Jul 24, 2023, 11:29 AM ETInterview

Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine | Lex Fridman Podcast #391

El-Kurd rejects the notion that religious texts or historical claims grant a right to "slaughter people, remove them from homes, and continue living on their balconies" decades later without introspection.
He argues that no entity has the right to confine an entire population in a "cage," citing the restrictions on freedom of movement in the West Bank and the blockade of water, air, and land in Gaza.
El-Kurd asserts that legal rulings do not equate to morality, comparing Israel's discriminatory laws to the legalized segregation of Jim Crow in the US, stating, "when something is legal, it can also still be wrong."
He contends that the current crisis is not a religious conflict but a political and colonial one, noting that many Zionist pioneers and current Israeli leaders are atheists and secular.
El-Kurd rejects the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, arguing that opposing a colonialist political movement is distinct from opposing the Jewish religion or people.

Sheikh Jarrah is described as a refugee housing unit established by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 for Palestinians expelled during the 1948 Nakba.
Settler organizations, often registered in the US with tax-exempt status, began claiming these properties in the 1970s based on "divine decree."
El-Kurd highlights a systemic asymmetry in the Israeli courts where judges rely on falsified Israeli documents while refusing to authenticate Ottoman, Jordanian, or UN records submitted by Palestinian claimants.
Between 2009 and 2020, over 50 expulsion orders were issued against families in Sheikh Jarrah; in 2009, 28 families were forcibly evicted, resulting in the death of Umm Kamil Al-Kurd's husband, who suffered a stroke during removal.
A global campaign launched by El-Kurd in 2020 resulted in the Israeli Supreme Court temporarily canceling dozens of eviction orders due to international diplomatic and public pressure.
The legal victory is viewed as a "small victory" because the courts are waiting for a land registry to conclude, which El-Kurd predicts will likely validate settler claims by disregarding pre-1948 Palestinian ownership documents.

The "Nakba" (catastrophe) is framed not as a single 1948 event but as an ongoing process of displacement, with recent expulsions occurring in 2009, 2020, and 2021.
In Silwan and Jerusalem's Old City, Palestinians face home demolitions rather than evictions, often because 95% of building permit applications from Palestinians are rejected.
Yonatan Youssef, a Jerusalem councilman with veto power over building permits, is an activist who publicly calls for a "second Nakba" and chants anti-Palestinian slogans.
In Masaf Raita (South Hebron), over 1,000 Bedouin Palestinians were expelled after the Israeli government classified their ancestral lands as "firing zones" in the 1980s to facilitate expulsion, a fact confirmed by declassified archives.
El-Kurd notes that the judge in the Masaf Raita case is a settler living in an illegal settlement, illustrating the lack of judicial neutrality.
There are over 60 laws in Israel that explicitly discriminate against Palestinian citizens, and Israeli courts generally refuse to prosecute Israeli security forces for actions against Palestinians.

The United States provides $3.8 billion annually in military aid to Israel, totaling $150 billion since WWII, which El-Kurd views as perpetuating the occupation without benefit to American citizens.
El-Kurd criticizes the US media for consistently omitting the word "occupied" when reporting on East Jerusalem and West Bank events, thereby normalizing the presence of an illegal military administration.
He accuses the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) of acting as a "police training department" for racial profiling and silencing Palestinian advocacy by labeling critics as anti-Semites.
The podcast notes a double standard in Western media where violence by Ukrainian soldiers is celebrated as heroic defense, while similar actions by Palestinians are labeled as terrorism.
El-Kurd argues that the "terrorism" label is used to delegitimize resistance against a foreign army, whereas violence by a state military is often framed as "security" or "self-defense."

El-Kurd rejects the two-state solution as geographically and politically impossible due to the "Swiss cheese" nature of settlements and the displacement of Palestinians from historic towns like Haifa and Jaffa.
He advocates for a single state solution based on three principles: recognition of the Nakba, the right of return for all Palestinian refugees, and redistribution of land and wealth.
The Palestinian Authority is criticized as a "subcontractor" of the Israeli regime that fails to represent the people, while Hamas is viewed as a democratic force that nonetheless lacks the power to govern Gaza effectively.
El-Kurd posits that the only entity capable of ending the conflict is the Israeli regime, which holds the power to dismantle the wall, stop expulsions, and end the siege.
He suggests that a future without nation-states or militaries is ideal but acknowledges the current reality necessitates fighting against the existing power imbalance.

El-Kurd's grandmother, Rifqa, was displaced from Haifa in 1948 and spent her life navigating the trauma of the Nakba until her death in 2020; she was the title character of his poetry collection Rivqa.
He describes the process of writing in English as a struggle to prove basic facts of existence due to media denialism, whereas writing in Arabic allows for philosophical nuance.
The book A Million States in One (tentative title) is being written as a memoir of the neighborhood to document the dignity of resistance against the "polite suffering" expected of Palestinians.
El-Kurd argues that Palestinian "resilience" is better described as "stubbornness," emphasizing the refusal to let occupation break the community's spirit.
He finds hope in historical precedent, noting that all previous injustices (slavery, Jim Crow, colonialism) were eventually overturned, and believes justice is inevitable.
El-Kurd rejects the role of "victim," stating that anger is a rational response to the "bulldozer bulldozing through my house" and that it fuels necessary action.