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

“Court, the military, the courts, the government, they all work together, which is why it's so ironic to me that there are hundreds of thousands of people marching on the streets of Tel Aviv, trying to save the progressive beacon that is the Israeli Supreme Court, when you find its fingerprints all over the injustices perpetuated against Palestinians, be it legalizing and upholding the withholding of slain Palestinian bodies who were killed by the Israeli military to be used as bargaining chips by the Israeli militaries, be it making decisions.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Military, I mean, the police, if you look at how many times I should have brought the data with me, but if you look at how little times the Israeli military or police has investigated its own people or indicted its own people. I mean, just recently, the killer who has been hailed a hero by some of Israeli society who killed Yadul Halakh, a Palestinian man who is autistic, who lives inside the occupied old city where again Israeli military has no business being there or jurisdiction whatsoever. He was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier who was trigger happy because again they have this siege mentality where like any moving object is going to kill them and he was shot and killed and despite it being in broad daylight despite being well documented despite the victim being you know disabled despite all of this he was acquitted by the Israeli”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are literally Jewish settlers One of which from Long Island in my literal front yard? And this is the case in hundreds, if not thousands, of Palestinian homes. You know, no one is saying Jewish people shouldn't exist or they shouldn't have a state of their own. I mean, I think all religious-based states are like a bad idea. All nation states are a bad idea. But whatever. If that's what they want to do, that's what they want to do. But that doesn't mean that they are allowed or have a right to create and implement a system of Jewish supremacy at my expense. That's not a crazy thing to say. That is not a controversial thing to say. You can have your state. Just don't kill anyone. Thank you. Have a good day. You know, like that's not a crazy thought to have.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's like maybe number 99 on my priorities list. I'm concerned with the refugees. I'm concerned with the teenagers in the prisons. I am concerned with my house. I'm concerned with my family's house in Heifa. I am concerned. There's a lot for me to do before I can even tend to the needs of my occupier. That is the least of my concerns.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All of this other stuff about what happens to the settlers and like, you know, we want to kill all Jews and all of this. I think it's bullshit and I think it's ridiculous. And I think fixating on it is like distracting from the focal point. There needs to be an end to all of the injustices, to all of the atrocities. A little boy from Jerusalem should be able to go jog around the city without fearing getting shot. That's like the simplest thing we're asking for here. And we went to our land back. And those things do not mean actually at all the ethnic cleansing of another people.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean If it wasn't, but is the land stolen, but all of this, again, I try not to fall into this because it's just like it feels so abstract and far away. And this is not how liberation is going to look like whatsoever. And I'm not like, I'm not fixated on ethnic cleansing. I'm not obsessed with ethnic cleansing. I'm obsessed with ending the ethnic cleansing campaign that has been visited upon me and my family and my community for seven plus decades. That's what I'm obsessed with.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where the owners, the rightful owners of these homes are still lingering in a refugee camps. Are still dreaming of return.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is it their home? I'm not talking about some random home, 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but is that a bad thing for these borders to be like for the occupation to end, for the land to be given back? Is that a bad thing?”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Israeli regime, the Zionist regime should continue to exist in its forms, subjugating people, enacting the crime of apartheid according to a bajillion 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 a future, a liberation of Palestine, when we're talking about anything, they constantly jump to saying things like, oh, they want to throw us into the sea. They want to 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 murder of all Jews across the world. That is hyperbolic. And the fact that we coddle it is insane to me. As things stand right now, as the power balance stands right now, I don't think there's an existential threat to Israel. And also let's redefine what existential threat. Do we think Israel”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but like we're talking about this far away monster that's like we're scared of, you know, it's like fearmongering. What do you mean, Annie? Who has the nukes?”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I live 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 to whine about it because there's real shit going on on the ground that we're 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 cyber security, how limited is our, even healthcare, you know, like all of these things, we don't even have time to complain about, but the real life things that formulate an insecure population that Israelis certainly Does not suffer from.