Mohammed El-Kurd: A world-renowned Palestinian poet, writer, and journalist from Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem who became a leading voice for the Palestinian cause after his family's home was partially seized by settlers. Author of the poetry collection Rifqa.
What this episode covers
El-Kurd recounts his childhood in Sheikh Jarrah, where his family faced decades of expulsion orders culminating in settlers taking over half their home in 2009. He frames the Israeli-Palestinian situation not as a religious conflict or real-estate dispute but as an ongoing settler-colonial project enforced through an asymmetric judiciary. The conversation ranges across the 1948 Nakba, the West Bank wall, Gaza's blockade, the Janin raid, media bias, U.S. military aid, and the abandonment of Palestinians by Arab normalization deals. El-Kurd defends Palestinian resistance against charges of exceptionalism, critiques the weaponization of antisemitism accusations, and reflects on poetry, humor, and dignity as survival tools. He closes on hope grounded in history's pattern that no injustice lasts forever.
Recommended on this episode
The Hundred Years' War on Palestine
Rashid Khalidi
“a great book to recommend is the Hundred Years War on Palestine um that's the you know traces the Zionist movement oftentimes in Zionist own words”— Mohammed El-Kurd
The guest's own work
Rifqa
Mohammed El-Kurd
“I signed the book when I had a lot a lot less visibility um in the world... this book um it's it starts in Jerusalem it goes to Atlanta”— Mohammed El-Kurd
A Million States and One
Mohammed El-Kurd
“the tentative title is a million States and one and it's so not to how many different realities and universes exist in this tiny one country”— Mohammed El-Kurd
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
The Jewish State
Theodor Herzl
“in the early early correspondence between the mayor of Jerusalem and herzl who wrote the Jewish State you know the generosity through which uh the Palestinian mayor was talking to herzl”— Mohammed El-Kurd
Big reveals from this episode
- Came home from school by end of 2009 to find his furniture in the street and American-accented settlers living in his house.
- Says Zionism's founders were explicitly racist, citing Jabotinsky comparing Palestinians to 'red Indians' loving their land.
- Flatly rejects Netanyahu's claim that anti-Zionism equals antisemitism.
- Defends a 2021 tweet wishing death on soldiers burning his neighborhood, refusing to apologize for it.
- Admits he was relieved his 102-year-old grandmother died before facing yet another expulsion order.
- Envisions a world beyond nation-states, calling all religious-based and nation-states 'a bad idea.'
- Calls the Israeli Supreme Court that Tel Aviv protesters rally to save complicit in injustices against Palestinians.
- Says he has no interest in running for political leadership, joking he doesn't want to wear a suit.
Worth remembering
- A spokesperson confirmed 95% of Palestinian building-permit applications in Jerusalem and the West Bank are rejected.
- Zionist militias destroyed over 500 villages and killed over 15,000 people during the Nakba, per El-Kurd.
- The separation wall is a nine-meter-high cement barrier completed in 2003.
- John Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel, has said Hitler was a 'hunter' sent to hunt the Jews.
- The ADL is described as the largest non-governmental police-training body in the U.S.
- Israel receives $3.8 billion in U.S. military aid annually and over $150 billion total since WWII.
- His mother, a poet, would guess which of her lines the Israeli military censor would red-pencil from the newspaper.
- A study found 52% of Palestinians have depression; El-Kurd argues the real figure is much higher.
- Claims an Israeli historian confirmed organizations bombed Baghdad synagogues to push Iraqi Jews to emigrate to Israel.