Reading Group Week 15
FYI: there is a fun link at the end of this email. Please read to the end for a fun link.
Hello everyone. This week we'll finish reading Perfect Victims by Mohammed el-Kurd
I'm going to take this last opportunity to remind everyone that next week we'll be reading Settler Militarism: World War II in Hawai'i and the Making of US Empire by Juliet Nebolon
Readings
This week we'll be reading chapter 8 (on identity), and chapter 9 (on irreverence). We'll also read the epilogue (Rain is coming).
Reflections
chapter 8 - "are we indeed all palestinians?" (on identity)
We tell ourselves it isn't careerist aspirations that drive us to the stenographer party; rather, we want to change things from the inside. We enter these rooms and pander—and are pandered to—to secure a seat at the table. It is for good reason that we shed our skin to assimilate into the world that invisibilizes us: after acquiring respectability and protection, we will finally wear our real faces. But we quickly learn that the inside is already rotten, and we too run the risk of decay. Once we have institutional protection, we'll want to stay protected. And once we get some money, we'll want more wealth. When we go back to ourselves after a long career and look deep in our closets for the skin we once wore, we find it shriveled and discolored, foreign to us as we are foreign to it.
These days I am haunted by a subtler though deadlier refrain, an unwanted realization: Gaza has the right to forsake us, to never forgive us, to spit in our faces. How many wars has it confronted? How many martyrs has it given? How many bodies were stolen from it, snatched from their fathers' embrace? And how many of us stutter when asked about resistance, or disavow our right to resist entirely, our need to resist? How many of us choose our careers over our kin? How many of us could have done something, anything, and did not?
I am repeatedly reminded of the late Bassel al-Araj's words, "If you want to be an intellectual, you have to be engaged"—though I am inclined to argue the Arabic word for "engaged," mushtabik, carries a much more militant connotation—"If you don't want to be engaged, if you don't want to confront oppression, your role as an intellectual is pointless."
Can we defeat Zionism and end its monstrous reign? It is even more difficult to define: fragmentation means that different things are asked of us in different locales. We face disparate challenges and circumstances. Can we reverse the effects of fragmentation? Collective struggle seems impossible in a hyper-capitalist, hyper-surveilled world. Unscrupulous logic tells us political discipline is an ineffective weapon, that our efforts are in vain. And personal sacrifices (quitting a job, self-immolation, the thousands of things in between) might feel futile, because they crush the doer while barely denting the status quo.
But this is not about their status quo. It is about ours. It is about our relationship with ourselves and our communities. The few moments of reflection before drifting to sleep, the brief encounter with the mirror in the morning, when we ask our-selves: What are the pretenses that absolve us from participating in history?
The White House Correspondent's Dinner was a few nights ago, on Saturday. Of course I reflected on the beginning of this chapter, on Mohammed El-Kurd's challenge for journalists to look themselves in the mirror or to face one another. I thought about all the personal and moral compromises people made to aspire to be there, in a room where people don't regard them as human beings, and the torture they do to themselves.
(I don't say this with admiration or even sympathy. It's just an observation that many people flayed themselves to attend the Substack dinner party, perhaps thinking occasionally that it was quite subversive and contrarian of them to attend a well-catered event hosted by Nazis and paid for by newsletters relentlessly advocating violence and the construction of ethnostates around the world. Just an observation.)
But I wasn't thinking that far ahead when I read the chapter originally (a few days prior). When I originally read this part of the chapter, I thought a lot about the selfish and ultimately stupid debasement I subjected myself to in order to endear myself to the people who were and remain totally at home in institutions that didn't see me as a human being in the first place.
I listen to liberals talk about saving their voice for when a red line is crossed - the kind of shit that Biden said, the kind of shit that I assume Aaron Sorkin had to have written and passed around for mediocre white people to get on the same page, to talk without saying anything, because otherwise these parallels are totally inexplicable. I wonder if they realize that one day they'll try to speak and realize that after a lifetime of stoicism (read cowardice), their vocal cords are assuredly atrophied.
Their skin dries out, their voices shatter, whatever muscle memory they ever had of standing between a belligerent and their victim has receded so far into the distance of their memory that they don't even know if it happened or if they dreamt it. I won't let myself wonder if I actually have the will to put myself in the way of people committing violence.
This isn't about living a better life than journalists hobnobbing with nazis, or professors apologizing for their racist colleagues who plastered diatribes online for years. Most of us clear that hurdle trivially, and those who don't are not my peers.
