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

1. 0:00 – 2:18

   Introduction

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd0:00

      Regardless of whatever was written in these books that were written thousands and thousands of years ago, the fact of the matter is, no one has a right to go on slaughtering people, removing them from their homes, and then continuing to live in their homes, continuing to drink coffee on their balconies, um, decades and decades later, with no shame, with no introspection, uh, with no reflection. That's, no one has the right to do that. No one has the right to keep an entire population of people in a cage, uh, which is what's happening to people in the West Bank, who have no freedom of fo- uh, of movement, which is what's happening in Gaza, which is blockaded through water, air, and land, and is deemed uninhabitable by human rights organizations like the UN. Um, no one has a right to do that.

   2. LFLex Fridman0:52

      The following is a conversation with Mohammed el-Kurd, a world-renowned Palestinian poet, writer, journalist, and an influential voice speaking out and fighting for the Palestinian cause. He provides a very different perspective on Israel and Palestine than my previous two episodes with Benjamin Netanyahu and Yuval Noah Harari. I hope his story and his words add to your understanding of this part of the world as it did to mine. I will continue to have difficult, long-form conversations such as these, always with empathy and humility, but with backbone. And please allow me to briefly comment about criticisms I receive of who I am as an interviewer and a human being. I am not afraid to travel anywhere or challenge anyone face to face, even if it puts my life in danger. But I'm also not afraid to be vulnerable, to truly listen, to empathize, to walk a mile in the well-worn shoes of those very different from me. It's this latter task, not the former one, that is truly the most challenging, in conversations and in life. But to me, it is the only way. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Mohammed el-Kurd.

2. 2:18 – 26:47

   Palestine

   1. LFLex Fridman2:18

      Tell me about Sheikh Jarrah, the neighborhood in East Jerusalem where you grew up.

   2. MEMohammed El-Kurd2:23

      Sheikh Jarrah is, you know, in a, in a way, a typical neighborhood despite the, despite the absurd reality that surrounds it. It's a typical neighborhood in terms of Palestinian neighborhoods as one that is threatened with colonialism, with settler expansion, and with forced expulsion, and it has been that way since the early '70s. My family, like all of the other families in Sheikh Jarrah, uh, were expelled from their homes in the Nakba in 1948, and they were forced out by the Haganah and other, uh, Zionist paramilitaries that later formed the Israeli military. Um, and they were driven to various cities, and my grandmother moved from city to city and she ended up in Sheikh Jarrah in 1956. Sheikh Jarrah was established as, uh, refugee housing unit, uh, by the United Nations and by the Jordanian government which had, which had control over that part of Jerusalem at the, at the time. And then people lived there harmoniously. They were all from different parts of Palestine, and, you know, they managed to rebuild their lives after the first expulsion. And then in the '70s, you had settler organizations, um, many of whom were registered here in New York and in the United States, claiming our houses and our lands as their own by divine decree. And because, obviously because the judges are Israeli and the laws were written by Israeli settlers and the whole judiciary was established, uh, atop the ra- the rubble of our homes and villages, we had no, you know, we had no real pull in the courts. The Israeli courts would look at the Israeli documents, which we argue are falsified and fabricated, um, and they would take them at face value without authentication and they refused to look at our documents. They refused to look at the documents from the Jordanian government, the documents from the UN, the documents from the Ottoman archives. So, you already have this kind of asymmetry in the court that for any person with common sense would lead you to believe that this is not, in fact, a legal battle, um, or a real estate dispute as the Israeli f- Ministry of Foreign Affairs likes to frame it, but rather a very, very political battle, one that is about, um, social engineering, one that is about demographics, one that is about removing as many Palestinians as possible from occupied Jerusalem. Um, so we did what all Palestinian families in Jerusalem do when they're faced with this kind of threat, and we bought time. We, we pleaded and pleaded and appealed the courts and appealed the cases and we got over 50 expulsion orders. Um, in 2009, rifle-wielding settlers accompanied by police and Israeli military came over and shoved our neighbors out- outside of their home around 5:00 AM. It's like, it was the most brutal, violent thing I'd seen as a child at the time, and I didn't realize that my turn was coming, my turn was next. They threw m- they threw them out in the middle of the night, uh, with sound bombs and rubber bullets and they had to live in tents on the street for many, many months, and even lived in our front yards for a few months, and lived in their cars.

   3. LFLex Fridman5:41

      Can you linger on that process? 2009, you said 50 expulsion orders. What, uh, what was happening?

   4. MEMohammed El-Kurd5:48

      Between the '70s and 2009, there had been many, dozens of expulsions orders against us and against many other families in the ne- in the neighborhood. 28 other fami- 20, 28 families in total, actually. Um, and in 2008, 2009, the first wave of expulsions fi- finally happened. It actually began with, uh...Um, Kamel El-Kurd, we're not related, but we live on the same street in the same neighborhood. She was thrown out of her home. Um, her husband, an elderly man also named Mohammed Al-Kurd, was pronounced dead on the spot. He had a stroke and died. He- they- the Israeli soldiers pulled him out of his home while he was, um, urinating and threw him into the streets, and he died. A few months later, the Rawi and Hanun families, um, which are, you know, kind of not a clan, but you know, in Palestine you have sometimes a building that contains multiple brothers and their wives. Um, each have little apartments. So, the Rawi and Hanun families, about 35 people were thrown out in the middle of the street right across from us. And then by the end of 2009, I had come home from school to find all of my furniture scattered across the length of the street, and I saw the settlers, many of whom had American accents, living in our house. Um, and their justification for this, their reasoning for this is, you know, divine decree. This is, this is what God wants. This is the promised land. This is so-and-so, as if God is some kind of real estate agent. Um, so they took over half of our home and we continued to be in courts for the following decade. This was, I was still a child and I had broken English and I was talking to all of these diplomats and all of these journalists who would, you know, subjugate me, um, to their, subject me to their, you know, racism and biases and, and so on and so forth. And I had to prove my humanity time and time again. And I had to, you know, do all of this all with broken English. Um, and we were lucky even if we got a, if we got a quote in the, in the article written about us by The Times or so on and so forth. Move forward to 2020, I was in New York City studying, um, a master's degree, getting a master's degree, and my father calls me and he tells me, you know, we have an, yet another expulsion order. And we decided to launch a campaign. It was quite ambitious at the time, but the whole objective of the campaign was to demystify what is happening, right? Because it's reported on in the news, it's reported on around the world as this real estate dispute, as these evictions, which was not really what's happening. Evictions do not entail a foreign army in an occupied territory forcibly removing you out of your home. Uh, so I came home from New York and we launched a campaign which turned into a global success. And I believe it was a global success because finally the, the images on the screen matched the rhetoric that was being said. It wasn't so confusing or complicated anymore. All of this asymmetry was pronounced and articulated in a way that any viewer, be it in Alabama, be it in New York, be it in Egypt, was able to understand the asymmetry of the digi- of the judicial system and, you know, the agenda of colonialism that was taking place here. And due to immense international and diplomatic pressure, um, from all over the world, even the United States, the Israeli Supreme Court was forced to cancel all of the eviction orders in Sheikh Jarrah until further notice. This, I consider, was a small victory because obviously we're- we are still at risk of losing our homes once they decide to do the land registry, which we can get into a little bit later if you'd like. Um, but nonetheless, it was something that we haven't seen before. And the fact that the Supreme Court canceled all of these dozens and dozens of past eviction orders, it set a precedent and it also proved that this was a political battle, not a legal one.

   5. LFLex Fridman9:54

      So, let's just add a little more detail to the people who are not familiar with the story, with the region, with the evictions, with the courts. So first of all, Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem. Maybe you can say what is Jerusalem? Where is it located? What are we talking about in terms of regionally? And second, what kind of people that live there. So, if you could talk about the Palestinian people. And, um, we should also make clear that these evictions is literally people living in homes and their homes are taken away from them. I suppose technically, it's legal, uh, evictions, but you're saying that there's a asymmetry of power in the courts where the legal is, uh, not so much legal, but is, uh, politically and maybe even religiously based.

