The myth of the peaceful victim

I do not want to “coexist” in peace and harmony with our oppressors. Not with mine, not with theirs, not with yours.

A picture I captured in Harissa, Lebanon.

[1]

Do not reconcile

even if they give you gold

I wonder

if I were to gouge out your eyes

and replace them with two gems

would you see?

These things are priceless.

[2]

Do not reconcile over blood

even with blood.

Do not reconcile

even if they say a head for a head

Are all heads equal?

Is a stranger’s heart

equal to your brother’s?

Are his eyes your brother’s eyes?

Is a hand whose sword was your sword

equal to a hand whose sword caused you to mourn.

They will say: we came to end the bloodshed…

we came, be the prince of justice.

They will say: we are your kin.

Tell them: you showed no kinship to the dead.

— Amal Dunqul

By now, you may be used to my restless thoughts, drifting from the personal to the cultural and political, circling back, refusing to settle. My thoughts rarely sit still long enough to be organized, and maybe that is fine. This space was never meant to be polished. It is just where I come to put down what I cannot always say out loud. Those closest to me are tired; I am tired too. We are really tired. But yesterday, on a call with a friend, a thought resurfaced: the myth of the peaceful victim.

We are always asked to be peaceful victims. People love peaceful victims. They are easy to pity, safe to mourn. Peaceful victims do not disturb the order of things. They bear injustice in silence, their grief contained in images and poems. The world cries for them, briefly, admires their resilience because the poem was so moving, because the image was so haunting, and then moves on. How convenient, a tragedy that poses no threat.

But the moment the oppressed rise, the chorus begins: violence is never the answer. You could achieve everything peacefully, they say. Normalize this. Normalize that. Speak of “coexistence,” speak of “harmony.” As if coexistence has ever been possible with someone who denies your very existence. This is not morality. It is a system that insists on nonviolence because it keeps its power intact. And it will go to any length to persuade you. It will reach into your own faith to convince you. It will use your own people as instruments to convince you.

For centuries, the demand has been the same. Submit quietly while your land is stolen, your dignity stripped, your children buried. You may weep, but never resist. And if you do resist, if you dare to strike back, you and your people will be branded as “terrorists,” as if history began only with your defiance and not with the decades, the centuries, of violence inflicted upon you. Oh, how dare you!

This narrative is so strongly enforced because it preserves legitimacy. Nonviolent resistance can be dismissed, co-opted, or absorbed. Armed resistance, messy and imperfect as it may be, threatens the very foundations of domination itself. The demand for peaceful victims is not about peace. It never was. It is about forcing the oppressed to accept more bloodshed as if it were inevitable.

The tools of pacification are everywhere. Morality is twisted to mean virtue lies in suffering silently without retaliation. Language is bent until massacres are called “self-defense” and resistance is called “terrorism.” And the law, always draped in neutrality, outlaws the struggle to survive while permitting only the kind of protests that leave power unshaken.

The effect is brutal. Movements fracture. People doubt the legitimacy of their own fight, questioning whether survival is even theirs to claim. And too often, that doubt turns to anger against those who still dare to resist. The world also learns to sympathize only with corpses, not with fighters. You weep for the child under the rubble, but you hesitate, stammer, and second-guess when confronted with those who refuse to die quietly.

This is manipulation (!!!!) A carefully engineered order that denies the oppressed their agency while laundering the oppressor’s violence into legitimacy. Real peace will never be born from dictating the tactics of the oppressed. It comes only when the structures of violence, the root causes, are dismantled. Until then, to lecture the oppressed about their “tone” or their “methods” is not to call for peace. It is to demand submission.

The question has never been whether the oppressed have the right to resist. History answers that clearly. They do. They fucking do. The question is why the world keeps insisting they must resist passively, even as violence is systematically, mercilessly unleashed upon them.

I do not want to be diplomatic about it anymore. No, I do not want to “coexist” in peace and harmony with our oppressors. Not with mine, not with theirs, not with yours.

I refuse to reconcile over blood, even with blood. And if that makes you uncomfortable, so be it. I have carried your comfort on my back long enough.