YouSaid · the spoken record

Mohammed El-Kurd

lines on the record: 148
first: 2023-07-24
most recent: 2023-07-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Of freedom, and you'll come out of prison, and you're celebrated by your community. And the prison has not broken your spirit. So, all of these structures and system that the Zionist movement has put into place, be it the Shutikal policies or the prisons or demolishing our homes that were meant to kill our spirits. They don't. You demolish the home in Jerusalem, and the people say, don't worry, we'll build another. And you demolish it and we'll build another. That's what I admire most about the Palestinian people. It's this resilience. And people love to say resilience, but I think it's stubbornness. I think we're such a stubborn people. And I think that's great.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So in so much pain when they are cheering, they are not they are not celebrating, they are not cheering, they are letting the occupier know that you have not broken my spirit. I have not yet been defeated. And I think that is beautiful. It's the same thing with our prison culture. You know, Palestinians are fascinating in the sense that Palestinians go to prison and they study and they come out with degrees, they can find ways to participate in civil society, they can even smuggle sperm from prison to give a life outside of it because they understand in their philosophy of prisons they understand that these structures, these buildings were built to break your spirits. So what do you do? You allow it, you don't allow it to break your spirits. You resist it. You continue to hold on to life. You continue to hold on to your love of life. You continue to hold on to your love.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of the time people will broadcast images of Palestinian women cheering when their sons have been killed by the Israeli forces. And they will say, you know, these people glorify death and these people are eager to have sex with the 70 virgins in heaven and so on and so forth. But that's not the case. The whole idea of the occupation when they are killing our children, the whole idea is that they are trying to break our spirits. So these mothers whose hearts are broken, who are anguished, who are, you know, so...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think just the unabastedness of Palestinians where people who are told and were at some point were told by the large majority of the world that we should shrink ourselves, that we should be ashamed of who we are, that we are monsters, that we are terrorists, that we are blah, blah, blah. Palestinian people don't really give a shit. You know, they're continuing to live as they do. They continue to resist. They continue to ride. They continue to do all that they do. And I love that the most. And I love our ability to laugh more than anything else. One thing is that's misunderstood in American culture, about Palestinian culture or just Western culture in general is like martyrdom culture.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any point of colonialism in the African continent, people did not possess the moral clarity they possess today when they talk about these things. And all of these things were contested and controversial and in many, many, many cases legal. And today they are deplorable, condemnable, and people say never again and they don't remember them. So that's what gives me hope, is believing in the, you know. Believing in the inevitability of justice.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What gives me up about the future of Parison is taking a look at history and understanding that across history there has not been an injustice that lingered endlessly. Everything comes to an end. It's not necessarily, there's not necessarily like a perfect resolution for everything, but nothing continues in the form that it started in, in the occupation and colonialism in Palestine and Zionism. All of these things are not at all sustainable whatsoever. So taking a look at history, you know, a lot of what I'm saying today and what I have said in your podcast, many people would have been pearl clutching, hearing me say what I say. But I always try to remind myself that during Jim Crow, during slavery, during the Holocaust, During the occupation of Algeria, during”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm surrounded by good people and I'm I'm surrounded by people and I don't even think of it as a strength. I think of this as my obligation. It just feels like the thing I have to do. I don't need inspiration. I don't need strength. I don't need... It's just my obligation. It's just. There is a great travesty taking place in the world. And I and few others have been put in a place where we're able to talk about it to a few more people. And it's just my obligation. I have to do it.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A recent study came out and said that 52% of Palestinians have depression. I would argue that the number is much, much, much higher. I think it would be absurd for someone to live under the conditions we live under and not contemplate. Many things, many things not just suicide, but many, many, many things. And if people were to put themselves in our shoes for just one day, they would understand where all of the rage and all the resistance is coming from, it's not an easy life.