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

“And again, this is another yet another case of Palestinian exceptionalism because when it comes to Ukraine, people have no problem seeing Ukrainians defending their homes, seeing Ukrainians dying for the land, seeing Ukrainians making makeshift Molotovs on Sky News. You know, Sky News was running 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 Russians is actually a healthy outlet. The New York Post ran a headline championing quote-unquote heroic Ukrainian suicide bomber. These things we would not even dream of as Palestinians. We are told to turn the other cheek time and time again. We're told that we should continue living inside these enclaves.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on how you define terrorism, right? Across history, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. Don't necessarily subscribe to the definition of terrorism if a foreign army is in my neighborhood, which it's not supposed to be, and they're shooting live ammunition at my house. I'm allowed to do what I'm allowed to do.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is such an exceptionalism when it comes to Palestinians. We're not allowed analogy, we're not allowed expression, we're not allowed armed resistance, we're not allowed peaceful resistance, we're not allowed to boycott because that's anti-Semitic, we're not allowed to do anything. So what are we allowed? 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? Maybe Netanyahu can send me a manual while he's happy with”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Amy Cesare talks about this a lot of Hitler. Hitler is a deplorable I don't know condemnable, you know, raw and racist, horrible human being that belongs in the depths of hell. Obviously, that's without saying I am allowed analogy and I'm allowed to say whatever I want. Now I don't necessarily think that such an analogy is a good strategy to have. But at the time the context came in 2021 when Israeli soldiers and policemen and settlers were literally burning down our neighborhood again verifiable by Google. And I tweeted it. And also, I remember I tweeted something I hope every single one of them dies. And to this day, this is some kind of, you know, got shot for me as if I should have tweeted like, oh, here's the apple pie for every single soldier that's throwing tear gas in my house.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it's obviously wrong. I don't know. It's this idea that 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 Jewish people have been persecuted across history.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The largest non governmental police training department in the country where they train police in racial profiling and militarism, the fact that they have historically and continue to have engaged in surveillance on black liberation movements, on anti-apartheid South African activists, most recently in Charlottesville when white supremacists were marching 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 drop the adol.org.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 option is to oppose these labels, these smear campaigns that target us. I myself have been labeled an anti-Semite by the ADL. And I mean like if you want to talk about that at surface level, people will say like wow, the ADL anti-defamation league 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 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 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 an ongoing colonialism happening where people every single day are killed. I cannot count this morning a kid was shot in Palestine.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the Israeli regime does not have a problem with anti-Semites when it serves its interests. It has a problem. I mean, like if you look at evangelicals or like Christian Zionism at large, anti-Semitism lies at the heart.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To frame us who oppose Zionism, a form of racism and bigotry, as antisemites. But I can guarantee you, Benjamin Netanyahu has no problem with antisemitism. This is the same man who has no problem getting on stage and shaking hands with Pastor John Hagi doing webinars with Pastor John Hague. For those who don't know, Pastor John Hague is the founder of Christians United for Israel who has said on multiple occasions that Hitler was a hunter, who was sent to hunt the Jews, who said on multiple occasions that Jewish people are going to perish in hell. All of this is like verifiable by Google. And this is one of the Israeli...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does Israel have a right to exist, or like, why would you negate Israel's having a right to exist? That's one. Now, of course, I just find it's ridiculous. Again, 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 political movement that is quite young and quite recent is somehow equivalent to opposing a religion that is thousands and thousands of years old, but it is convenient, again, for Israeli politicians.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So on and so forth. First of all, and the second thing that's wrong with that statement is the whole idea that states somehow have a right to exist or whatever. It's such a distraction. You have people getting shot in the street. You have like millions and millions of people besieged. You have people losing their homes. You have people who are held in Israeli prisons without trial or charge indefinitely, but the conversations that are being held on the hill, the conversations that are being held on CNN,”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's 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 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 being an American is a nationality that consists of a diversity of religions”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's convenient to market what's happening in Palestine as a religious conflict because