El-Kurd depicts the politics of the appeal
Ever since many of us as children we have been taught: everything you write and say – solely on the basis that you are Palestinian – can and will be used against you. If not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, in a decade.
With the newly translated book “Perfect Sacrifice and Appeal Policy” offers Muhammad El-Kurd a painful but honest insight into what, for lack of other suggestions, I want to call the Palestinian condition. An existential condition shaped by the benevolence of compassion as well as by the malevolent forces that seek to crush and silence all that is Palestinian.
In drawing up this politics of appeal, he has laid a foundation for what should perhaps be described as the tactics and strategies of (anti-) Palestinian propaganda. One of these is about how we define ourselves based on what we are not. “I am not a terrorist, not an antisemite, not an extremist” etc.
The Palestinian state is shaped by a constant asymmetric struggle, where the language and the image of the thing constitute some of the most important battlefields. In his book “How propaganda works”, the propaganda researcher highlights Jason Stanley precisely the importance of appearing “reasonable” and empathetic in the public discourse. He shows how Israel urges his defenders to put on a seemingly sympathetic and sympathetic smile, according to the motto: “[d]e impressionable people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Show Empathy for BOTH sides!”.
When it comes to Palestinian victims, it usually goes: “It’s terrible that children die (because they just died, right?). But Israel has the right to defend itself.” Or like when some politician or debater reluctantly admits that Palestinians are actually being killed in the worst imaginable ways, you still end up saying “it’s their own fault”. As an echo from the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir: “But we can never forgive them [araberna] because they force us to kill their children.”
With heavy examples, El-Kurd illustrates how Palestinians in Palestine who resist to defend their families, livestock, lands and homes are branded as terrorists. How many times have Palestinian teenagers, having their eyes, knees and hearts penetrated by Israeli rubber and dumdum bullets, faced the big question: but did they throw stones, at the soldiers in full uniform? Instead of agreeing to these premises, El-Kurd invites us to answer: Even if!?
At the same time as El-Kurd rightly directs his criticism at the violent nature of Zionism, he directs an at least equally necessary criticism inward. Against us who pushed the fight with tactics aimed at “humanizing” Palestinians. He believes that we rather tend to reinforce the colonial language. Our dead are not recognized as mournable unless they are presented as exceptional or “innocent civilians”. By constantly appealing to the image of the spotless and innocent Palestinian, we are in fact negating all those who also have a right to their lives – usually the boys, the men, the fathers.
El–Kurd pushes the thesis that the appeal is a tactic that no longer serves the purpose. At this stage it appears outdated, even regressive. Although he doesn’t always agree with the tactics, he emphasizes that he’s not trying to undermine anyone’s contribution to the fight. Instead, El Kurd strives to “invent a new future” to “break us free from the squirrel wheel”. As long as we do not own our narratives and stories, on our terms, we will remain subordinate to our executioners and allies alike. This requires, according to him, a conversation between us.
Probably one will time when Israel’s regime is replaced. But through El-Kurd’s eyes, and his uncompromising generation at the forefront, a movement is emerging that has something else in mind. One who will probably continue to point out the problem: that there is a fault with the system, not just who controls it. And in the end, the movement will probably land in the equal freedom of the peoples – from the river to the sea, without reservation.
In the book’s epilogue, El-Kurd talks about the hope that a preschool has been built in the northern parts of Gaza, and that the jasmine still smells. The jasmine, he says, needs neither permission nor a ceasefire to germinate. It is an insight that “[o]m seeds can germinate in the inferno, so can the revolution”.
And if we take El-Kurd at his word, the rain will come soon. Until then, we owe it to ourselves to look at everything, look for everything.
Amer Sarsour is a writer and culture writer. This fall, the dramatization of his debut novel “Medan vi briner” premieres at Uppsala City Theatre.
The book is translated by Johanne Lykke Naderehvandi and Khashayar Lykke Naderehvandi. It is published by Daidalos publishing house.