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of things a lot of them are sinister. I have many friends, many journalist friends, and I've seen many journalists online speak about their experiences when talking about Palestine. The censorship that goes on into it, and I have many journalist friends, some at the New York Times, some Used to be at the Washington Post who tell me the kinds of battles they had to do. They had to go through with their editors to let them even utter the word Palestine. And not even in news pieces, like pieces about. Let's say a Palestinian artist or a Palestinian chef or whatever, you know, there's lots of happens behind the scene that is not reported on. Because when it comes to Palestine, the rules and the laws of journalism Bendable, you know, passive voice is king, emitting facts is acceptable. Anything”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not mentioning that a town is occupied when you're reporting about an occupied town, not mentioning that a settlement is illegal or a settler is illegally present in a Palestinian village when you're reporting on them, only quoting Israeli officials and only quoting Israeli politicians and police officers and framing your entire analysis with Israeli officials and only interviewing Palestinians when they have been brutalized and victimized physically yeah those are some of the issues there's there is plenty and then like saying things you know like is Israel will bomb a hospital in Gaza and the press will say like Hamas run hospital and this negative association with Hamas will remove any sympathy from the reader towards the victims of this hospital bombing”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the job of news reporters to report the news, but a lot of the time they use looted language, they use passive voice, they obfuscate facts, they And it's on the shoulders of us, the heavy carrying”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't say activism, I would say journalism, just making sure, you know, like disrupting the flow of the sentence to insert a statistic or insert A historical fact that should be implied is and should be a household name, but it's not, you know. Can't just say the nakaba. I have to say the nakaba, the 1948 total near total destruction of Palestinian society at the hands of Zionist militias that later formed the Israeli military that now terrorizes us today. And there is like three tier legal system, blah, blah, blah. I can't just stay in Akaba. I have to give all of these explanations. And that's heartbreaking. And people ought to do better. People are ought to do better. This is not. It's not what my literature should be limited to. It's not what anybody's literature should be limited to. It's the job of...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Stuck in this because the basic truths about our own existence are denied, that we don't even have the luxury of evolving our writing beyond it, or at least evolving my writing beyond it. And this is what I'm trying to do with this new book.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's the timeless, you know, it's not even timelessness, it's timeliness. I think what you write is always timely because the occupation is ongoing. But the struggle is moving beyond the news and tackling more nuances because in Arabic I can. In Arabic, I can philosophize. I can talk about violence and I can talk about my complicated relationship with violence or like my complicated, I can complicate and nuance and give things nuance. But in English, people still do not believe we are under occupation, even though it is an internationally recognized fact that is broadcasted 24-7 to the world's most watched screens. So we're stuck in a practice of providing facts and figure as an actually this happened and this person did this. And according to international law and blah, blah, blah.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Easily disrupted my writing by other news. Yanni, I'll picture stories to my editor about something, for example. And then as I'm writing it, 20 minutes in, some kid was shot and killed by the Israeli military. So you have to say something about it. And then 30 minutes later, as I'm writing it, there's news about a home demolition in Siluan. And there is this relentless onslaught of news that prevents us and the premises of the ability to analyze, to frame, to think, to conceptualize, to write beyond the current affairs. We're stuck in the relentlessness of the occupation that a lot of the time I worry that the things I'm writing are always in reaction to a crime that took place, to a bombing that took place and so on. And I think that's unfortunately true for so many Palestinian writers. So, you know”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a lot more neat than this conversation. It's like I am obsessed with sentences. It takes me a long time to like. Finish a piece of writing. I'm a perfectionist All the time, and I can't move on from one sentence until it's perfect. But I will say my other writer friends here in New York do not face.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A supermarket and blah blah blah as though you know the ceiling has been so lowered that we can't even afford joy anymore or you know little supermarket in the neighborhood.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And these little things, although like incredibly absurd and telling of a harrowing reality that our family and many in the neighborhood were living are also the coping mechanisms that we were using to deal with our everyday reality. And so much in the public framing of Palestinians, be it in media and novels and diplomacy and so on and so forth, is that of the powerless victim, is that of the person who only weeps, you know, like Israeli propagandists, for example, will show pictures on Twitter of a house in Razze. And they'll be like, look, this house has windows. They're talking about their BCs, but they have a nice, they have a balcony on their house. What are they talking about? Or like they'll show off a video of a supermarket in Ghazi and they'll be like, how come they're talking about a blockade when they have”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's like it's dignifying to find humor in these kinds of things. It makes you realize you are not so weak, you are not so powerless. Another thing is, you know, my same aunt who's like super obsessed with cleanliness would Insists on not going. To sleep before washing the dishes, and I would always seize her and say what you're just gonna like, you're gonna give them the house clean. You can leave it dirty so they have”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Homes, but my aunt was now passed away. My aunt refused to go home. She wanted to gather her teacups because she really cared about her teacups. So I was begging her to go inside and she refused she was gathering her teacups. So a soldier grabbed me and squeezed me between his baton and an electricity pole. And it was very excruciatingly painful and traumatizing for me as a child. But it was Also, like a funny memory in a way, despite the pain, despite the... The trauma that came with it, it was there's still something funny about it.