it allows 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 People who invented Zionism, who pioneered the Zionist movement, who called for emigration. settling into Palestine, a lot of them were atheists, a lot of them were not religious at all. And the leaders of the Israeli state today, a lot of them are atheists A lot of them are secular, and so on, and so forth. It's easy to say that this is. You know, about Muslims and NGOs 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Loaded language, anger and angry and hate and so on and so forth because it mischaracterizes people and it kind of delegitimizes them a little bit. You know, I think the real anger is the bulldozer 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 searches me every chance they get. That's where the real anger lies. And I'm quite honestly proud of Our unabassedness and our refusal to bow our heads or bury our heads in the sand. I think that's the only way forward.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Horrendously broken English and it didn't have any talking points and I came to realize that 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 with Palestinian adults as equals. And so we resort to sending our kids who will not threaten and who will not trigger the biases they have against Muslims and Arab people, which Palestinians, even though we're not all Muslim, are racialized as Muslim. And this is why we emphasize the deaths of women and children as though the deaths of our men does not counter, does not matter. All of these things, I think the new generation of Palestinians is rebelling against. I think words like, you know, I think it's loaded.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Does it cloud my judgment? I don't think so. I think our campaign to defend our homes 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. We shrink ourselves and we turn the other cheek and we try to convince American lawmakers and American diplomats and journalists of our humanity. Because we wait for their approval, you know. I was 14 years old when I first flew to Congress to speak to Congress people and to speak at the European Parliament. And at the time, I thought, wow, I must be such a brilliant 14-year-old for them to have me here. And, you know, looking back, I didn't know what I was talking about.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of us are very hospitable, even like in the early correspondence between the mayor of Jerusalem and Herzl, who wrote the Jewish state, you know, the generosity through which the Palestinian mayor was talking to Herzl, who was plotting to take over his land, is impressive and at the same time heart-wrenching. But I personally There's a lot of dignity. In negating your oppressor. And I think it would be ridiculous today if we look back at Jim Crow, for example, and we ask the person who's lived under Jim Crow if they have hate in their heart for Jim Crow as if that's not the absolutely logical and natural sentiment to feel.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, 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 breathe, they cannot live. They are living under excruciating circumstances. Palestinians, you know, I don't know, I don't know how many Palestinians have 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. Most of us”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, read the Quran 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 decades and decades later with no shame, with no introspection, with no reflection. No one has the right to do that. No one has the right to keep an entire population of people in a cage, which is what's happening to people in the West Bank who have no freedom of movement, which is what's happening in Gaza, which is blockaded to water, air, and land.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This kind of thing is a red herring. 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 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Israeli army, which was responsible for the Daria scene massacre, which was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel, this is a person who still celebrated in Israeli society. There are streets named after him, and Netanyahu just two weeks ago, if I'm not mistaken, honored him in a public celebration. So this is Zionism. It's not even through my own words.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And all of these schools of thought were then shopping around for Know imperialist support for their cause. They tried to get support from the Ottoman Empire. They tried to get support from Germany. And this is in the 1800s. And then they got support from the United Kingdom. A great book to recommend is the 100 Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khaledi that traces the Zionist movement, oftentimes in the Zionist own words. 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 called the Palestinians barbaric, who have said and done racist things. You know, Jobtinsky also was like the founder of the Ergun, one of the other militias that later merged to be.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Committing to the establishment, I'm quoting, I think, word for word, committing to the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, as if Palestine was the British to give away. And there was this whole movement that called for colonization of Palestine. And there were different schools of thought in Zionism. People like Zangu said that this was a country without a people. And Palestinians who have existed there, who have cultivated the lands, who have, you know, Had diverse cultural and religious and political practices, they were completely erased. And other people like Zabotsky. We're 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 love their lands. And he had a paper called The Iron Wall Colonization of Palestine Must Go Forward.