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know by not sharing a journalist doing her job in the Janine refugee camp. Why 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 ironwall ideology in which somehow they are always defending themselves even though Netanyahu and the Israeli government continue to talk about an existential threat about Iran being an existential threat. Even though the Israeli government The only body that holds nuclear weapons. The reason. 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 they're insecure and so on and so forth. I came here on the bus.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's say now you're like equal partners in the apartment. Would you want to give you? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Time will tell, but I don't think they want to live with us. Israelis are quite good, you know, especially Israeli diplomats. They're quite good at using flowery language about peace and coexistence and so on and so forth. And they're good about making us seem insane or radical or like full of hate and so on and so forth but the but the but the policies speak from for themselves the actions on the ground speak for themselves and i i truly i mean 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Live side by Let's ask two questions. Let's say 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 is a Absolutely Absolutely opposed their existence as a people. You don't even give him a key to your apartment.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I don't think there's a geography in which a two state solution is possible, as we said earlier, Swiss cheese is literally settlements all over the West Bank. Don't think it's fair. A two state solution is fair to all of the people whose homes. In Nazareth, in Yapha, and so far. And I don't think it's fair that I'm going to have to. Travel to another country to visit my cousin who's married in Nazareth, for example. And beyond that, it's just not possible. I do believe that whatever want to call it one state to state 48 states, 29 states, whatever you want to call it, refugees need to return. Land needs to be given back. Wealth needs to be redistributed. And a recognition of the Nakbah needs to happen. That is the only way we could move forward. And, you know, regarding whether this is like a possible situation for two people.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do think that both of these things are truly intrinsic to human beings, but I also do think there is a way to move beyond them. I'm not saying I have the answers. I'm tempted to say sway, but”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm not saying, you know, I have all the answers of a PowerPoint in my pocket with the instructions, but I'm saying the world I'd like to live in is one that transcends borders, is one That does not necessitate militaries, that doesn't necessitate all of these prisons, all of these walls, all of these Grace's laws”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Israelis. You know, they're the ones who are keeping people in a case. They're the ones who are wrapping the West Bank with a wall. Everything else to me is just secondary, regardless of what I think personally of any of those people. I'm not personally, for me, the world I envision, not just Palestine, the world I envision is a world that goes beyond states, that goes beyond this framing of power, this hierarchy in which some people rule over other people. This whole idea of nation states, be it Israel or any other nation states, it's futile, it's not good, it's exclusive. I think that we can achieve a better world than that.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. And you can infer similar things looking at Hamas. But these two entities virtually have no power, even Hamas, there is the context that Hamas is permitted by international law to use armed resistance, blah, blah, blah. Does that mean Hamas is equipped to govern Gaze? I don't think so. Does that mean that people around Palestine necessarily want to live under Hamas rule in 2006, Hamas was democratically elected. I don't know if that's still the case today. There's a lot to be said, but neither of these entities have any real power in perpetuating the only body that has access that can flip the switch and all of this equation.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 they are confronted by a great evil they liken it to some other great evil and this is where the Hitler analogy came from. Again, I don't think it's like the best strategy moving forward, but I refuse to be Know criminalized for a little sentence.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think governments wherever globally, honey, are different from people, no government is a true reflection of its people. I think this is even true in the case of Arab countries that normalize with Israel. In many of the cases they're unelected governments. I think the Palestinian Authority continues to fail. 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 The analogy thing not to stray away from the question, but you know, the Palestinian Authority.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 keep reiterating this point, but at this point 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Busy with that we can't even talk about the racism, the casual racism against the anti-Palestinian racism in the media, on social media and diplomatic circles. But all of this racism that has gone unchecked has not been regulated for decades allows for these tropes to continue in which Palestinians are promoted as these barbaric terrorists and the only way we could remedy that situation is by marketing them as these defenseless victims. But the fact of the matter is not this simplistic. Palestinian people are human beings who should enjoy a full spectrum of humanity, which includes rage, which includes disdain, which includes happiness and joy and laughter, which includes celebration, which includes all of these things, but we're not allowed this.