   6. MEMohammed El-Kurd10:53

      Yeah, I mean, f- the biggest, the most important context here is that oftentimes Americans think that Israel and Palestine are some kind of two neighbor, two neighboring countries, um, that live next to each other and they are at war. But the fact of the matter is, Palestinian cities exist, um, all over the country and it's just one country. It's just one infrastructure. And Israel is literally on top of Palestine. It was established on top of our villages, um, in the late '40s. Uh, now according to international law, the eastern part of Jerusalem is under occupation. So, Israeli presence and jurisdiction over the area is completely illegitimate. They say the evictions are legal because the settlers write their laws. So obviously they're going to allow settlements to expand, but according to international law, according to even US policy, um, Israel occupies the eastern part of Jerusalem. Its jurisdiction there is illegitimate. We shouldn't even be going to their courts in the first place, but we have no other option. Um, we're talking, when we're talking about Sheikh Jarrah or we're talking about Jerusalem, we're talking about generations and generations and generations of people who have lived there.... for the longest time, who now, even though, you know... For example, me, I don't have a citizenship. I'm a resident, a mere resident. I have a- a blue ID card, even though my grandmother and my grandfather were born in Jerusalem, their grandparents were born in Jerusalem, um, even though we've lived there for generations. But Palestinians in Jerusalem, we are not citizens, we're just mere residents. Same thing with residents of the occupied Syrian Golan. They are not citizens, they are just residents in their own hometowns. Um, this is an important, uh, piece, but all of this gets convoluted and lost in translation. And I think... I- I would argue, it's a lot more, it- it's... A lot of the time, it's dubious. It's- it's malicious, the fact that these little pieces of context that frame the entire story get lost. You know, I'll talk to you about something else. Um, just 10 minutes, 10 minutes across from my neighborhood, ?????, there's another- another neighborhood called Silwan. And the people in Silwan are also threatened with expulsion, but not through evictions, but through home demolitions. And if you look at American state, uh, American media or Israeli state media, you would read the headlines, you know, Palestinians living in, uh, homes built illegally are gonna face, you know, their homes are gonna be torn apart. What these headlines don't tell you, and even sometimes most of the time the substance doesn't tell you, that Palestinians seldom ever get building permit applications. Um, in fact, uh, recently a spokesperson for the Israeli military confirmed that it was 95% of building permits applications submitted by Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank are rejected by the Israeli authorities. And to make this al- even more absurd, the guy, the councilman who is responsible, um, for rejecting and accepting buildme- building- building permit applications, his name is Yonathan Yosef and he's a, he's a, an activist in the settler movement and he's a Jerusalem council member, and he... Last week, following the expulsion of, uh, Al-Sublabban family in the Old City of Jerusalem, he posted to his official Facebook, his Facebook account, "Nakba now," um, demanding a second Nakba, promising another Nakba. He has done so in many occasions. He has chanted with a megaphone just a few months ago walking down the street in my neighborhood, chanting, "We want Nakba now." This is a man who has vandalized our murals, who- who has, uh, screamed Islamophobic slurs. This is literally a man in the government making these decisions, right? Uh, and this is similar to, you know, Masafer Yatta in the South Hebron Hills. For those who don't know, it's a, it's- it's a place in the occupied West Bank where Bedouin and, um, cave dweller Palestinians have lived for generations. They have cultivated the land. Um, and recently, they were expelled from their homes. Over 1,000 people were expelled from the remote small villages. Again, if you're reading American media, they would say, it wou- it would say, "Palestinians living in firing zones were removed because they're living in a military zone." What these media reports will not tell you, that in the '80s, the Israeli government purposefully classified many lands in the occupied West Bank as firing zones, as off-limit military zones for the sole purpose of expelling the residents. And this is not some kind of conspiracy theory. This is declassified information that was released from the Israeli State Archive that was later reported on by Haaretz. Also, these reports will not tell you that the judge who rules on whether these people continue to live in their homes or not is himself a settler in the West Bank. And I'm not even talking about, you know, a loose definition of a settler, but according to international law, this is a settler living illegally in an illegal settlement in the occupied West Bank. This is the judiciary, um, that we deal with, which is hilarious considering how it's being reported on, um, in American media recently as some kind of beacon of progress and democracy that the new government is trying to undermine.

   7. LFLex Fridman16:20

      So there's no representation in the courts for the Palestinian people.

   8. MEMohammed El-Kurd16:23

      I mean, we have lawyers, but no, there is no, there is no... In fact, there is for Palestinians with Israeli citizenships, for example, there's over 60 laws that specifically and explicitly discriminates against them.

   9. LFLex Fridman16:37

      So again, it's technically legal, the evictions and the demolitions.

   10. MEMohammed El-Kurd16:43

       Yeah. So was Jim Crow was legal also, you know.

   11. LFLex Fridman16:46

       When something is legal, it can also still be wrong.

   12. MEMohammed El-Kurd16:50

       Absolutely. History has shown us time and time again, um, that legality does not necessarily mean morality. And the law, you know, is a, the law is a bloodbath in many ways. Um, it has been used and abused to facilitate the most horrendous atrocities. And in, in the case of the Palestinians, the- the law has served to facilitate and bureaucratize our ethnic cleansing.

   13. LFLex Fridman17:21

       Do you think there's people, judges, and just people in power in the judiciary that have hate for the Palestinian people?

   14. MEMohammed El-Kurd17:30

       I mean, I'm not really... Uh, yani, the- the easy simplistic answer is yes, but I don't really care about the contents of their hearts. What I care about the policy they enact, right? The laws they write and enact are hateful. Demolishing a person's home, um, so you can have somebody from Long Island, New York who's fleeing, you know, fraud charges, um, this w- this was the case in my house, live in- in their, in their, you know, front yard, that's hateful. So I don't need, you know, confirmation. This is something we see a lot actually, you know. Um, Palestinians and people who are pro-Palestine, and just people who want to make a difference in how this cause is represented, we often run for the first, um...... opportunity to cite an Israeli being hateful. You know, the recent, the last, uh, Israeli prime minister said that he has killed many Arabs and that he has no qualms with it. Um, Netanyahu has said a slew of racist, hateful things. Um, Jabotinsky, the pioneer of Zionism, Herzl, one of the pioneers of Zionism, all have said horrible, hateful things. We also, like, cannot wait to, you know, cite, uh, a confession from a former Israeli soldier whose guilty conscience is keeping them, you know, up at night. And we use all of these, you know, confessions or slip-ups as evidence to prove that this is a racist country that is enacting rac- racist acts. But we don't need this, because the material proof is on the ground. You see it in the policies that are enacted. You see it, um, in how the country, how this regime has behaved for the past 75 years. I don't need, you know, confessions from the likes of Netanyahu to understand that his heart is full of hate.

   15. LFLex Fridman19:27

       So if you could return to 1948 and describe something that you've mentioned, the Nakba, which means catastrophe in Arabic. Wh- what was this event? What was this displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948?

   16. MEMohammed El-Kurd19:43

       Well, you know, like May 15th, 1948, um, is commemorated every year as, you know, the anniversary of the Nakba. But I would even argue, and I think this is like an, a very popular idea, is that the Nakba did not begin or end in 1948. The, '48 was rather, you know, a crystallization of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. Um, and what, what happened was is that many Zionist paramilitaries that, again, today merged and made the Israeli army, which calls itself the Israeli Defense Forces, even though they're literally always the aggressor, um, committed atrocities and massacres and, you know, they destroyed over 500 villages. They killed over 15,000 people. They forced, uh, a very large portion, a majority of the Palestinian population, uh, to flee their homes. And this was, you know, the near total destruction of Palestinian society that continues on to this day. We, we refer to it as the ongoing Nakba, and you see it in, in Sheikh Jarrah, you see it in Silwan, you see it in Hebron, in all of these people losing their homes. And in many cases, time and time again. You know, I grew up and my grandmother told me the stories about the Nakba. She told me stories about her neighbors who were running away in a panic, and they had mistaken a pillow for their offspring, and they just took it with them, and they realized later that they forgot their child and they came back for it. S- many, many people who were separated from their... My grandmother herself, she lost her husband for a few months, for nine months. He was imprisoned by the Israelis. Um... You know, she told me all of these stories, and she wasn't just reminiscing about them. She was, you know, letting me know that this is still happening and in, and I didn't need to grow up that old to see it happening in my own front yard, to see that expulsion happen in the same fashion she's, she's talked about it. But, you know, now they have replaced their artillery with the judiciary. Um, they have replaced, you know, the, the, the slashing of the pregnant women's bellies in the Deir Yassin massacre with, with laws that say, "You know, you're not, you're not legally allowed to be here. We're gonna kick you out of your home." And it's happening, and it has happened in, in, in broad daylight. Um, one piece of context for the listener who doesn't, who is not familiar with the Nakba is the Balfour Declaration, which was a promise, quote unquote promise made by the British to the Zionist movement in 1917, uh, committing to the establishment, I'm, I'm quoting, I think word for word, "Committing to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine," um, as if Palestine was, you know, the British to give away. Um, and there was this whole movement that called for colonization of Palestine, and there were different, there were different schools of thought in Zionism, you know. People like Zangwill said that this was a country without a people. Um, and Palestinians who have existed there, who have cultivated the lands, who have, you know, had diverse cultural and religious and political, uh, practices, they were completely erased. And other people like Jabotinsky, um, were a lot more explicit and a lot more honest and said that we need to fight the Palestinians because they love their land, much like the Red Indians loved their lands. And he had a paper called The Iron Wall: Colonization of Palestine Must Go Forward. Um, and all of these, all of these schools of thoughts were then shopping around for, you know, imperial support, uh, for their cause. Uh, they tried, they tried to get support from the Ottoman Empire, um, they tried to get support from Germany, and this is in the 1800s, and then they got support from the United Kingdom. Uh, a great book to recommend is the 100 Year, The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, um, that's, that, you know, traces the Zionist movement, oftentimes in the Zionists' own words.Um, and so today what we're seeing is a continuation. And, you know, people like Jabotinsky who are, like, profoundly and explicitly racist, who have called for genocide, who have, uh, called the Palestinians barbaric, who have said and done racist things. You know, Jabotinsky also was, like, the founder of the Irgun, one of the other militias that later merged to become the I, the Israeli Army, uh, which was responsible for Deir Yassin massacre, which was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel. Um, this is a person who's still celebrated in Israeli society. There are st- streets named after him and Netanyahu, just two weeks ago, if I'm not mistaken, honored him in a public celebration. Um, so this is, uh, Zionism. It's not even through my own words.