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if that's my mom saying, but I don't know if it's probably a proverb that I first heard from my mom, but it's Sharul Baliyatimayute, the most evil of atrocity is what makes you laugh. And it can be, you know, it's open for interpretation. You should be aware of one school of thought would say you should be weary of the things that make you laugh, but another school of thought would say this is a commentary on like our natural reactions to tragedies in 2012, 2011, something like this, we had like a protest and after the protest, all of the women of the neighborhood were sitting down under the fig tree of our neighborhood, which they always do. A bunch of soldiers, maybe 40 soldiers started marching down the street and everybody dispersed and hidden their”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Communities that are threatened with the expulsion and other communities who are resisting in their own way, be it in beta, in Nablus, or South Urban Hills, in Masafariota, or in Silwan or in the Nakab, all of these communities that are dealing with different forms of expulsion. And, you know, the emphasis that I'm trying to achieve with this book is dignity. I want to write a book about my experiences that is super dignified, that kind of kicks its feet up on the table and says what it wants unabashedly because, you know, we are told not only are we going to be victimized, but we are going to be polite in our suffering. And I want to reject that completely and I want to lean into the humor of the past few years of my life because I think that's really what the world needs and what I need to be writing.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More is bizarre because you know, I'm so young, so it's not really my memoir, but it's rather the memoir a memoir of the neighborhood, which I grew up. The title, the tentative title is a million states and one, and it's a nod to how many different realities and universes exist in this tiny one country. And it's, you know, it's kind of... Kind of a documentation of the two waves of expulsion in 2009 and 2020 and 2021 and the kind of behind the scenes of the campaign that took place, the diplomatic and media campaign and grassroots campaign that took place to save our homes. And it's also an exploration of other”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even the carpet of the mosque can sell the church because it's his property and sell our orphans because their father is absent and do whatever you want. It's a sarcastic poem that was in reaction to these laws that translate it to the everyday Palestinian, to the farmers, to the landowners, what these bureaucratic, complicated laws meant to them, what they meant to their land, what it meant, what effect are these laws going to have on these people's lands. And that, I think, is the role of poetry that I try to achieve.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But anyway, it just felt like it's a place where I could talk and express large ideas in a simplistic way. And the best example I could give you is one of my favorite poets, Rasud Hassan, when the Israeli authorities decided to do the land law, which classified, I believe, 93% of historic Palestine is Israeli owned state-owned, forgive me. And then when they also did the absentee property law, which allows the Israeli government to take over homes that were depopulated from the Palestinian owners, he wrote a poem called God is a refugee. It's kind of a sarcastic, sardonic poem in which he goes, you know, God has become a refugee, sir. So confiscate.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Writer, I think if any literally had his car bombed, exploded because of his writings, and, you know, recently Darintatur, a poet, Palestinian poet with an Israeli citizenship, was imprisoned for a few months for publishing a poem on Facebook in which he said, resist my people, resist. So even that is not necessarily true.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So my mother was a poet, and she would, you know, her and my dad would play this game in the morning. She would read her poems to him and he would guess which lines would be read penciled by the Israeli military censor because she would submit her poems to the local newspaper Al-Qutz newspaper. And you know the military censor has to go over it. You know, she would get her poems back with a bunch of words erased, and they would laugh about it and blah, blah, blah. So Pochi was very much part of my upbringing. And, you know, as a Palestinian, when you're excluded from mainstream spaces, including media and journalism, poetry tends to be a place where you can say what you want to say without repercussions. And I say that. I realize that our greatest.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I signed the book when I had a lot less visibility. In the world, so when I didn't think thousands and thousands and thousands of people would be reading it, I decided to include many poems which I wrote when I was young because it's a long journey, this book. It starts in Jerusalem, it goes to Atlanta, it goes back to Jerusalem, and then it ends in New York. And Rifka is the name of my grandmother, and it's an Arabic name, a Hebrew name, and it means to accompany someone. I wanted to write about displacement in a way that was beyond what we read about in English. Poetry as a medium, I don't know if I have much faith in it anymore. Be honest, maybe like I'm turned off by it and I'll revisit it again in a few years. But at the time of writing this book, poetry as a medium, it Really A source of hope and inspiration for me.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes I don't have a preference whatsoever. I don't, you know, I saw Cornell West on CNN. I don't think it's going to go far with his campaign. Cornell West is running with the Green Party. And I don't think he's going to achieve much success, but I saw him on CNN berating Anderson Cooper, and I enjoyed that very much. Wouldn't mind seeing that on my screen.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would even argue that a reckoning is coming in the American public and more and more American people are concerned where their tax money is going, are concerned what their politicians are invested in. More and more American people are saying not on our dime are saying not today, not here. Also, there's many Palestinians in the diaspora here in the United States, in Europe who benefit and could benefit from political education in the English language because of the diaspora across history. The Palestinian diaspora has been effective in the 70s and the 80s. And I'm hoping ever since 2021 there has been a resurgence of the power and influence of the Palestinian diaspora.