When I first started writing, I made two mistakes. First: I trained myself to use ‘unbiased’ words. What I’d refer to in Arabic as an ‘entity’ would become a ‘state.’ I wanted my vocabulary void of accusations, so I replaced ‘arrogate’ with ‘confiscate,’ ‘dispossess’ with ‘evict,’ and ‘lie’ with ‘allege.’ This phenomenon is common among writers writing about Palestine, writers who worship the mythology of objectivity instead of satirizing it. There’s a naïve belief that Palestinians will acquire credibility only once they’ve amassed respectability. We do this to appear rational and unhostile. The truth, however, is very hostile.
The second mistake is what I will call ‘humanization’: I portrayed my people only in the ways that adhere to ethnocentric civility, robbing them of their agency. I made them tremble in their victimhood like sticks in the wind. They were mere vehicles for extracting empathy. It was the tendency to ‘women and children’ Palestinians to death, to infantilize Palestinians in hopes of proving that, indeed, they deserve liberation.
Ironically, one of the world’s most lethal regimes does not require humanization. The world can grieve Israeli loss without qualifiers, despite the disparities in the death toll. In contrast, we must qualify our dead with reminders of their nonviolence, humane professions, and disabilities. A Palestinian man cannot just die. For him to be mourned, he must be in a wheelchair or developmentally delayed, a medical professional, or noticeably elderly at the very least. Even then, there are questions about the validity of his victimhood.
Having lived in the United States for [some] years, I realize that much of what I try to expose is already blatant. This indifference to Palestinian death exists despite morality and ‘human rights.’ Humanization, more often than not, does the exact opposite of what it alleges. I no longer feel the responsibility to give humans eyes for humanity.
– Mohammed El-Kurd, excerpts from RIFQA (2021)
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