   17. LFLex Fridman25:14

       What do you say to people, uh, that describe Israel as having a historical right to the land? So, if you stretch not across decades, but across centuries into the past.

   18. MEMohammed El-Kurd25:27

       This kind of thing is a red herring. Um, it's a distraction because you don't think of any state as having rights. But there is this exceptionalism to the Israeli regime where it is, it has a right to defend itself and it has a right to the land, and it has a right to shoot 14-year-old boys because it thought they had a knife in their pockets. You know, a lot of the time people cite the Torah and cite religious books and, you know, sometimes Zionists will even say, like, read the Qu'ran and blah, blah, blah. You know, regardless of whatever was written in these books that were written thousands and thousands of years ago, the fact of the matter is no one has a right to go on slaughtering people, removing them from their homes, and then continuing to live in their homes, continuing to drink coffee on their balconies, um, decades and decades later, with no shame, with no introspection, uh, with no reflection. That's, no one has the right to do that. No one has the right to keep an entire population of people in a cage, uh, which is what's happening to people in the West Bank, who have no freedom of fo- uh, of movement, which is what's happening in Gaza, which is blockaded through water, air, and land, and is deemed uninhabitable by human rights organizations like the UN. Um, no one has a right to do that.

3. 26:47 – 40:18

   Hate

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd26:47

   2. LFLex Fridman26:48

      Do you have hate in your heart for Israel?

   3. MEMohammed El-Kurd26:51

      Why, why does that matter?

   4. LFLex Fridman26:55

      As one human being to another, you're describing quite brilliantly that, uh, the contents of people's hearts don't matter as much as the policies, and the contents of the courts and the laws and what actually is going on on the streets in terms of actions. But this is also a human story.

   5. MEMohammed El-Kurd27:18

      Yeah.

   6. LFLex Fridman27:18

      And, uh, I f- feel like at the core of the situation here is, um, hate, is, or maybe, uh, inability for some group of humans to see the humanity in another group of humans. And so it's important here to talk about the contents of hearts if we're to, uh, think about the long-term future of this.

   7. MEMohammed El-Kurd27:47

      Yeah, I mean, uh, I would be concerned actually if I didn't feel some kind of way in my heart. I would be concerned for my own dignity because the people who revolt, the people who are angry, the people who refuse to live under occupation know that they deserve better. People start revolutions not because of some kind of cultural phenomenon, not because of some kind of desire, but because they cannot breathe, because they cannot, they cannot breathe. They cannot live. They are living under excruciating circumstances. You know, Palestinians, you know, I don't know, I don't know how many Palestinians I've in- interacted with, but we are some of the most wonderful people. I mean, not all of us. I think some of us are, you know, insufferable.

   8. LFLex Fridman28:30

      (laughs)

   9. MEMohammed El-Kurd28:30

      But most of us, you know, most of us, you know, we are v- very hospitable. Um, we're very hospitable. Even like in the earl- early correspondence between the mayor of Jerusalem and, uh, Herzl, who wrote The Jewish State, you know, the generosity through which, uh, the Palestinian mayor was talking to Herzl, who was plotting to take over his land, is impressive and at the same time, you know, heart-wrenching. Um, but I, I personally think there is, there's a lot of dignity, um, in negating your oppressor. And I think it would be ridiculous today, today if we, like, look back at Jim Crow, for example, and we ask the person who's lived under, under Jim Crow, um, if they have hate in their heart for Jim Crow, as if that's not the absolutely logical and natural sentiment to feel.

   10. LFLex Fridman29:30

       In Rifqa, you wrote, "My father told me anger is a luxury we cannot afford. Be composed, calm, still. Laugh when they ask you. Smile when they talk. Answer them. Educate them." So, let me linger on this. Is there anger in there, in your heart? And does it cloud your judgment?

   11. MEMohammed El-Kurd29:50

       Does it cloud my judgment? I don't think so. I think we've, I think our campaign to defend our homes was particularly successful because it was honest to what was happening on the ground, because it refused to follow the strategy that we have used in our advocacy before, where we shrink ourselves and we turn the other cheek and we try to convince American lawmakers and American diplomats and journalists of our humanity. Um-... because we wait for the approval. You know, I was 14 years old when I first, uh, flew to Congress to speak to Congresspeople, and to speak to... At the European Parliament. And I, at the time I thought, "Wow, I must be such a brilliant 14-year-old, um, for them to have me here." And, you know, looking back, I didn't know what I was talking about. I had horrendously broken English, um, and I didn't have any, any talking points. And I came to realize that the, the reason why we send our kids with their PowerPoints to the Hill is because of the racism and the hatred that lingers inside the hearts of American politicians who refuse to sit on the table, um, with Palestinian adults as equals.

   12. LFLex Fridman31:07

       Mm-hmm.

   13. MEMohammed El-Kurd31:07

       Um, and so we res- we resort to sending our kids who will not threaten, um, and who will not, you know, trigger the biases they have against Muslims and Arab people, which Palestinians, even though we're not all Muslim, are racialized as Muslim. Um, and this is why we emphasize, uh, the deaths of women and children as though the deaths of our men does not count or does not matter. All of these things, I think the new generation of Palestinians is rebelling against. Um, I think words like, you know, I think it's loaded. Uh, it's loaded language, uh, anger and angry and hate and so on and so forth, because it mis- mischaracterizes people and it kind of de-legitimizes them a little bit. Um, you know, I think the real, the real anger is the bulldozer, um, bulldozing through my house. I think the real anger is the 18-year-old soldier who refuses to see me as a human being and strip searches me every chance they get. That's where the real anger lies. Um, and I'm quite honestly proud of, you know, our unabashedness, um, and our refusal to, like, bow our heads or bury our heads in the sand. I think that's the only way forward.

   14. LFLex Fridman32:25

       So, uh, a- anger or whatever it is, is a fuel for action?

   15. MEMohammed El-Kurd32:30

       Absolutely. And it has been throughout, throughout history. It has been.

   16. LFLex Fridman32:36

       How much of this tension is religious? I- in the practical aspects of the courts and the, the evictions and the demolitions, and you mentioned something, divine decree. How much underneath do you feel the division over religious texts and religious beliefs?

   17. MEMohammed El-Kurd33:00

       You know, it's convenient to market what's happening in Palestine as a religious conflict, because it allows, um, the listener the luxury of believing that this is an ancient, complicated thing that stretches thousands and thousands of years ago. But the fact of the matter is, the people who invented Zionism, who pioneered the Zionist movement, who called for immigration and settling into Palestine, a lot of them were atheists. A lot of them were not religious at all. Um, and the leaders of the Israeli state today, a lot of them are atheists, and a lot of them are secular and so on and so forth. It's easy to, it's easy to say that this is, you know, about Muslims and, and Jews fighting over the land and so on and so forth, but it's not. It's about the land itself and it's about people being forced out of their homes.

   18. LFLex Fridman34:00

       Benjamin Netanyahu said, "Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism."

   19. MEMohammed El-Kurd34:05

       Of course he said that.

   20. LFLex Fridman34:07

       (laughs) Do you disagree?

   21. MEMohammed El-Kurd34:09

       Absolutely, I, I disagree.

   22. LFLex Fridman34:11

       What's the gap between, um, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, those who are against the policies of, uh, Israel versus those who are against the Jewish people?