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Arabs, which we don't have, like, I don't have the luxury, you know, to write laws about. By the way, I'm quite, you know, frustrated by this. I am preoccupied and the Palestinian people are preoccupied.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's the framing makes it seem as though Unprovoked Hamas is like firing rockets unto Israel regards to what I 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 imports, no access to anything 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. 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...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that potentially somebody might have picked up a Molosov 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 normal, is accepted, is institutionalized, is Glorify the event, right? And you walk around Tel Aviv and you see all of the plaques plastered around the streets of the country, of the city, celebrating the battles that they had won, the massacres that they had enacted against the Palestinian people. But God forbid, God forbid Palestinians have any kind of similar sentiment.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I don't think we should be glorifying violence at all, but I don't think we should be normalizing violence either. I think that's what it is. You know, I'll tell you a story. I was interviewing a person whose brother was killed by the Israeli military during an Israeli raid. their village and the person was so concerned about whether I was going to report that Her brother allegedly had a Molotov cocktail in his hand. 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 four 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 going to badge an eyebrow.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Absolutely. I think if there was no occupation, there would be no violence. It's quite obvious. And again, people understand this. I mean, like we saw on Twitter in the recent month all of these Israeli propagandists who had tweeted pictures of like little girls with guns in Ukraine and like women making bombs in Ukraine and young men carrying their rifles in Ukraine and praising them as heroes post very similar pictures of Palestinians and calling them terrorists. It's glaring, the double standard. I don't even need to linger on it.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 the 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 heroic tendencies. It's because this is about survival.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 quell people, tell people that they can guarantee that these kids are not going to 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These refugee camps are under illegal occupation. The Israeli army has no business being there in the first place. That is the departure point. That is the most important piece of context that will answer to you why these people are arming themselves, many of which, by the way, lived through the 2002 massacre and bombardment of Janine and grew up in that violence. The context that Palestine is under occupation that these Palestinian states are under occupation that they have to deal with land seizures at all times that they cannot leave their towns 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think the Washington Post article is a little bit more careful than other media that came out recently about Janine. I think I was listening to a Reuters radio show and they failed to ever mention the occupation. I don't even think this paragraph mentioned that Janine is under occupation by the Israeli forces, by the Israeli regime. I think this is the most important piece of context that gets obscured in our media reporting is”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Who are chased away from the homes in Haifa in the first place? This perpetual exile that Paulinian people continue to live is unbearable. I mean, in my case, my grandmother was removed from her home 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 my grandmother had died because I did not want her. 103 years old at the time to go through yet another Nakbe. And this is the fact for so many Palestinians regardless of where they are on the map.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they killed many people. They attacked medics and journalists and brought daylight on camera. They have destroyed infrastructure and it was all very painful. But I think the most compelling aspect of the raid on Janine was what followed. Israeli soldiers at night held their megaphones and instructed hundreds of Palestinians to flee their homes and they told him 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 Nakbah is not that old. I can guarantee you that some people who were marching away from their camps were chased away from their homes in the camp in Janine were some of the same people”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and it's fascinating also how interconnected they are, you know, like a friend of mine, Muna Umari, recently did a documentary report on the day that Haifa fell during Zionist invasion. The Haganah 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 Janine refugee camp. And those who stood on the left side of the street were forced to board boats that took them to Lebanon to become refugee camps there. Last month we saw the Israeli army invade Janine in maybe the largest military invasion of Janine since 2002.