Mohammed el-Kurd | 'Perfect Victims'

For the opening night of the Festival van de Gelijkheid we invite Palestinian author, poet and journalist Mohammed el-Kurd, leading up to the release of his non-fiction debut 'Perfect Victims: and the politics of appeal' in the beginning of 2025. This evening will be hosted by Palestinian artist and researcher Samah Hijawi. Live illustrations will be made by Sirien Salameh. Adriaan de Roover and Hala El Mohor will close the evening with a musical performance.

In this year’s Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Princeton, published in The Nation, Mohammed el-Kurd Said’s 1984 essay 'Permission to Narrate', which critiques how Western coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese War was biased toward the Israeli narrative and suppressed the Palestinian point of view. el-Kurd identifies a similar situation at hand today, with Western mainstream media creating a false dichotomy in which Palestinians “are either victims or terrorists” and only deemed sympathetic if they are “perfect victims.” Countering this, el-Kurd