   23. MEMohammed El-Kurd34:25

       I watched the Netany- well, the first, like, 20 minutes and then I couldn't do it anymore, you know? But I watched, and then what was interesting about Netanyahu is that he said, you know, "Being, being anti-Zionist is like saying I'm okay with the Jews, I just don't believe the Jews have a right to form their own state." That's like saying, "I'm okay with Americans. I'm just not okay with Americans having their own state." And there is so much wrong with that statement in the sense that Jewish people are a religious group, and Americans, and Ame- to be, being an American is a nationality that consists of a diversity, um, of religions and, and so on and so forth, first of all. And the second, the second thing that's wrong with that statement is the whole idea that states somehow have a right to exist or, or whatever. It's, it's such a distraction. You have, you have people getting shot in the street. You have, like, millions and millions of besieged. You have people losing their homes. You have people who are held in Israeli prisons without trial, um, or charge indefinitely, but the conversations that are being held in the Hill, on the Hill, the conversations that are being held on CNN are, does Israel has a right to exist? Or, like, why would you negate Israel's having a right to exist? That's one. Now, of course, anti... And I just, I just find it's, it's ridiculous, again, like, that opposing a secular political movement that was explicitly colonialist, expansionist, exclusive, and racist, through the words of its own authors is somehow... And also, again, opposing such a, a political movement that is quite young and quite recent is somehow equivalling, equivalent to opposing, uh, a religion that is thousands and thousands of years old. But it is convenient, again, for Israeli politicians to frame us who oppose Zionism...... a form of racism and bigotry as anti-Semites. But n- I can guarantee you Benjamin Netanyahu has no problem with anti-Semitism. This is the same man who has no problem getting on stage and shaking hands with Pastor John Hagee, doing, uh, web- webinars with Pastor John Hagee. For those who don't know, Pastor John Hagee is the founder of Christians United for Israel, who has said on multiple occasions that Hitler was a hunter who, who was sent to hunt the Jews, uh, who said on multiple occasions that Jewish people are gonna perish in hell. You can... All of this is, like, verifiable by Google, and this is one of the Israeli regime's closest allies, right? Um, so the Israeli regime does not have a problem with anti-Semites when it serves its interest. It has a problem, I mean, like if you look at evangelo- evangelocal- Evangelicals or, like, Christian Zionism at large, anti-Semi- Semi- Semitism lies at the heart of Christian Zionism. It's the idea that we want to drive all of the Jews outside of the United States so that Armageddon could happen or whatever the fuck. This accusation has been a muzzle. It has been used as a muzzle to silence political opposition, um, and to stifle political advocacy for the liberation of Palestine. And a lot of the time, people get caught up in denouncing it and in, uh, justifying themselves and disclaimers and so on and so forth that you lose the point, that you're distracted from the focal point that is... there is a, an ongoing colonialism happening where people every single day are killed. I cannot keep count. This morning, a kid was shot in Palestine. W- we cannot... It's embarrassing even for me that I don't even know the numbers here. But this muzzle has been effective and I think the only righteous, uh, option is to op- is to oppose, um, these labels, these smear campaigns that target us. Um, I myself have been labeled, um, an anti-Semite by the ADL. And I mean, like, if you want to talk about the, uh, surface level, people, people will say like, "Wow, the ADL, Anti-Defamation League, you know, uh, condemned you." But people do not look at the history of the Anti-Defamation League, do not look at the present of the Anti-Defamation League. The fact that they are, um, the largest non-governmental police training, uh, department in the country where they train police in, uh, racial profiling and militarism, the fact that they have historically and continue to have engaged in surveillance, um, on, on bla- Black, uh, liberation movements, on anti-apartheid South African activists. Most recently in Charlottesville when white supremacists were marching, um, and chanting anti-Semitic shit, the ADL advised local police departments to spy on the Black organizers opposing the white supremacists. This is, again, all verifiable on the internet. Go to droptheadl.org.

   24. LFLex Fridman39:46

       So wait, the ADL does not, uh, alleviate the, uh, the hate in the world as it probably is designed to do?

   25. MEMohammed El-Kurd39:58

       No. It's, it's a guise. I don't think the Apartheid Defense League is really our most progressive...

   26. LFLex Fridman40:06

       That's what it stands for.

   27. MEMohammed El-Kurd40:07

       Yeah. In case you didn't know, now you know.

   28. LFLex Fridman40:10

       (laughs) Uh, if we can just linger on this idea of anti-Semitism,

4. 40:18 – 48:14

   Antisemitism

   1. LFLex Fridman40:18

      there's quite a bit of anti-Muslim sentiment in, in the United States, especially after 9/11. I've spoken to people about that. There's also, uh, anti-Jewish, anti-Semitism sentiment in the United States, but also throughout human history. What do you make about this kind of, um, fact of human nature that people seem to hate Jews throughout history, especially in the 20th century, uh, especially with Nazi Germany? What are your, in general, thoughts about the hatred of the Jewish people?

   2. MEMohammed El-Kurd40:57

      I mean, I think it's obviously wrong. I don't know. It's, it's this, it's this idea that I even have to clarify what I think about anti-Semitism that doesn't sit right, well with me. I think it's completely unfortunate and wrong that, um, Jewish people have been persecuted across history.

   3. LFLex Fridman41:13

      So one of the criticisms, I think I read the ADL making this criti- criticism of you, is, uh, maybe you've tweeted a comparison between, uh, Israel and Hitler-

   4. MEMohammed El-Kurd41:27

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman41:27

      ... and thereby diminishing the evil that is Hitler. Uh, what would you say to that?

   6. MEMohammed El-Kurd41:34

      Amy Sazer talks about this a lot, um, the exceptionalization of Hitler. Um, Hitler is a deplorable, I don't know, condemnable, you know, rotten, racist, horrible human being that belongs in the depths of hell. Obviously that's b- that goes without, without saying, but I am allowed, um, analogy, and I'm allowed to say whatever I want. Um, now I don't necessarily think that, that such an analogy is a good strategy to have. Um, but at the time, the context came in, um, uh, 2021 when Israeli soldiers and policemen and, and settlers were literally burning down our neighborhood. Um, again, verifiable by Google. Um-... and I tweeted it, and I also, I remember I tweeted something, "I hope every single one of them dies." And to this day, like this is some kind of, uh, you know, gotcha for me, as if I should have tweeted like, "Oh, here's the apple pie for every single soldier that's throwing teargas in my house." You know? There is, there is such an exceptionalism when it comes to Palestinians. We're not allowed analogy, we're not allowed ex- expression, we're not allowed armed resistance, we're not allowed peaceful resistance, we're not allowed to boycott because that's antisemitic. We're not allowed to do anything. Um, so what are we allowed? If I c- if I can't boycott, and that's against American law now to boycott, and if I can't pick up a rifle because that's against the law, and if I can't even tweet my frustration out, what am I allowed to do? And y- maybe Netanyahu can send me a manual he's happy with, you know?

   7. LFLex Fridman43:21

      So you've spoken about the taking of homes, uh, the IDF, uh, killing civilians, killing children. Uh, what about the violence going the other direction? Israelis being killed, um, in part by terrorist action?

   8. MEMohammed El-Kurd43:39

      Well, it depends on, depends on how you define terrorism, right? Across history, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Um, I don't necessarily subscribe to the definition of, uh, terrorism. If, uh, if a foreign army is in my neighborhood, which it's not supposed to be and, and they are shooting live ammunition at my house, I'm allowed to do what I'm allowed to do. And again, this is a- another yet another case of Palestinian exceptionalism because when it comes to Ukraine, people have no problem seeing Ukrainians defending their homes, seeing re- Ukrainians, uh, dying for their land, seeing Ukrainians, uh, making makeshift molotovs on Sky News.

   9. LFLex Fridman44:24

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MEMohammed El-Kurd44:25

       You know, Sky News was running, uh, molotov-making cocktails. The New York Times ran an article interviewing a Ukrainian psychologist who said that hatred, I'm paraphrasing, but he said, "Hatred for all, um, Russians is actually a healthy outlet." The New York Post ran a headline, um, champion- championing, uh, quote unquote, "Heroic Ukrainian Suicide Bomber." Um, these things we would not even dream of, uh, as, as Palestinians. We are, we are told to, to turn the other cheek time and time again. We're told that we, we should continue living these, in- inside these enclaves, um, without access to clean water, without a- access to, to the right to movement, without access to building permits, without our natural right to expansion, without, you know, without a guarantee that if we leave our house, we're not gonna be shot, and we're supposed to not do anything about it. That is absurd. Any, any, any person watching this understands this completely. People understand, you know, people understand that if somebody is attacking your home, you fight back. If somebody is attacking your family, you fight back. That is, that is not... But again, who gets to call who a terrorist? Who gets to, to define terrorism? This is all about who has power. Who gets to write these laws? Who gets to write these definitions? You know, why is it, um, why is it that American actions in Iraq is not called terrorism by American politicians? Why is... You know, violence is like this mutating, mutating concept, you know, and it takes on many shapes and forms, and if it's in, in a uniform, it's, if it speaks in English, if it has blonde hair, it's somehow acceptable, it's okay. We make movies about it, you know, we sell out tickets about it, we make games about it. But if it's without a uniform, it's, if it has a thick accent, if it has a beard, you know, that's, that's condemnable, that's wrong, that's terrorism, you know?

