Mohammed El-Kurd on the Ongoing Nakba, Forced Expulsions, and Legal Asymmetry in Palestine

Mohammed El-Kurd provides a deeply personal and critical perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rooted in his family's experience in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem. He describes his neighborhood as typical of Palestinian areas threatened by settler expansion and forced expulsion, a reality his family has faced since the 1970s, following their initial displacement during the Nakba in 1948. El-Kurd highlights the profound legal asymmetry in Israeli courts, where settler claims, often based on 'Divine decree' and Israeli-written laws, are prioritized over Palestinian, Jordanian, UN, and Ottoman documents. He argues that these 'evictions' are not mere real estate disputes but a political strategy of social engineering and demographic manipulation aimed at removing Palestinians from Jerusalem.

The podcast details the brutal reality of these expulsions, including the 2009 incident where his neighbors were forcibly removed, and his own family lost half their home to settlers. El-Kurd recounts launching a global campaign in 2020 to 'demystify' the situation, emphasizing that 'evictions do not entail a foreign army in an occupied territory forcibly removing you out of your home.' This campaign, which gained significant international and diplomatic pressure, led to the Israeli Supreme Court temporarily canceling eviction orders, a small victory that El-Kurd believes proved the political, rather than legal, nature of the conflict.

El-Kurd broadens the context, asserting that Israel was established 'on top of Palestine' and that its jurisdiction in East Jerusalem is illegitimate under international law. He points out that Palestinians in Jerusalem and the Golan Heights are mere residents, not citizens, despite generations of inhabitation. He exposes the deceptive framing of home demolitions in Silwan and expulsions in Masafer Yatta, revealing how building permits are systematically denied to Palestinians and lands are purposefully classified as 'firing zones' to facilitate displacement. He draws a stark parallel between the 'legality' of these actions and historical injustices like Jim Crow laws, arguing that the law is being used to 'bureaucratize our ethnic cleansing.'

Finally, El-Kurd addresses the emotional and ideological dimensions of the conflict. He rejects the notion that it is primarily a religious conflict, noting that many Zionist pioneers were atheists and that the core issue is land and forced displacement. He strongly refutes Benjamin Netanyahu's assertion that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, distinguishing between opposition to Israeli state policies and hatred of Jewish people. El-Kurd views anger as a natural and dignified response to oppression, serving as a 'fuel for action,' and criticizes the historical need for Palestinians to 'prove their humanity' to Western politicians, advocating for an unabashed refusal to bow to oppression.

"no one has a right to go on slaughtering people removing them from their homes and then continuing to live in their homes continuing to drink coffee on their balconies um decades and decades later with no shame with no introspection with no reflection that's no one has the right to do that"

"this is not in fact a legal battle um 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"

"evictions do not entail a foreign army in an occupied territory forcibly removing you out of your home"

"Israel is literally on top of Palestine it was established on top of our Villages um in the late 40s"

"legality does not necessarily mean morality and the law you know is uh the law is a bloodbath in many ways um it has been used and abused to facilitate the most horrendous atrocities in in the case of the Palestinians the law has served to facilitate and bureaucratize our ethnic cleansing"

"the network did not begin or end in 1948 the 48 was rather you know a crystallization of the Zionist Enterprise in Palestine"

"the real anger is the bulldozer um bulldozing through my house I think the real anger is the 18 year old soldier who refuses to see me as a human being and strip searches me every chance they get that's where the real anger lies"

"it's convenient to market what's happening in Palestine as a religious conflict because it allows um The Listener the luxury of believing that this is an ancient complicated thing that stretches thousands and thousands of years ago but the fact of the matter is the people who invented Zionism who pioneered the Zionist movement who called for immigration and settling into Palestine a lot of them were atheists"