This is about, as El-Kurd said, creating and sustaining a status quo for yourself - a state that you can live with when you go to sleep at night, or when you see yourself in the mirror, or when you have a moment of quiet to yourself. Did you do what you could?
Joshua Clover passed away recently. There has been an outpouring of stories about what a kind, compassionate, beautiful individual he has been, and in particular a number of people and organizations have reflected on his life. @Workshops4Gaza posted a thread about Clover's early and enthusiastic support of this program that we're all currently participating in through this reading group:
Workshops4gaza is devastated to learn of the passing of our comrade, friend, and supporter, Joshua Clover. We offer our deepest condolences to his family, students, and loved ones 🌹
— Workshops4Gaza (@workshops4gaza.bsky.social) 2025-04-28T03:23:44.984Z
Joshua Clover was an engaged intellectual. He found the point of being an intellectual, and he drove that point home all his life. The same day he died, western journalists continued to miss the point of their performative intellectualism, just as they continue to miss the point today.
I'll try to get us to read Riot. Strike. Riot by Joshua Clover some time soon. If you have the chance, please buy it so that the proceeds can go to Palestinians in Gaza. I regret that we won't have been able to read it while he was alive. From all of the friends who seemed to know him, he sounded like a remarkable person, so unlike his contemporaries.
chapter 9 - "do you want to throw israelis into the sea" (on irreverence)
The trouble here is not that our enemies employ this illicit tactic (that is what enemies do) but that we submit to it. We attempt to refute defamation instead of repudiating it. We placate this fallacious logic instead of saying: Even if—even if!—my dreams were your worst nightmares, who are you to rob me of my sleep?
I do not care if I am a "human animal" in Israeli folk tales, or if they dream about drowning me in the Mediterranean. My concern is that they have the power to actualize their fantasies, fables, and theology. They have the tools to transform them into a macabre reality, much like they have done in the besieged Gaza Strip. I only care about their dreams because they have taken them to the Knesset.
When confronting leading or loaded questions on a public stage, it is imperative to remember that there is an audience to address: all kinds of people—curious, sympathetic, skeptical, receptive, on-the-fence—People whom you need to speak to with both words and body language. One option is to accept that you have been charged and stand trial. Plead your case before this self-appointed judge, gesturing at the dossiers of exonerating evidence you have prepared, hoping for acquittal. Another option is to reject his jurisdiction and to reject the premise that you are a defendant, to refuse to live any more of your life in cross-examination.
Zionism, behind the facade of the impenetrable superpower it purports to be, is more vulnerable today than ever. And I do not say this naively: I do not ask that we gloss over our enemy's capabilities or the power of the empires and mercenaries that back it. Nor do I ask that we trivialize the crushing weight of hundreds of thousands of martyrs or glamorize the men confronting tanks in tracksuits and burden them with more than they can handle. Freedom fighters understand that their opponent is Goliath, that the odds are stacked against them, that they do not have an option but to pick up the stone. But this is a new dawn. Through close inspection—watching state media, listening to the shifting global narrative, witnessing the renaissance of radical movements, even reading the inscriptions in random airport bathrooms—one discovers that this is a new dawn. Zionism may remain a formidable opponent, but it is also an aging, trembling beast, blinded by its own significance, unpredictable as it may be.
This chapter actually helped me unlock something both about Mohammed El-Kurd and also about Refaat Alareer (the author of the anthology of poetry and prose which we read before this book). I think I avoided scrutinizing how Alareer and El-Kurd could find ways to be witty, to be funny, even to be irreverent in their writing; and I tried not to interrogate or otherwise call it into question. I think in the same way that Ruha Benjamin pointed out that play and joy are so important (in Imagination: A Manifesto, which we read even earlier). Humor must be critically important as well.
But this chapter helped put into sharp focus what irreverence and humor does for El-Kurd, and what it does for the people that he's in conversation with (the "curious, sympathetic, skeptical, receptive, on-the-fence" people).
I mean, the first point is obviously serious and maybe somewhat challenging: even if(!) their dreams were your worst nightmares, who are you to rob them of their sleep?
I feel like I've written repeatedly that I needed to confront this gap in my own morality - the discomfort I have about the fact that every single Palestinian (even the children who can't formulate a sentence, let alone a malicious desire) could want everyone on earth to die, and it still wouldn't justify the annihilation of Palestine. Just as Israelis clearly want (as they demonstrate every day) to kill every Palestinian on earth, that doesn't justify their annihilation.