   11. LFLex Fridman46:28

       Do you think violence is an effective method of protest and resistance in general?

   12. MEMohammed El-Kurd46:33

       In general, I think it has been, but I think, you know, I believe in fighting on all fronts. I don't think violence alone is gonna, uh, bring about change. I think, uh, there's so much to do, uh, in culture, in p- in shifting-

   13. LFLex Fridman46:49

       Hmm.

   14. MEMohammed El-Kurd46:49

       ... public opinion, there's so much to do in media and fighting back against media erasure and census... and s- and censorship. There's so much to do diplomatically and politically. Um, um, and I, I, I think I would be naive if I don't take the power imbalance into consideration. Um, one side has makeshift weapons, um, and the other side is one of the most sophisticated armies in the world. So, I don't know, I don't know how effective violence could be in this case.

   15. LFLex Fridman47:19

       But if you look at the flip side, do you see the power of nonviolent resistance? So Martin Luther King, Gandhi, the power of turning the other cheek, you spoke negatively about turning the other cheek.

   16. MEMohammed El-Kurd47:32

       Yeah.

   17. LFLex Fridman47:33

       Do y- (laughs) so I sense that, uh, doing so has not been effective for the Palestinian people.

   18. MEMohammed El-Kurd47:40

       We've turned the other cheek, uh, generation after generation. There is this Zionist trope that, that is used against us. They say Palestinian rejectionism. They say that we reject everything, but if you look at the history, like our leadership, the Palestinian authority has given up inch after inch, has compromised on acre after acre, has signed deal after deal after deal after deal, and still there is no peace. So turning the other cheek is not, you know, the most effective method in my book.

5. 48:14 – 55:11

   Peace in the Middle East

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd48:14

   2. LFLex Fridman48:15

      What are the top obstacles to peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians?

   3. MEMohammed El-Kurd48:20

      (laughs) The, the occupation comes to mind. Uh, the shoot-to-kill policies come to mind. The siege comes to mind. The asymmetry of the judiciary comes to mind.The whole, the whole system needs to be dismantled. I will quote my dear friend, ?????? , who is, uh, who's a lawyer, who says, "You know the solution, justice comes about through recognition, return, and redistribution." There are millions of Palestinian refugees who are living in excruciating circumstances in refugee camps around the world. There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners, um, who are held in prisons for defending their homes, hundreds of which are held without charge or trial, by the way. There are many Palestinians who get killed in broad daylight with no recourse, journalists and medics and everyday people, not just the fire, uh, the freedom fighters. Um, we need, again, recognition, return, and redistribution. And peace comes about when, when, when they stop killing us, when they stop keeping us in a cage. I mean, that's, that's quite simple.

   4. LFLex Fridman49:33

      Can you describe recognition, redistribution, return, and redistribution?

   5. MEMohammed El-Kurd49:38

      Return, return, right of return, right, the right of return to all of the Palestinian refugees to their homes. You know, when I'm driving around Haifa and I see my grandmother's, uh, home that's now turned into a, a restaurant, you know, I could have, you know... I, I made a joke in one of my essays recently that had I had that, I could have had it all, you know, beachfront views, her smug attitude. You know, she grew up by the, she grew up by the sea after she relocated to Haifa when she, after, you know, Jerusalem. Um, we want that. We want that. And, um, you know, they're lucky I don't want Netanyahu's home, but I just want my home. I just want my home. We want to return... I also wouldn't, there needs, you know, and like, I believe in the 1960s, the Israeli government classified 90% of all of historic Palestine as state owned land. This is all land that was owned by Palestinian farmers who have cultivated their lands for decades. You know, since the establishment of the Israeli state, there has been, uh, Jewish only towns popping up every few years. And not one town, not one Palestinian town has emerged. We are even, those of us who have Israeli citi- uh, Israeli citizenship, who live outside of the wall are encircled and cannot have their natural community growth in their towns. That needs to change. That needs to change.

   6. LFLex Fridman51:01

      You mentioned the wall. Can you describe the wall?

   7. MEMohammed El-Kurd51:03

      The wall is a nine meter high cement wall, uh, that was finished in 2003. And if you're American, you've probably heard the whitewashed sanitized version of the name, which is the security wall, but it's, uh, it's the wall that literally has stolen thousands of dunams of land and has ripped apart families. My mother is a poet or was a poet at some point, and she had this, uh, poem she, she published in the paper called Love Behind the Wall. And it describes, you know, it's, it's a poem, but it describes a real life situation of, uh, two families that, who lived right across the street from each other, but were then separated by the wall, and they would fly balloons, um, you know, to see each other from each side of the wall or, or something like that. Um, this, although it sounds absurd, but it's the reality for many Palestinian families whose lives were torn apart, whose livelihoods also were torn apart, uh, by the wall. Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about the, the legal classifications for Palestinians.

   8. LFLex Fridman52:07

      Mm-hmm.

   9. MEMohammed El-Kurd52:08

      You know, um, Israel, much like any other colonial entity, uh, was, has divined, uh, has divided and fragmented the Palestinian people. Um, as I said earlier, I have a blue ID, which means I'm a resident. A friend of mine who lives in Haifa, for example, two hours away from me, 150 kilometers, not- nothing too bad in this country, has an Israeli citizenship. He can, you know, travel. He can enter the West Bank. He can, um, do a lot more. He's a citizen. He can vote if he wants to, not that we want to. Um, you know, I always tease my friends, "Oh, you can go to Italy without, without a visa because you have an Israeli citizenship." But, you know, they battle national erasure. They battle, um, crime in their own communities because of police negligence. They, they battle land confis- land confiscation and have battled land confiscations since the '50s whereas somebody with a green ID, um, somebody from the West Bank, uh, cannot leave the West Bank, cannot go anywhere without a special permit and lives behind these walls. And even within the West Bank, the West Bank, I think hilariously George Bush, uh, described it as Swiss cheese because of the holes every, every few, every 100 meters there's a new settlement or there's a new military checkpoint. So, even if you live behind the wall in the West Bank with your green ID, even though you're raw- you're robbed of your right to movement, you still even can't move from town to town within the West Bank without encountering settler violence or military violence while you're crossing the checkpoints and so on and so forth. And then the last category we have is people who live in Gaza. We are talking about over two million people who live in an open air prison, um, who have no right to movement, but also have no access to clean water, water and no access to, uh, supplies, no access to good food, no access to good healthcare and so on and so forth, who routinely get bombarded every few years. Um, Gaza is, like, two hours away from my house. It feels like an absolute far away planet because it's so isolated from the rest of the country. So, imagine all of these different legal statuses fragmenting, um, your everyday identity and creating different challenges and obstacles for you to deal with, for each group to deal with.... you know, it's amazing and impressive that despite these colonial barriers, the ce- the, the real cement ones, and the, you know, the barriers in the mind, despite all of these barriers, the Palestinian people have main- have maintained their national identity for 70 years. That is incredibly impressive and it also sends a message that as long as we have a boot on our neck, we are going to continue fighting, you know. Violence, cracking down on refugee camps, bombarding refugee camps is only gonna bring about more violence.

6. 55:11 – 1:05:20

   West Bank

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:11

   2. LFLex Fridman55:12

      So West Bank is a large region where a lot of Palestinian people live and then there are settlements sprinkled throughout, and those settlements have walls around them-

   3. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:21

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman55:21

      ... with security cameras.

   5. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:23

      And security guards.

   6. LFLex Fridman55:24

      Security guards.

   7. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:25

      There's almost a million settlers in the West Bank.

   8. LFLex Fridman55:28

      And so what are the different cities here, if you can mention? So-

   9. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:31

      In the West Bank?

   10. LFLex Fridman55:31

       In the West Bank. Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho-

   11. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:36

       Yeah.

   12. LFLex Fridman55:36

       ... Nablus.

   13. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:37

       Yeah (inaudible)

   14. LFLex Fridman55:38

       They have their own stories, they have their own histories.