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, now they have replaced their artillery with the judiciary. They have replaced the slashing. Women's bellies in the Daryacine massacre with laws that say, you know, you're not legally allowed to be here. We're going to kick you out of your home. And it's happening and it has happened in broad daylight. One piece of context for the listener who is not familiar with the Nak The welfare declaration, which was a promise promise made by the British to the Zionist movement in nineteen seventeen.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In many cases, time and time again, you know, I grew up, and my grandmother told me the stories about the Nakabeh. 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 many, many people who were separated from their grandmother herself. She lost her husband for a few months, for nine months. He was imprisoned by the Israelis. She told me all of these stories, and she wasn't just reminiscing about them. Letting me know that this is still happening, 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 talked about it”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They destroyed over 500 villages, they killed over 15,000 people, they forced a very large portion, a majority of the Palestinian population, to flee their homes. And this was the near total destruction of Palestinian society that continues on to this day. We refer to it as the ongoing Nakbah, and you see it in Shiljara. You see it in Silwan, you see it in Hebron, in all of these people losing their homes”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, like May 15, 1948 is commemorated every year as, you know, the anniversary of the Nakabet, but I would even argue anything this is like a very popular idea is that the Nakabad did not begin or end in 1948. The 48 was rather a crystallization. of the Zionist Enterprise in Palestine. And what happened was that many Zionists paramilitary is that again today merged and made the Israeli army which calls itself the Israeli defense forces even though they're literally always the aggressor Committed atrocities and massacres and”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Israeli prime minister said that he has killed many Arabs and that he has no qualms with it. Netanyahu has said a slew of racist, hateful things. Jobotinsky, the pioneer of Zionism, Herzl, one of the pioneers of Zionism, all have said horrible, hateful. We also cannot wait to cite a confession from a former Israeli soldier whose guilty consciousness is keeping them up at night. And we use all of these confessions or slip-ups as evidence to prove that this is a racist country that is enacting 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 in how the country, how this regime has behaved for the past 75 years, I don't need confessions from the likes of Netanyahu to understand that his heart is full of hate.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I'm not really 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 so you can have somebody from Long Island, New York who's fleeing fraud charges. This is the case in my house, live in their front yard. That's hateful. So I don't need confirmation. This is something we see a lot actually. 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 opportunity to cite an Israeli being hateful. You know, the recent, the last...”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, history has shown us time and time again. That legality does not necessarily mean morality, and the law is a bloodbath in many ways. It has been used Abuse to facilitate the most horrendous atrocities. And in the case of the Palestinians, the law has served to facilitate and bureaucratize our ethnic cleansing.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we have lawyers, but no, there's no. In fact, there is for Palestinians with Israeli citizenships, for example, there's over 60 laws that specifically and explicitly discriminates against them.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 her audits. Also, these reports will not tell you that the judge who rules on whether these people continue to live under homes or not is himself a settler in the West Bank. I'm not even talking about 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 a judiciary that we deal with, which is hilarious considering how it's being reported on in American media recently as some kind of beacon of progress and democracy that the new government is trying to undermine.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Screamed Islamophobic slurs. This is literally a man in the government making these decisions, right? And this is similar to, you know, Massafriotta in the South Hebron Hills. For those who don't know, it's a place in the occupied West Bank where Bedouin and Cave Dweller Palestinians have lived for generations. They have cultivated the land. And recently they were expelled from their homes. Over a thousand people were expelled from their remote small villages. Again, if you're reading American media, they would say it would say Palestinians living in firing zones were removed because they were 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building permit applications. In fact, recently a spokesperson for the Israeli military confirmed that 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 even more absurd, the guy, the councilman who is responsible for rejecting and accepting building permit applications, his name is Yonatan Youssef and he's an activist in the settler movement and he's a Jerusalem council member. And he last week, following the expulsion of a subloban family in the old city of Jerusalem, he posted to his official Facebook account Nakbanau, demanding a second, promising another Nakba. He has done so on 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would argue a lot of the time it's dubious. 