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a responsibility and I have a privilege even to have a voice, to have some kind of platform. And if I'm not defining myself, if I'm not talking and representing myself, then other people will define me and their definitions of the Palestinian people across the few past decades have not been kind or generous to the Palestinian people. That's one thing. The other thing is I believe in the United States as a front for change. I believe we have a lot more leverage here than we do back home. Again, I believe in someone said the other day, I can't remember their name, but someone said no to own unturned. I believe in fighting on all fronts. But here really, I can go protest in front of the Israeli embassy without getting shot. There's a lot of work to be done here. There's a lot of people waking up.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know I speak, I was born and raised in Jerusalem. I might speak perfect Arabic. I think my Arabic writing is much superior to my English writing, but I choose to... Write in English because I think there's not a disparity and there's a chasm between what is said in Arabic on the street in Palestine and what is said here about Palestinians both by anti-Palestinian racists and people who are pro-Palestine and advocates for Palestine. And I believe I and a few others from my generations or many others actually from my generation are working to fill that chasm and I also believe that literature, culture the public sphere, changing the public opinion, changing the narrative is important to affecting policy, to affecting change, affecting material change. I'm not going to go read a poem in front of a checkpoint in what's it catching flames. I'm not that delusional about the power of words. But I do think that”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there's a body through it, Can run for anything. It's like it's completely dysfunctional. And also, you know, I don't want to wear a suit all the time.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no. Obviously, they're going to be marketed as positive. And obviously, you know, they're going to. This flowery language surrounding them and the idiots in the room might like nod and smile by anybody with critical thinking skills can know that if people continue to be under occupation, you know, there's nothing positive there. And it's also there's, you know, let's linger a little bit on the mutual interest. The only way Morocco could normalize relations with the Israeli regime. Is so that the Israeli regime could recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara, which just happened actually last week and now Morocco and before that Morocco recognized Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. It's not like Morocco itself just has no interest in this kind of deal.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Represent the will of the people or the desires or the opinions of their peoples. And the proof to this is like places like Jordan and Egypt, even though they've normalized and had peace agreements with Israel for many, many, many, many years. Palestine and the Palestinian cause was still a talking point in the political campaigning of politicians, of Jordanian and Egyptian politicians, and continues to be for them to gain popularity because that's where the hearts of the people are. And then, you know, the Zionist regime is quite explanatory. The imperialist Zionist regime, I mean, what else do you call a regime that sought help from imperial powers to depopulate an entire country and build a new one on top of it?”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reason. They're about mutual strategic interests that all of these nations have together. And some people argue that, you know, Palestine is no longer an Arab cause because Arab countries are normalizing. But most of these governments, if not all, actually all these governments that have normalized, most of them are monarchies are not elected governments and they do not.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have been talked about as though they're like groundbreaking new phenomenon. But many Arab countries have normalized relations with the Israeli regime since the birth of the state. It's not a new thing. But yes, I think he was talking about Egypt and Jordan at the time. Today we can include United Arab Emirates. We can include Bahrain. We could include Morocco. And these, again, these Abrahamic accords, they are promoted and marketed and talked about as some kind of like religious reconciliation, which I think is the most disgusting thing ever because they're not about religious reconciliation. They're about arms deals and economic deals and they're about consolidating power in their”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so in today's terms, the local reactionary leadership is the Palestinian Authority. The regional regimes. We're talking about, you know, actually, you know, the normalization deals that have emerged in recent years, the Abrahamic Accords.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you would have thought his words were divorced from other forms of struggle, but I think he recognized the importance of culture and shaping culture and shaping public opinion, both in achieving, you know, A shift in global stance and also in achieving an awakening in the Palestinian generation as well. There's a very famous interview of his where he's talking to, I believe, a British journalist and the British journalist is asking him, why don't you have talks with the Israelis? And he means, what do you mean talks? You mean capitulation? You mean talking that you can't have a conversation between the sword and the neck? And I think that that really summarizes the kind of values you sit for. Now to talk about the three things.