   15. MEMohammed El-Kurd55:41

       Yeah. And it's fascinating also how interconnected they are, you know. Like, uh, a friend of mine, Muna Omari, recently did a, a, a documentary report on the day that Haifa fell during the Zionist invasion. The Haganah, um, led the Palestinian residents of Haifa down to the city center, and as absurd as it sounds, those of them who stood on the right side of the street were forced into cars that took them to multiple stops that would later become multiple refugee camps, the last of which was Jenin refugee camp. And, um, those who stood on the left side of the street were forced to board, uh, boats that took them to Lebanon to become refugee camps, uh, refugees there. Uh, last month, we saw the Israeli army invade Jenin in maybe the largest military invasion of Jenin since 2002.

   16. LFLex Fridman56:37

       Mm-hmm.

   17. MEMohammed El-Kurd56:38

       Um, and they killed many people. They attacked medics and journalists in broad daylight on camera. They have destroyed infrastructure and it was all very painful, but I think the most compelling, um, aspect of the raid on Jenin was what followed. Uh, Israeli soldiers at night held their megaphones and, uh, instructed hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes, and they told them, "If you don't leave, if you don't have your hand up in the air, you will get shot." And they were forced to leave their homes in the camp and walk to God knows where. I can guarantee you, because the Nakba is not that old, I can guarantee you that some people who were marching away from their camps, who were chased away from their homes in the camp in Jenin, were some of the same people who were chased away from the homes in Haifa in the first place. This perpetual exile that Palestinian people continue to live is, is unbearable. I mean, in my case, my grandmother was removed from her home in, in Haifa in '48, and then she moved from city to city. And then in 2009, she saw half of her home taken over by Israeli soldiers. My grandmother died in 2020, and two months later, we got the next expulsion order from the Israeli court. I'm quite ashamed to admit that I was relieved that my grandmother had died, because I did not want her, 103 years old at the time, to go through yet another Nakba. And this is the fact for so many Palestinians, regardless of where they are on the map.

   18. LFLex Fridman58:21

       If I may read the description of the situation in Jenin, and maybe you can comment. So this is on July 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Just reading Washington Post description. So this was an Israeli military incursion into Jenin. The raid included more than 1,000 soldiers backed by drone strikes, making it Israel's largest such operation in the West Bank since the end of the second Palestinian uprising in 2005. The Israeli military said it dismantled hundreds of explosive, cleared hundreds of weapons, destroyed underground hideouts, and confiscated hundreds of thousands of dollars in, quote, "Terror funds." Many of the 50 Palestinians who have attacked Israelis since the start of the year have come from Jenin camp and the surrounding area. Palestinian attacks inside Israel have killed 24 people this year. UN experts described the Jenin operation as "collective punishment," in quotes, uh, for the Palestinian people, amounting to egregious violations of international law. Many of the more than 150 Palestinians killed by Israelis this year have also come from these communities. Palestinian fighters say they need arms to defend themselves against the Israeli occupation and military incursions into the camp during which Palestinian civilians, including children, have been killed. So tho- those are the, I would say, different perspectives on the many people on both sides who have been killed, many more Palestinians. Can you comment more about the situation?

   19. MEMohammed El-Kurd59:57

       I mean, I think the, the Washington Post article is a little bit more, uh, you know, careful than other, than other media that came out recently about Jenin. I think, you know, I was listening to our Reuters radio show, and they failed to ever mention the occupation. I don't, I don't even think this paragraph mentioned that Jenin is under occupation by the, by the Israeli forces, by the Israeli regime. I think this is the most important piece of context that gets, um, obsecured in our media reporting, is these cities, these refugee camps, are under illegal occupation. The Israeli army has no business being there in the first place. Um...... that is the most, that is the departure point, that is the most important piece of context that will answer to you why these people, um, are arming themselves. Many of which, by the way, lived through the 2002 massacre, um, and bombardment of Jenin and grew up in the, um, violence. Um, the, the context that Palestine is under occupation, that these Palestinian cities are under occupation, that they have to deal with land seizures at all times, that they cannot leave their towns, um, without a special permit. All of this will give context to the violence. And you know, the thousands of Israeli soldiers that raided the camp that day, that traumatized an entire generation. They think they will quell that generation. They think that with such bloodshed and such barbaric violence, destroying infrastructure, attacking medics, killing people left and right, they think with this kind of terror that they can, you know, quell people. Tell people that, you know, they can guarantee that these kids are not gonna grow up and resist. But that's the opposite of what happens. One thing about Palestinian people, they will not compromise their dignity, you know? These people live in ............................ live in dire, excruciating circumstances, and it is so courageous, in my opinion, that they even think, um, to defend themselves against one of the most lethal, one of the most sophisticated armies in the world, against a nuclear state that can wipe them out in a matter of seconds. But it's not, at the end of the day, it's not even about courage. It's about survival. They don't do this because, you know, of machismo or because of, uh, heroic tendencies. It's because this is about survival.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:02:37

       So, the degree there's violence, it's about survival.

   21. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:02:40

       Absolutely. Absolutely. I think if there is no, if there was no occupation, there would be no violence. It's, it's quite obvious. And again, people understand this. I mean, like, we saw on Twitter in, in the recent month, uh, all of these Israeli, uh, propagandists who had tweeted pictures of, like, little girls with guns in Ukraine and, like, women making bombs in Ukraine and, and young men carrying their rifles in Ukraine and praising them as heroes, post very similar pictures of Palestinians, um, and calling them terrorists. It's glaring, the double standard. I don't even need to linger on it.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:03:17

       Well, the double standard is glaring, but I also think the glorification of violence is questionable. There's a balance to be struck, of course, but...

   23. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:03:29

       Yeah, I mean, I don't, wh- I don't, I don't think, uh, I don't think we should be glorifying violence, um, at all. But I don't think we should be normalizing violence either.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:03:39

       Yeah.

   25. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:03:40

       Uh, I think-

   26. LFLex Fridman1:03:41

       Good point.

   27. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:03:41

       ... that's, that's, that's what it is. You know, I'll tell you a story. I was interviewing a person whose, uh, brother was killed by the Israeli military during a Israeli raid on their village. And the person was so concerned about whether I was gonna report that her brother allegedly had a Molotov cocktail in his hand. And I found it absolutely insane, absolutely absurd that we can just glance over the fact that there is, again, a foreign military in tanks with rifles and snipers invading the village at 4:00 AM in the morning, shooting live ammunition at people's houses, throwing tear gas. That, we can just glance over. It's normal. We could just report on it. No problem. Nobody's gonna bat an eyebrow. But the fact that potentially somebody might have picked up a Molotov cocktail to throw it at this invading army is where we draw the line. It says a lot. It says a lot about whose violence is normalized, is accepted, is institutionalized, is glorified even, right? And you walk around Tel Aviv and you see all of the plaques plastered around and, around the streets of the country, uh, uh, of the city, um, celebrating the battles that they had won, the massacres that they had enacted, um, against the Palestinian people. But God forbid, God forbid Palestinians have any kind of similar sentiment.

7. 1:05:20 – 1:15:08

   Hamas

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:05:20

   2. LFLex Fridman1:05:20

      So, on July 4th, during this intense period, a Palestinian rammed a car into pedestrians at a bus stop in Tel Aviv, injuring eight people before being shot dead by a passerby. Also that night, Hamas fired rockets into Israel, and then Israel responded with strikes on what it said was an underground weapon site. So, just to give some context to the intensive violence happening here, uh, what do you think about Hamas firing rockets into Israel?

   3. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:05:52

      Well, it's... The framing makes it seem as though, like, unprovoked, Hamas is, like, firing rockets onto Israel, regardless of what you think of Hamas, obviously. But unprovoked. But that's not the case. The provocation is the fact that they are forced to live in a cage, that they have no access to clean water, they have no access to basic rights, no access to, uh, imports, no access to anything, um, that they can't leave. They're living in a densely populated enclave that was deemed uninhabitable by the UN, that was deemed an open-air prison. Um, so the rockets, in any case, are retaliation for the siege. Let's start there. But again, this is just to prove my point. Violence begets violence. Palestinian people are not...... violent people. We are not violent people at the core. And I think, you know, what serves this narrative is Islamophobia, is like xenophobia towards Arabs, which we don't have, like I don't have the luxury, you know, to like, to write laws about. Um, by the way, I'm- I'm quite, I'm quite, you know, frustrated by this. Uh, I am, I am preoccupied and the Palestinian people are preoccupied, um, with the material violence that we have to deal with on the day-to-day, the demolitions, the bombings, uh, the imprisonment. That's what we're distracted with and- and busy with that we can't even talk about the racism, um, the casual racism against us, anti-palestinian racism, be it in the media, on social media, in diplomatic circles and... But all of this, all of this racism that has gone unchecked, that has not been regulated, um, for decades, allows for these tropes to continue in which Palestinians are promoted as these like barbaric terrorists. And the only way we could remedy, uh, that situation is to, is by, um, marketing them as these like defenseless vic- victims. But the fact of the matter is- is- is not this simplistic. Palestinian people are human beings who should enjoy a full spectrum of humanity, which in- in- includes, uh, rage, which includes, uh, disdain, which includes happiness and joy and laughter, which includes celebration, which includes, um, all of these things. But we're not allowed this. But we are doing exactly what any people throughout history who have been oppressed, who have been colonized, who have been occupied, have done and continue to do, as we see in Ukraine, which is celebrated by mainstream media. I'm sorry to, uh, keep reiterating this point, but, you know, at- at this point, uh, I am quite, you know, exhausted by how exceptional Palestine and Palestinian resistance is when the world tells me time and time again that it doesn't have a problem with violence, it just has a problem with who does that violence.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:08:53

      Do you, in your mind, in- in the way you see this region, uh, draw a distinction between the people in power versus the regular people? So you mentioned the Palestinian people. Is there something you can comment on on Hamas and the PLO? Uh, do you see them as fundamentally different from the people? Uh, w- what does Hamas do well? Where do they fall short?

