition of humanity? Those who were not privileged enough to go to a fives-tar university or to be born into a line of feudal lords? What about those without halos, the angry men who wander the streets with mouths full of spit and venom, the children whose shoulders are burdened by the straps of rifles, the women who choose an explosive path? What about the poor? What about those who are cruel with the occupier and cruel with their kin? The not-so-gentle fathers? The reckless in our midst, those who would furrow the eyebrows of Europeans: the sister who "found her rage / in the kitchen drawer," and the sister "learning the anatomy of the gun"? Do they not deserve life? According to whose law?
I think I commented on Saturday that reading this book has already challenged me on some of the things I've done in the past - letting the logic of economies of human life seep into my rhetoric, letting myself amplify mostly what happens to women and children, and letting men being annihilated by Israel pass by, because I implicitly bought into this logic that permits the killing of men because they're "violent". Violent according to whom? According to occupiers? According to Zionists? According to the people whose objection isn't how Palestinians exist, but that they exist in the first place? What kind of nonsense am I taking in and putting back out?
As soon as we open the door to any of this kind of logic - that perhaps the murder of some Palestinians is defensible (if they're men, if they had a knife, if they were "violent") - we quickly get pulled under the waters and into the riptides of Zionism, of eugenics, of fascism. What have I (what have we all) been doing, talking and thinking like this—like them?
And I realize this is difficult to confront because I wince when I think about defending "those who are cruel with the occupier and cruel with their kin" and "the not-so-gentle fathers". I'm still struggling with this. I don't have a good short way to summarize this thought, and I'm not even totally reconciled with it myself.
But, as el-Kurd writes, this is the project of colonialism: to trick us into debating one another over the worthiness of people's lives, and not questioning, let alone destroying, the colonial project itself. Negotiating and bargaining over the circumstances of boys who were throwing rocks at their occupiers, or men who pick up rifles, is not part of the future that any of us wants to live in, nor is it on the path toward anything good. So what if a kid was throwing a Molotov cocktail? Is that not supported, even celebrated, when we see Ukrainians repel invaders? (we'll talk about that in a bit)
Whose law says that the poor are worthy of death? Whose law says that those who are angry at their dispossession are worthy of death? Is it only wrong that Refaat died because the Expo marker he threatened to throw at the IOF soldiers would have been harmless? Would my empathy for him have been tempered if he had owned a rifle? Am I not supposed to wish that he had been able to stop Israel from killing him and annihilating his family? What kind of horseshit is that thinking? I need to shake myself loose of it. I wish Refaat were alive; I either mean that and endorse what that would have meant; or I don't really mean it (maybe don't really mean anything).
chapter 3 - "shireen's passport"
Why contribute—even if only with a simple phrase—to a hierarchy of lives where citizenry, like race, class, gender, "civility", plays a role in determining whether someone deserves compassion or due diligence?
My argument is not that we should stop using political and diplomatic maneuvers to coerce powerful regimes into action or in hopes of changing their anticipated stances. I am arguing that we reassess such tactics, taking into consideration their long- and short-term side effects, and ask whether they are worth the gamble.
the tonal shift employed in media coverage is simply in service of the West's strategic interests. [...] To sustain the Zionist project in Palestine, to protect the empire's capitalistic and militaristic endeavors in the region, the Palestinian freedom fighter must fall.
Considering that the most brazen declarations are obfuscated from even nut grafs and margins, why bring up the subtle? Because in that subtlety one finds a more dangerous, more insidious logic. Examining the conversation between a liberal television anchor [Christiane Amanpour] and a liberal author unveils the implicit underpinnings of their discourse: Palestinians must denounce certain affiliations, determined by the West, to be considered worthy of living. Or, I should correct myself, worthy of condolences, as we are doomed regardless.
As with the previous chapter, I've been finding myself reflecting on my own mistakes, endorsing and contributing to the idea that Shireen Abu Akleh's death might have been "more important" than the deaths of people who didn't have American passports, who weren't citizens of a state, who didn't have the backing of an empire. Not consciously, but nevertheless letting it permeate both my own conversations and not challenging and calling it out when other people try to appeal to the fact that someone was an American (Rachel Corrie, Shireen Abu Akleh, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki).
