Muhammad al-Kurd, Palestinian poet writer, author of the new book Perfect Victims.

Mohamed, thank you so much for joining me on The Empire Files.

It's such a huge honor to have you.

Thank you. It's my honor. Thank you for having me.

Muhammad, I loved your book. I flew through it. I feel like it really articulates and clarifies so much about the propaganda that not only deeply dehumanizes the Palestinian, but also keeps people trapped in these endless rhetorical loops and bad faith arguments.

Like you said, side arguments to the burning flesh right in front of us.

So I guess just start by telling us who are the perfect victims.

Well, a perfect victim is someone who adheres strictly to a predetermined, you know, civility, usually predetermined by Western ethnocentric standards, that demands a certain, you know, being docile, demands submissiveness, it demands concession after concession, it demands surrendering the future and

surrendering your national and national ambitions and collective anti-colonial ambitions

and just any kind of political ambitions, turning the other cheek.

And in other words, this is a mythical feature. This feature does not, this figure does not exist.

Right. I mean, it made me critical of my own framing, particularly the quote, unquote, just worthy

victims. I mean, if someone's murdered who's not wearing a press jacket or a medic coat, it doesn't

make them any less worthy. And obviously, the disproportionate assault on women and

children have made this kind of framework and inevitability, I guess, and a desperate appeal to some

sort of morality out there. But it takes away from the mass murder of Palestinian men. And the

unending tragedy of that.

And that really underpins the entire genocidal onslaught as a justification.

Absolutely, not only does it take away from the value of the lives of millions and millions of Palestinian men,

but it also robs women of their agency.

This kind of framing of women and children positions women to be these kinds of candles in the

wind who have no control or no say whatsoever in the, quote-unquote, conflict that is taking

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