   5. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:09:19

      I think governments, uh, wherever globally are different from people. No government is a true reflection of its people. I think, uh, you know, this is even true in the case of like Arab countries that normalize with Israel. In many of the cases, they're, um, unelected governments. I think the Palestinian authority continues to fail. Um, I think they are subcontractors of the Israeli regime through their security coordination. And also, I'd like to use this as an opportunity to comment a little bit on the, on the analogy thing, not to like stray away from the question, but, you know, um, the Palestinian authority two years ago killed an opposition activist named Nizar Banat. It was a horrendous crime. And I was in Ramallah with the people protesting against the Palestinian authority. And, um, at some point, they had their batons, the Palestinian authority police, and they beat us with it. And many of the people in the crowd were liking the Palestinian authority to Zionism. I think people, this is what people do. When- uh, when they are confronted by a great evil, they liken it to some other great evil. And this is where the Hitler analogy came from. Um, again, I don't think it's like the best strategy moving forward, but I refuse, you know, to be, uh, you know, criminalized for a little sentence.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:10:52

      But sort of to linger on those in power, so one of the criticisms towards Hamas and PLO, towards the Israeli government, uh, at least the current coalition government, is, um, that there's a lot of incentive to sort of p- perpetuate violence to maintain power. There's a hunger for power and- and maintaining that power amongst the powerful. That's the way power works. So, is there, um, a worry you have about, um, those in power not having the best interests of its people? So, those in power, the PLO, Hamas, not, um, not being incentivized towards peace, towards justice.

   7. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:11:40

      You know, looking at the PA's action today, it tells you a great deal about what they're interested in and what they're not interested in. And maybe, yeah, the occupation is in their best interest. Um, and you can infer similar things looking at- at Hamas, but the two v-, the two, these two entities virtually have no power, even Hamas. Um, yani, if there is, you know, the- the context that Hamas is permitted through, by international law, uh, to use armed resistance, blah, blah, blah, does that mean Hamas is like equipped to govern Gaza? I don't think so. Does that mean that, uh, people around Palestine necessarily wonder, want to live under, uh, Hamas rule? In 2006, Hamas was democratically elected. I don't know if that's still the case today. Um, there is, there is a lot to be said, but neither of these entities have any real power, um, i- in- in perpetuating... They don't, the- the only, the only body that has access, that can flip the switch on all of this equation...... is the Israelis. You know, they're the ones who are keeping people in a cage. They're the ones who are, um, wrapping the West Bank with a, with a wall. Um, everything else to me is just secondary, regardless of what I think personally of any of those people. And, uh, personally for me, I, I, the world I envision, not just Palestine, the world I envision is a world that goes beyond states, um, that goes beyond this, uh, uh, framing of power. This, this hierarchy in which, uh, some people rule o- over other people. This whole idea of nation states, be it Israel or any other nation states, is, it's, it's, it's futile. It's not good. It's exclusive. I think that we can achieve a better world than that.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:13:38

      Well, the, you know, w- how do you do a better world? Uh, actually if you just linger on that, like what... (laughs) Politically speaking, geopolitically, you have to have representation of the people, you have to have laws and you have to have leaders and governing bodies that enact those laws and all those kinds of things. You probably need to have militaries to protect the people.

   9. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:14:05

      Can you not imagine a world without militaries?

   10. LFLex Fridman1:14:07

       I can imagine it, but we're not in that world.

   11. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:14:10

       Yeah. And I'm not saying, you know, I have all the answers or a PowerPoint in my pocket f- you know, with the instructions, but, uh, I'm saying the world I'd like to live in is one that transcends borders, is one that, you know, does not necessitate militaries, that doesn't necessitate all of these, um, prisons, all of these walls, all of these racist laws.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:14:35

       So you don't think violence is a fundamental part of human nature that emerges and, and like combined with a hunger for power?

   13. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:14:45

       I do think, I do think they're, both of these things are like truly intrinsic to, to human beings, but I also do think there is a way to move beyond them. I'm not saying I have the answers. Um, I'm tempted to say sway, but... (laughs)

   14. LFLex Fridman1:15:01

       (laughs) But you have a hope that there-

   15. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:03

       Uh-huh.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:15:03

       ... there doesn't have to be war-

   17. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:05

       Yeah, yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:15:05

       ... in the world.

   19. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:06

       Definitely. Definitely.

8. 1:15:08 – 1:30:58

   Two-state solution

   1. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:08

   2. LFLex Fridman1:15:08

      Well, if we look a little bit more short term, people speak about a one state solution and a two state solution. What is your hope here for, um, for this part of the world? Do you, do you see a possible future with a two state solution, where there's just Palestine and Israel? Do you, do you see a one state solution where there's, uh, a diversity of different peoples like in the United States and they have equal rights, uh, in the courts and everywhere else?

   3. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:39

      You know, I don't think there's a geography in which a two state solution is, is possible.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:15:43

      Yeah.

   5. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:15:43

      Um, as we said earlier, Swiss, Swiss cheese, there's literally, uh, settlements all over the West Bank. Um... And I don't think it's fair, um, if a two state solution is fair to all of the people whose homes, um, are still in Haifa, um, in Nazareth, in Jaffa, and so forth. And I don't think it's fair that, like, I'm gonna have to travel to another country to visit my cousin who's married in Nazareth, for example. Um, and beyond that, it's just not possible. I do believe that what, whatever you wanna call it, one state, two state, 48 states, 29 states, whatever you wanna call it, refugees need to return. Land needs to be given back. Wealth needs to be redistributed, um, and a recognition of the Nakba needs to happen. That is the only way we could move forward. Um, and, you know, regarding, uh, uh, whether this is like a possible situation for two people to live side by side, let's ask two questions. Uh, let's say you, you lived in a house with a person, your roommate, you just had a roommate who constantly beat the shit out of you. I wonder if you'd want to continue to live with them. That's one. And let's try another scenario. Let's say you live in a house with a roommate who you just absolutely hate, just absolutely oppose their existence as a people. Um, you don't even give him, you know, a key to your, to your apartment. Let's say now you're like equal partners in the apartment! Would you want to give h- would you want to live with him? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Time will tell, but, you know, I don't think, I don't think they want to live with us. Israelis are quite good, you know, especially Israeli diplomats, they're quite good at, um, using, uh, flowery language about peace and coexistence and so on and so forth, and they're good about m- they're good with making us seem insane or radical or like f- uh, full of hate and so on and so forth. But the, but the, but the policies speak from the, fro- for themselves. The, the actions on the ground speak for themselves. And I, I truly, I mean, uh, every time there's an uptick, many of them leave. And I wonder, I would like to see, I wonder what would happen in a one state solution.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:18:13

      Well, okay, so you've spoken eloquently about the injustice of the evictions, the demolitions, the settlements. Uh, but is there, uh... Can you comment about the difficulty of the security from an Israel perspective when there is a large number of people that want to destroy it? How does Israel exist peacefully? This one state solution?

   7. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:18:41

      I don't know, by not shooting, uh, you know, a journalist doing her job in the Jenin refugee camp?

   8. LFLex Fridman1:18:46

      But that doesn't-

   9. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:18:47

      By not killing a 14-year-old standing in his front yard. This whole talk about, you know, security and security fence and the whole, like, propaganda of the Israeli Defense Forces and this whole iron wall ideology in which somehow they are always defending themselves, even though they're... You know, N- Netanyahu and the Israeli government...... continue to talk about an existential threat-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:19:10

       Mm-hmm.