And this "gamble" doesn't even pay off: Heads of state don't care; this doesn't move (let alone embarrass) them when they say "if you harm an American, we will respond" and you immediately confront them with their own hypocrisy and two-facedness.
I need to remind myself that all of the people Israel kills, whether they picked up a pen, a camera, a rifle, or nothing at all - all of these people equally deserved to live. Israel is guilty of murder of all of these people.
One last thought: I noticed with Refaat's writings, but didn't comment on it at the time, but there's clearly something to be said here about how much sharper and more acute Palestinians' analysis of Ukraine is than most Western analysts. The juxtaposition of (currently equivocating) support for Ukraine resisting its invaders next to the characterization of Palestinians as terrorists can't be explained except as a function of strategic interests to the American empire and its strategic interests, and in this chapter el-Kurd demonstrates a much crisper understanding of the ostensible incoherence that I think I wasn't able to locate or articulate myself.
Share your reflections
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Otherwise, let's chat on Saturday at 12pm ET, during the weekly video call.
Other news
I'm going to include a few other things happening that are connected to Palestine. As before, I hope this motivates you to think about action and what we can do together to make this genocide stop.
AI Art and Zionism
I won't include any of it in these emails, but OpenAI debuted a new thing where you can give them your private photos to do whatever weird stuff they wanna do with it, and in return they'll give you some AI-generated images in a style that kind of reminds you of Studio Ghibli if you don't really pay attention or care about Studio Ghibli's ethos and spirit. If this is the first you're hearing of it or of AI in general, I envy you.
None of that is the point, though; the IOF has used this feature to generate some "ghiblified" images of soldiers and scenes of the occupation of Palestine. All this is a pretext for me to point you to this article by Gareth Watkins in New Socialist on AI "art", but also AI in general, as an "aesthetic of fascism", of which Zionism is one style:
AI is a cruel technology. It replaces workers, devours millions of gallons of water, vomits CO2 into the atmosphere, propagandises exclusively for the worst ideologies, and fills the world with more ugliness and stupidity. Cruelty is the central tenet of right wing ideology. It is at the heart of everything they do. They are now quite willing to lose money or their lives in order to make the world a crueller place, and AI is a part of this – a mad rush to make a machine god that will liberate capital from labour for good.
"AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism"
Israel attacks paramedic vehicles
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society has called for an independent inquiry into Israel's killing of more than a dozen medical workers in Gaza recently. Video footage of the attack showed that the ambulance Israel attacked had its sirens and lights on, making it very clear that it was a medical vehicle providing humanitarian aid.
“It is no longer sufficient to speak of respecting the international law and Geneva Convention,” al-Khatib told reporters from el-Bireh in the occupied West Bank. “It is now required from the international community and the UN Security Council to implement the necessary punishment against all who are responsible.”
Microsoft
Ibtihal Aboussad and then Vaniya Agrawal interrupted a Microsoft 50th anniversary event with its CEOs (Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, Mustafa Suleyman, and Bill Gates), rebuking them for profiting from genocide:
"Shame on you," said Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad, speaking directly to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. "You are a war profiteer. Stop using AI for genocide. Stop using AI for genocide in our region. You have blood on your hands. All of Microsoft has blood on its hands. How dare you all celebrate when Microsoft is killing children. Shame on you all."
"Shame on you all. You’re all hypocrites," said Microsoft employee Vaniya Agrawal [...] "50,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been murdered with Microsoft technology. How dare you. Shame on all of you for celebrating on their blood. Cut ties with Israel."
The Verge: "Microsoft employee disrupts 50th anniversary and calls AI boss 'war profiteer'"
The Verge: "Microsoft CEOs interrupted by another employee protestor: 'shame on all of you'"
US bombings on civilians
Trump posted a video showing the annihilation of a gathering of Yemeni people during Eid, bragging about killing Houthi militants. Let's remember this week's reading when we think about and engage with people who want to find ways to justify killing people.
Israel bombings on press tents
Israel bombed press tents yesterday, killing at least one journalist and severely injuring several others. You may have recently seen videos of a fire consuming a tent and burning a man, Ahmad Mansour. I would caution, seemingly as always these days, that the footage is extremely graphic.
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Thanks
Thank you for reading to the end. I'm looking forward to hearing how this book is landing for all of you. Please reach out if you have comments, or consider joining the Saturday call this weekend. Either way, thanks for reading along with me.