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, Listen of Fenny is a brilliant, brilliant writer. And he was prolific. He's authored so much books, even though he was assassinated in the 70s, but he was 37, if I'm not mistaken, 35 when he was assassinated. He was an inspiration to me in school. And I remember like even... Even my theatris had qualms about him because he was like a secular person. But I loved us thinking of any he's a beloved figure in the Palestinian community. And I hope to one day be able to achieve a fraction of what he's achieved in the terms of shaping a political consciousness for Palestinians and for people in the region”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your interest. I don't think Americans, I think Americans, a lot of Americans are concerned with healthcare. A lot of Americans are concerned with clean water and Flint. I don't think they're concerned with funding apartheid in another country. And I think it's a disturbing phenomenon that although public opinion in the United States is shifting, I would argue drastically about Palestine. People in Washington are yet to catch up. It was only, I think, nine Congress people who boycotted Herzog's speech in Congress yesterday. And he received standing ovation after standing ovation after standing ovation after standing ovation. And I wonder if the everyday American is concerned that many of their politicians are Israel first politicians are politicians who care more about maintaining a relationship with the Israeli.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, that we were able to do this without any media backing, without any institutional backing, without any training, without any budget, nothing.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, in our case, it was the international community, but in our case also, it wasn't just the international community. It was the hundreds of thousands of people in Palestine and abroad who were marching on the streets, getting beaten and brutalized in Jerusalem. And I don't know, sometimes arrested in places like Germany and so on and so forth, who forced themselves inside the media cycle. What was unique about Shal Jarah? We were able to penetrate. an industry that usually ignores us and usually refuses to use any of our framing, any of our quotations. And these people that marched, these people that spread the rhetoric spread the facts, wrote articles, these people that made videos online.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's like groups. So, like, in our case, it's like four houses every four houses. But again, it happens in a language we do not speak. And a lot of the time our strategy is buying time and building a global campaign. Like we know that there is no recourse in the Israeli courts. I mean, my grandmother used to say, and this is like a popular proverb, if your enemy is the judge to whom do you complain”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Always make a joke about being in an Israeli court is like playing a game of broken telephone because you know everybody's speaking in Hebrew and then like your lawyer says something to your dad and your dad says something to your mom and your mom whispers it in your ear and then you're like you say it to your cousin your cousin has like a completely different idea of the verdict than what the verdict is but that's really the reality”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ownership papers from the Ottoman era. That's not legit in the eyes of the Israeli courts because that existed before your ownership deeds existed long before Israel even existed. So we're not going to take this into consideration. So not to be cynical here, but unfortunately the likely result of the land registry is that they're going to say, oh, all of this land belongs to these Jewish organizations because they're not going to 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. And we'll see what happens. But that's the fear. And 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So our small victory in the Israeli courts was that they would keep us in our homes until a land registry is completed. Basically, it means that they have to check who owned the land prior. And then they could decide if the land is ours or the land belongs to the Israeli settler organizations that are headquartered in the United States and enjoy a tax-exempt status here. 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 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 taboo papers, their”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 the whole idea, be it like Christian Zionism or John Hagey or the calls for Jews to leave the United States and relocate in Israel or like recently, which we've heard about a long time ago, but recently an Israeli historian confirmed the fact that Israeli organizations were bombing Baghdad and bombing synagogues in Baghdad, in Iraq. 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 anytime I look at my”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, as it looked like before the Israeli state emerged, I mean, we should be reading our history here. When you read like European and white Historians, they'll tell you like Palestine was bare and many of them would say it was even without a people. There were 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. Druze, Jewish people, you know, my grandmother continues to talk about, well, she continued until she died. She continued to talk about her Jewish neighbors when she grew up in the old city or like when she was born in the old city and then her Jewish neighbors in Haifa. We even had one Jewish member of our family, Ms Sami actually, who just also recently passed away. Jews were a part of Palestine and they spoke Hebrew, a different kind of Hebrew, but they spoke Hebrew and they were people really need to read the Hundred Years War on Palestine. It's really an excellent synopsis of the history. But this whole”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The lack of diversity on the Israeli political spectrum that makes the vision for a future so limited, because those on what seems to be like the far left are defending an extremely conservative institution that is a Supreme Court that they regard as progressive when in fact it is the opposite of such. So what do we do? How can we talk? How can we have peace with people who Who are chanting to save, you know, the very body that is displacing us. You know, it's ridiculous.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source