French translation of "The Perfect Victim and the Politics of Demand" published; writer El-Kurd poses a question to Western narratives of suffering
The French translation of Palestinian writer, poet and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd's work "The Perfect Victim and the Politics of Demand" was published this week. He grew up in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem, and the experience of his family being displaced from their home by Israeli settlers during his childhood runs through his writing. France 24's "Perspective" program aired an interview of nearly eight minutes this week.
The publication of the French edition has brought Palestinian writer, poet and journalist Mohammed El-Kurd's work "The Perfect Victim and the Politics of Demand" before French-language readers. According to France 24 English channel's "Perspective" program, the translation was released last week.
The title itself is a statement. The juxtaposition of "perfect victim" and "politics of demand" points to a critical interrogation of how Western media disciplines Palestinians on how they "should suffer" in order to elicit sympathy. This line of questioning did not arise from nowhere — El-Kurd grew up in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem and is himself a direct party to the case of his family being driven from their home by Israeli settlers during his childhood.
The Sheikh Jarrah displacement cases have long been a focus of international reporting and one of the emblematic cases through which outsiders understand settlement expansion and the systematic displacement of Palestinians. Palestinian families in the community were forced to leave homes they had inhabited for generations, driven by Israeli courts and settler organizations; some of the cases drew large-scale international solidarity around 2021. El-Kurd's family was among them.
France 24's "Perspective" program broadcast an interview with him running nearly eight minutes. In its report, the program framed the theme of the conversation as how El-Kurd "challenges the way Palestinian suffering is viewed." The report did not directly disclose his specific arguments in the interview about this narrative framework, but the broadcast coincides with the publication of the new French edition, suggesting that his discourse is crossing language borders into new audiences.
El-Kurd had previously made a name for himself in Arabic- and English-language literary circles with his poetry collection "Rifqa." From poetry to political commentary, from personal memory to an examination of international public-opinion mechanisms, the same proposition he keeps interrogating is: how Palestinian suffering is allowed to enter the Western gaze, and how it is framed into forms that can be accepted or rejected. This proposition enters the reading agenda of the French-speaking world with the publication of the French translation.
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