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 just 10 minutes across from my neighborhood. So there's another neighborhood called Silhouan. And the people in Silhouan are also threatened with expulsion, but not through evictions, but through home demolitions. And if you look at American media or Israeli state media, you would read the headlines, you know, Palestinians living in homes built illegally are going to face their homes as they're going to 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”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 blue ID card, even though my grandmother and my grandfather were born in Jerusalem. Their grandparents were born in Jerusalem. Even though you'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. This is an important piece, but all of this gets convoluted and lost in translation. And I think”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. When we're talking about Jerusalem, we're talking about generations and generations and generations of people who have lived there.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, the biggest, the most important context here is that oftentimes Americans think that Israel and Palestine are some kind of two neighboring countries that live next to each other and they are at war. But the fact of the matter is. Palestinian cities exist 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 in the late 40s. 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of colonialism that was taking place here and due to immense international and diplomatic pressure from all over the world, even the United States, the Israeli Supreme Court was forced to cancel all of the eviction orders in Zarjar until further notice. This I consider was a small victory because obviously 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. But nonetheless, it was something that we haven't seen before. And the fact that the Supreme Court cancelled 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. 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 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 of you, albeit in Alabama, be it in New York, be it in Egypt, was able to understand the asymmetry of the judicial system and the agenda.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So they took over half of our home and we continue 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 these journalists who would subjugate me to their racism and biases and so on and so forth. And I had to prove my humanity time and time again and I had to do all of this all with broken English. And we were lucky even if we got a quote in the article written about us by the time or so on and so forth. Move forward to 2020. I was in New York City studying a master's degree, getting a master's degree. And my father calls me and he tells me, you know, we haven't yet another expulsion order. And we decided to launch a campaign. It was quite ambitious at the time.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. And their justification for this, their reasoning for this is divine decree.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Between the 70s and 2009, there had been many dozens of expulsions orders against us and against many other families in the neighborhood, 28 other families, 28 families in total, actually. And in 2008, 2009, the first wave of expulsions finally happened. It actually began with Amkam al-Kurd. We're not related, but we live on the same street, in the same neighborhood. She was thrown out of her home. Her husband, an elderly man also named him Hamad al-Khud, was pronounced dead on the spot. He had a stroke and died. The Israeli soldiers pulled him out of his home while he was urinating and threw him into the streets. And he died. A few months later, the Rawi and the Hanun families, which saw kind of not a clan, but in Palestine, you have sometimes a building that contains multiple brothers and their wives. Each have little apartments. So the Hanun family is about 35 people were thrown.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 them out in the middle of the night with sound bombs and rubber bullets and 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.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 or a real estate dispute as the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs likes to frame it, but rather a very, very political battle, one that is about social engineering, one is about demographics, one that is about removing as many Palestinians as possible from occupied Jerusalem. So we did what all Palestinian families in Jerusalem do when they're faced with this kind of threat and we bought time. We pleaded and pleaded and appealed the courts and appealed the cases and we got over 50 expulsion orders. In 2009, rifle wielding settlers Accompanied by police and Israeli military came over. And shoved our neighbors outside of their home around 5 a.m.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then people live 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, 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 atop the rubble of our homes and villages, we had no real pull in the courts. Israeli courts would look at the Israeli documents, which we argue are falsifies and fabricated, and they would take them at face value without authentication, and they refuse to look at our documents. They refuse to look at the documents from the Jordanian government, the documents from the UN.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has in a way a typical neighborhood despite the absurd reality that surrounds it. It's a typical neighborhood in terms of Palestinian neighborhoods. It's 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 Sajara, were expelled from their homes in the Nakbe in 1948 and they were forced out by the Haganah and other Zionist paramilitaries that later formed the Israeli military and they were driven to various cities. My grandmother moved from city to city and she ended up in Zhara in 1956. By the United Nations and by the Zordanian government, which had control over that part of Jerusalem at the time.”
2023-07-24 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #391 – Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source