   11. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:19:10

       ... about Iran being an existential threat, even though the Israeli government is the only body that holds nuclear weapons in the region. They're the most sophisticated army in the region, and yet they continue hiding behind their fingers and talking about an existential threat and talking about how, like, they're insecure and, and so on and so forth. I came here on the bus. You know, I- I l- I live in a, I live in a, in a house where everybody in the world can easily Google it and get its address, and anybody can just walk into my house, and this is just... And I'm lucky and privileged as a Palestinian journalist. There are many Palestinian journalists who lose their lives. This is, like, that's real insecurity, but we don't even have time whine about it because there's real shit going on on the ground that we are preoccupied with and reporting on all the time that we don't even have the time to talk about how limited is our institutional backing, how limited is our, you know, uh, cyber, uh, security, how limited is our, you know, even healthcare. You know, like, all of these things we don't even have time to complain about. But there are real-life things that formulate an insecure population, um, that Israelis, that Israel certainly, um, does not suffer from.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:20:36

       There's a tension here. It's, it's true that the ideas of existential threats to a nation have been used to expand the military industrial complex and to, uh, to limit the rights of its people, so... In the United States after 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded under some justification of there being terror in the world, these big ideas. And i- in the same way, yes, Israel, with the existential threat of Iran, has used to expand its military might over the region and control over the region. But it also has some truth to it, in terms of the- the threat that Israel is facing, including from Iran. If Iran were to get a nuclear weapon, do you think there's a threat from that?

   13. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:21:24

       But who has the nukes?

   14. LFLex Fridman1:21:27

       Right now.

   15. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:21:28

       Yeah, but, like, we're talking about this, like, faraway monster that's like, we're- we're scared of, you know. It's like fearmongering. What do you mean? I mean, who has the nukes?

   16. LFLex Fridman1:21:37

       Some of it is fearmongering, but, uh, some of it is true.

   17. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:21:42

       I don't think it's true. I don't think it's true. I think Israelis are obsessed with genocide because they have enacted genocide against us. Even when we talk about, like, a future, a liberation of Palestine, when we're talking about, uh, anything, they constantly jump to the, to saying things like, "Oh, y- they wanna throw us into the sea. They wanna kill all Jews." What kind of hyperbolic bullshit is that? To say that if I am chanting and marching for my home not to be taken away from me by some kind of settler court, I am somehow demanding the- the murder of all Jews across the world. That is hyperbolic. And the fact that we coddle, coddle it is insane to me. So no, I don't think, as things stand right now, um, as the power balance stands right now, I don't think there's an extense- existential threat to Israel. And also let's redefine what "existential threat." Do we think Israel, um, the Israeli regime, the Zionist regime should continue to exist in its form, subjugating people, enacting the crime of apartheid according to a bajillion, uh, human rights organizations? Do we think that it should continue keeping people in a cage? If that's what people are fighting to save, then that says a lot about the people who are feeling this existential threat, not me.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:23:00

       Do your beliefs represent the Palestinian people? Meaning how many people are there that want Israel to be gone?

   19. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:23:10

       But what does it mean for Israel to be gone?

   20. LFLex Fridman1:23:12

       Uh, what it means is for people who think of Israel as an occupier-

   21. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:23:17

       Yeah.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:23:17

       ... who stole land, that needs to go away, that this should be all Palestine.

   23. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:23:22

       Yeah, but is that a bad thing for these borders to be, like, for- for the occupation to end, for these, uh, for the land to be given back? Is that a bad thing?

   24. LFLex Fridman1:23:30

       Well, there's different definitions of occupation. I... There's still, there's people in their homes now, right?

   25. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:23:36

       But is it their home? I'm not talking about, like, I'm not talking about some random, some random home. Um, but there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many Israelis who drink their coffee every morning from living rooms that are not theirs.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:23:56

       That are not theirs, that was, that were taken just a few decades ago?

   27. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:24:02

       Yeah. Where like the owners, the rightful owners of these homes are still lingering in refugee camps, are still dreaming of return.

   28. LFLex Fridman1:24:12

       There are homes on the land of Israel that you wouldn't classify as stolen?

   29. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:24:18

       I mean, there is... Like if it, if it wasn't stole, like if it was built but is the land stolen, right? Is the... But all of this, again, I, I try not to, like, fall into this because it just, like, it- it feels so abstract and far away and- and this is not how liberation is gonna look like whatsoever, and I'm not, like, I'm not fixated on ethnic cleansing. That is not, I'm not obsessed with ethnic cleansing. I'm obsessed with ending the ethnic cleansing campaign that has been, that has v- been visited upon me and my family and my community for seven-plus decades. That's what I'm obsessed with. Uh, all of this other stuff about what happens to the settlers and, like, uh, you know, we wanna kill all Jews and all of this, I think it's bullshit and I think it's ridiculous and I think, you know, uh, fixating on it is, like, distracting from the focal point. Um-... there needs to be an end to all of the injustices, to all of the atrocities. You know, a little boy from Jerusalem should be able to go jog around the city without fear in getting shot.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:25:23

       Mm-hmm.
9. 1:30:58 – 1:37:41

   Jerusalem

   1. LFLex Fridman1:30:58

      ... Let's just take it as a microcosm of Jerusalem. What's your vision for what Jerusalem looks like with a peaceful coexistence of people?

   2. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:31:08

      You know, as it looked like before, before the Israeli state emerged. I mean, we should be reading our history here. Um, when you read like European and white, um-... historians, they'll tell you like Palestine was barren. Many of them would say like, it was even without a people, there were nobody, nobody was there. Or like some of them will say, "We were uncivilized." But the fact of the matter is Palestine, Jerusalem particularly had a diversity of religion. Um, Druze, Jewish people. You know, my grandmother continues to talk about... Well, she continued until she died. She continued to talk about her Jewish, um, neighbors when she grew up in the old city, or like when she was born in the old city and then her Jewish neighbors, um, in Haifa. Um, we even had one Jewish member of our family, M Sammy actually, um, who just also recently passed away. There are like, Je- Jews were a part of Palestine and they spoke Hebrew, a different kind of Hebrew, but they spoke Hebrew and they were... People who really need to read the Hundred Years' War on Palestine. It's- it's really an excellent synopsis of the history. But this whole idea that this is like some kind of war between two religions is so misleading, because what's happening is a bunch of frankly European settlers with a certain political secular ideology came and relocated here, and turned it into a religious conflict between people who have lived harmoniously together for decades before that. And you know, the whole idea, be it like, you know, Christian Zionism or, you know, John Hagee or like the- the calls for Jews to leave the United States and relocate in- in Israel or like, you know, uh, re- recently, which we've heard about a long time ago. But recently an Israeli historian confirmed, uh, uh, the fact that, uh, Israeli organizations were bombing Baghdad, and bombing synagogues in Baghdad and Iraq to get Iraqi Jews to leave and come relocate in Israel. Right? All of this is manufactured. And again, none of this is a conspiracy theory. I know it sounds absurd and- and, you know, any time I like look at my l- my life from a bird's eye view, I think, "What a circus." But it's, but it's real and it's (laughs) it's verifiable. Yeah. I mean, call the fact-checkers.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:33:31

      You mentioned the land registry. Can you-

   4. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:33:33

      Yeah.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:33:33

      ... can you elaborate what's happening there?

   6. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:33:34

      Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So, um, our small victory in the Israeli courts, um, was that they would keep us in our homes until a land registry is completed.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:33:47

      Mm-hmm.

   8. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:33:47

      Basically, it means that they have to check who owned the land prior.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:33:54

      Mm-hmm.

   10. MEMohammed El-Kurd1:33:55

       Um, and then they could decide if our- if the land is ours or the land belongs to the Israeli, um, settler organizations that are headquartered in ni- in the United States and enjoy a tax-exempt status here. Um, and that sounds great on the surface, but then you look at Israeli law, you look at Israeli courts, you look at ownership and you see that, oh, Israelis refuse to, uh, authenticate or take into consideration any land ownership documents from the prior of the establishment of the state. So, all of us in Jerusalem who have their, um, taboo papers, their ownership papers from the Ottoman era, that's not legit in the eyes of the Israeli court because that existed before, like your ownership deeds existed long before Israel even existed. So, we're not gonna take this into consideration. So, not to be cynical here, but unfortunately the- the likely result of the land registry is that they're gonna say, "Oh, all of this land belongs to these Jewish organizations," because they're not gonna take any of our documents into consideration. But that means that there's going to be another campaign and there's going to be a long-winded fight, um, and we'll see what happens. But that's- that's the fear. And there's- there's a huge dreadful fear of a massive loss in property in Jerusalem following this land registry for the reasons I just told you. It's the mere fact that they just refuse to look at land ownership documents.

Episode duration: 2:14:42