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Supplies nor access to good food, no access to good healthcare, and so on and so forth who routinely get bombarded every few years. Reset is like two hours away from my house. It feels like an absolute faraway planet because it's so isolated from the rest of the country. So imagine all of these different legal statuses fragmenting 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 real cement ones and the barriers in the mind, despite all of these barriers, the Palestinian people 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 described it as Swiss cheese because of the holes every few hundred 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 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 Gaze. We are talking about over 2 million people who live in an open air prison, who have no right to movement but also have no access to clean water and no access to”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As I said earlier, I have a blue ID, which means I'm a resident, a friend of mine who lives in Heifa, for example, two hours away from me, 150 kilometers, nothing too bad in this country, has an Israeli citizenship. He can travel, he can enter the West Bank, he can do a lot more. He's a citizen. He can vote if he wants to, not that we want to. I always tease my friends, oh, you can go to Italy without a visa because you have an Israeli citizenship. But, you know, they battle national erasure. They battle crime in their own communities because of police negligence. They battle land confiscation and have battled land confiscation in the 50s. Whereas somebody with a green ID, somebody from the West Bank cannot leave the West Bank.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of two families who lived right across the street from each other but were then separated by the wall and they would fly balloons to see each other from each side of the wall or something like that. 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 by the wall. Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about the legal classifications for Palestinians. You know, Israel, much like any other colonial entity has divided Fragmented the Palestinian people.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wall is a nine meter high cement wall that was finished in two thousand three. And if you're American, you've probably heard the whitewashed sanitized version of the name, which is the security wall. But it's the wall that literally has stolen. Thousands of dunhams of land and has ripped apart families. My mother is a poet or was a poet at some point and she had this poem she published in the paper. Love behind the wall, and it describes it's a poem, but it describes a real life situation.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Return right of return, 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 home that's now turned into a restaurant, you know, I could have, you know, I made a joke in one of my essays recently that had I had that, I could have had it all, you know, the beachfront views her smug attitude, you know, she grew up by the sea after she relocated to Haifa after, you know, Jerusalem. We want that. We want that. 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. Also, in like, I believe in the 1960s, the Israeli government classified 90% of all of historic Palestine as state-owned land. This is...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are millions of Palestinian refugees who are living in excruciating circumstances and refugee camps around the world. There are thousands of Palestinian prisoners 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 freedom fighters. We need, again, recognition, return, and redistribution. And peace comes about when... They stop killing us, when they stop keeping us in a cage. I mean, that's quite simple.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The occupation comes to mind, the studical policies come to mind, the siege comes to mind, the asymmetry of the judiciary comes to mind. The whole system needs to be dismantled. I will quote my dear friend Robert Barrier, who's a lawyer who says, you know, the solution, justice comes about through recognition, return, and redistribution.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We have turned the other cheek generation after generation. There's a Zionist trope 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“General, I think it has been busts. I think I believe in fighting on all fronts. I don't think violence alone is going to bring about change. I think There's so much to do in culture and shifting public opinion. There's so much to do in media and fighting back against media, erasure and censorship. There's so much to do diplomatically and politically. And I think I would be naive if... Don't take the power imbalance into consideration. One side has makeshift weapons and the other side is one of the most sophisticated armies in the world. So I don't know how effective violence could be in this case.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mutating concept. And it takes on many shapes and forms. And if it's in a uniform, if it speaks in English, if it has blonde hair, it's somehow acceptable. It's okay. Movies about it. You know, we sell out. Tickets about it. We make games about it. But if it's without a uniform, if it has a thick accent, if it has a beard, you know, that's condemnable. That's wrong. That's terrorism, you know?”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Without access to clean water, without access to the right to movement, without access to building permits, without our natural right to expansion, without a guarantee that if we leave our house, we're not going to be shot and we're supposed to not do anything about it. That is absurd, any person watching this understands this completely. People understand that if somebody is attacking your home, you fight back. If somebody is attacking your family, you fight back. That is not. But again, who gets to call who a terrorist? Who gets to define terrorism? This is all about who has power. Who gets to write these laws? Who gets to write these definitions? Why is Why is it that American actions and Idol is not cultivated by American politicians? Violence is like this.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source