Mohammed El-Kurd: “Bombs, women, children, etc”: Humanization, Victimhood, and the Politics of Appeal

For decades, well-meaning journalists and cultural workers used a humanizing framework in their representation of oppressed people, in hopes of countering the traditional portrayal of the Palestinian as a “terrorist.” Within this framework, a perfect victimhood emerged as an ethnocentric prerequisite for sympathy and solidarity, often over-emphasizing oppressed people’s nonviolence, humane professions, and disabilities. In “Bombs, women, children, etc.”: Humanization, Victimhood, and the Politics of Appeal, El-Kurd unpacks the impact such practices of “defanging,” which reproduce the mainstream cultural order in which Palestinians are robbed of their agency, right to self-determination, and, ultimately, their humanity.