Finding ways to chip away at the obscenity of Zionism - to help others find it risible and not just ominous - is one way of "debunking with dignity" the bullshit that people will sometimes throw at you. Recognizing the attempt to put him in "cross-examination" and finding the sharpest and most direct route out of that trap is an incredible revelation. Maybe not that incredible, given the microscope - or the sniper's scope - under which El-Kurd has lived all his life. But it still struck me as remarkable.
The epilogue and the end of this chapter gave me a surprising sense of clarity and motivation to go forward that I wasn't expecting. I wasn't expecting to suddenly understand how El-Kurd's sense of humor is so central to his ability to sidestep heinous, racist bullshit. But the revelation unlocked what it does for El-Kurd and Alareer. It even helped me understand myself a little bit - when I make jokes in the shadow of looming disaster, have I been exploring the gaps in the threat and seeing where there might be weaknesses in the monolith?
Share your reflections
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Other news
Raids on pro-palestine activists
There's a lot to this story and I'm not sure if people have the capacity to read all of it, so I'll spare you for now, but if you want to hear more about allegations of Nessel's prejudice against Muslims and people from Muslim-majority countries, feel free to let me know and I'll unpack what I know in the next email or something.
Yale organization welcomes war criminal, censures peace organization
Back in the 90s, Cory Booker went to Yale Law School and founded the Chai Society. Some time passed and the Chai Society renamed itself to Shabtai. Some more time passed, and Shabtai invited Itamar Ben-Gvir (Israel's National Security minister) for a talk.
Rabbis, student protestors, and other members of the community protested his visit, pointing out that Ben-Gvir is a criminal, tried and convicted by an Israeli court for supporting terrorism. Others pointed out that Ben-Gvir is a far-right extremist who has made numerous statements that are currently under scrutiny as incitements to commit genocide (but only because because he is a far-right extremist, and he has made incitements to commit genocide in his capacity as National Security minister).
Anyway, Yale responded to all this by banning the on-campus group "Yalies4Palestine" (Al Jazeera).
Not that it matters, but the group issued a statement denying even having been involved in organizing the protests against Ben-Gvir's New Haven visit.
Kneecap may lose US visa, will keep backbone
This one is slightly out of my wheelhouse these days, but let's start at the beginning.
Coachella is a music festival that happens every year in southern California. It's one of the largest music festivals in the country with around ~150 artists performing across two weekends. It's a big deal.
(Look, just so nobody feels obliged to point it out: the boss of Coachella's parent company is Philip Anschutz (Le Monde), who's wildly conservative, and spends millions on extremely conservative thinktanks and PACs, and is kind of a stereotype of every old timey billionaire you can think of - telecom, oil, railroads, really cliché stuff)
... Where were we?
Kneecap is an Irish hip hop group from Northern Ireland who performed at Coachella this year. During their set, on the screen, they showed the messages
Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people
It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes
Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.
See the story here if you want. (The Irish Times)
Various reality tv show stars (Sharon Osbourne, can't think of anyone else at the moment) manufactured some outrage over what is arguably the most anodyne message that's ever been put on a screen at Coachella.
(Her husband Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off of a bat during a concert in Des Moines, Iowa in the 80s. On a related note: have you ever been so stunned by all the raw material for a joke that you just kind of just froze and didn't know what to do with it all?)
Kneecap responded yesterday to Osbourne with the following:
Meanwhile Sharon Osbourne thinks telling people about Israeli war crimes at Coachella "compromised its moral and spiritual integrity”.... pic.twitter.com/M0CiTSw450
— KNEECAP (@KNEECAPCEOL) April 27, 2025
Hasan Piker NYT profile
I'm running out of steam and this is the stupidest story yet. The New York Times profiled Hasan Piker, prompting many readers to ask "what the fuck is a MAGA body?"
What the fuck is a “MAGA body”?
— A.J. Bauer (@ajbauer.bsky.social) 2025-04-27T11:22:21.084Z
Did I miss something?
If I missed something, please let me know and I'll try to include it in next week's email.
Support people in need
If you have extra funds, please donate directly to the Sameer Project.
If you have extra capacity to donate, you can also donate to Sudan Funds, a project to get money to Sudanese people surviving genocide.
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Thanks
Thank you for reading to the end. Please reach out if you have comments, or consider joining the Saturday call this weekend.
Regardless, thanks for reading along with me. And, as with the last few times we've finished books together... Thank you so much for reading Perfect Victims with me in whatever capacity - whether in the group chat, on Saturday video chats, or allowing me to send you emails every week.
Something fun
Mohammed El-Kurd is notably very funny. I kept forgetting to share this video someone shared during the Saturday video chats, so here's my last opportunity to share "In Bad Faith with Mohammed El-Kurd":