
Perfect Victims
And the Politics of Appeal
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Narrated by:
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Mohammed El-Kurd
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By:
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Mohammed El-Kurd
About this listen
Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.
Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured—the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.
Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.
How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.
©2025 Mohammed El-Kurd (P)2025 Tantor MediaListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
“Mohammed El-Kurd has written a new Discourse on Colonialism for the twenty-first century.”—Robin D. G. Kelley
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- By: Surekha Davies
- Narrated by: Christina Delaine
- Length: 10 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Monsters are central to how we think about the human condition. Join award-winning historian of science Dr. Surekha Davies as she reveals how people have defined the human in relation to everything from apes to zombies, and how they invented race, gender, and nations along the way. With rich, evocative storytelling that braids together ancient gods and generative AI, Frankenstein's monster and E.T., Humans: A Monstrous History shows how monster-making is about control: it defines who gets to count as normal.
By: Surekha Davies
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Rory Land
- The Up-and-Down World of Golf's Global Icon
- By: Timothy M. Gay
- Narrated by: Brandon Pollock
- Length: 13 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Timothy M. Gay writes that four-time major champion Rory McIlroy is "golf's ageless Opie Taylor," a superstar whose charm transcends national boundaries and enlivens the game. His swing is so powerful that Tiger Woods is teaching his own son to mimic Rory's action. But a charismatic persona and a pretty swing don't translate into winning championships. Rory has failed to win another major and fallen short of achieving the career Grand Slam. Rory Land tells the saga of a compassionate superstar living in a world where "money has no conscience."
By: Timothy M. Gay
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The Palestine Laboratory
- How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World
- By: Antony Loewenstein
- Narrated by: Finlay Robertson
- Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers a largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'.
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Important but badly edited
- By Wouter on 05-17-25
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Gaza Writes Back
- Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine
- By: Refaat Alareer
- Narrated by: Amin El Gamal, Lameece Issaq
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Gaza Writes Back: Short Stories from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine, edited by Refaat Alareer, is a compelling collection of short stories from 15 young writers in Gaza, members of a generation that has suffered immensely under Israel's siege and blockade. Their experiences, especially during and following Israel's 2008-2009 offensive known as Operation Cast Lead, have fundamentally impacted their lives and their writing.
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Powerful. Sad and beautiful at the same time.
- By Gheed M. Murtadi on 05-02-24
By: Refaat Alareer
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A Genocide Foretold
- Reporting on Survival and Resistance in Occupied Palestine
- By: Chris Hedges
- Narrated by: Ali Nasser
- Length: 6 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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A Genocide Foretold confronts the stark realities of life under siege in Gaza and the heroic effort ordinary Palestinians are waging to resist and survive. Weaving together personal stories, historical context, and unflinching journalism, Chris Hedges provides an intimate portrait of systemic oppression, occupation, and violence.
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The Pain is Unbearable
- By A. J. Wind on 05-13-25
By: Chris Hedges
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When the Stones Speak
- The Remarkable Discovery of the City of David and What Israel's Enemies Don't Want You to Know
- By: Doron Spielman
- Narrated by: Doron Spielman
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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As former vice president of the City of David Foundation, Doron Spielman has guided numerous visitors—including donors, diplomats, professors, celebrities, and American politicians—on a journey into the City of David’s tunnels. While often holding vastly different political views, these visitors agree on one thing: the story of the City of David must be told.
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Fascinating and Important
- By A.B. on 05-26-25
By: Doron Spielman
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Forest of Noise
- Poems
- By: Mosab Abu Toha
- Narrated by: Mosab Abu Toha
- Length: 1 hr and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Barely thirty years old, Mosab Abu Toha was already a well-known poet when the current siege of Gaza began. After the Israeli army bombed and destroyed his house, pulverizing a library he had painstakingly built for community use, he and his family fled for their safety. Not for the first time in their lives. Somehow, amid the chaos, Abu Toha kept writing poems. These are those poems. Uncannily clear, direct, and beautifully tuned, they form one of the most astonishing works of art wrested from wartime.
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Beautiful, powerful, and devastating
- By N.K. on 10-25-24
By: Mosab Abu Toha
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Gaza in Crisis
- Reflections on the US-Israeli War Against the Palestinians
- By: Ilan Pappe, Noam Chomsky, Frank Barat - editor
- Narrated by: Shawn K. Jain
- Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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While numerous books address Israel-Palestine conflict, Gaza in Crisis brings together two renowned thinkers—American activist Noam Chomsky and Israeli historian Ilan Pappé—to examine why this conflict has lasted so long, who can stop it, and how. Israel's Operation Cast Lead, a 2008 military assault on the Gaza Strip, thrust the region to the center of the discussion. With expert knowledge and deep insight, Chomsky and Pappé survey the fallout from Israel's conduct in Gaza and place it in historical context.
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Excellent
- By Waleed Y. A. Sarhan on 04-29-25
By: Ilan Pappe, and others
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Mellon vs. Churchill
- The Untold Story of Treasury Titans at War
- By: Jill Eicher
- Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Mellon, one of the most accomplished businessmen of his era, is almost unknown today. To this shy, diffident (but brilliant) man fell the daunting task of collecting the war debts from European governments still devastated by WWI and struggling to recover economically. Dealing with the US Congress and the heads of foreign governments on the world stage became one of the great adventures of his life. Mellon vs. Churchill presents Winston Churchill through a different lens, focusing on his service as Chancellor of the Exchequer when Great Britain was the largest debtor to the US.
By: Jill Eicher
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Bear Witness
- The Pursuit of Justice in a Violent Land
- By: Ross Halperin
- Narrated by: Perry Daniels
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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As young men, Kurt Ver Beek, an American sociologist, and Carlos Hernández, a Honduran schoolteacher, devoted their lives to helping the poor. But it wasn't until they moved to an extraordinarily dangerous neighborhood in Honduras that they came to a radical conclusion: The charity world was combating poverty incorrectly. In gripping prose, journalist Ross Halperin chronicles how these two best friends became quasi vigilantes and charged into a series of life-and-death battles.
By: Ross Halperin
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The Eyes of Gaza
- By: Plestia Alaqad
- Narrated by: Plestia Alaqad
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
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In early October 2023, Palestinian Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a successful journalist. By the end of November, she would be internationally known as the 'Eyes of Gaza'. Millions of people would be profoundly moved by her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza amid Israel’s deadly invasion and bombardment. Through the raw honesty and vulnerability of a normal 22-year-old woman trying to make her way through a human tragedy, The Eyes of Gaza is a powerful call for peace.
By: Plestia Alaqad
Heart wrenching
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