Mohammed el-Kurd
Palestinian activist and writer
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Mohammed el-Kurd (Arabic: محمد الكرد; born 15 May 1998) is a Palestinian writer, poet, and journalist who gained prominence for his descriptions of Palestinians' lives under occupation in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.[1] El-Kurd has referred to evictions as a form of ethnic cleansing,[2] and has also accused Israel of imposing apartheid-style laws and regulations on Palestinians in the occupied territories.[3][4][5]
Mohammed el-Kurd | |
|---|---|
محمد الكرد | |
| Born | 15 May 1998 |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations |
|
| Known for | Palestinian activism |
| Notable work | Rifqa (2021) Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal (2025) |
| Relatives | Muna el-Kurd (twin sister) |
| Website | www |
Biography
Early life
El-Kurd was born on 15 May 1998 into a Palestinian Muslim family in Sheikh Jarrah, East Jerusalem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.[6] In 2009, when he was 11, part of his family's home in Sheikh Jarrah was taken over by Israeli settlers.[6][7] The episode was the subject of the 2013 documentary film My Neighbourhood, directed by Julia Bacha and Rebekah Wingert-Jabi.[8]
El-Kurd wrote poetry as a teenager, sometimes in both Arabic and English, and performed in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere in Jerusalem.[6] In 2018, while studying writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, he released Radical Blankets, which Mondoweiss described as a poetry and multimedia magazine.[9] In 2021, while pursuing graduate study at Brooklyn College in New York City, he returned to East Jerusalem to protest Israel's eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, including in Sheikh Jarrah.[10][11]
Return to East Jerusalem (2021)
Since his return to the Israeli-occupied West Bank during the Sheikh Jarrah controversy, El-Kurd has documented and spoken against Palestinian displacement in East Jerusalem.[10][12][13] He and his twin sister, Muna el-Kurd, used social media to draw attention to Israeli policies in East Jerusalem.[14][15] A 2021 article in Tripodos said Muna's posts were usually in Arabic, while Mohammed often posted in English for a Western audience.[15]
On 6 June 2021, Mohammed and Muna were both detained by Israel Police;[16][17] they were released later that same day after being held for several hours.[18] During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, Mohammed appeared on American television channels including CNN, MSNBC, and CBSN.[15]
In 2021, Mohammed and Muna were named to the Time 100 list of the world's most influential people.[19][20]
Education
El-Kurd earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design and a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Brooklyn College.[21]
Influences
El-Kurd has cited Aimé Césaire, Frantz Fanon, Rashid Hussein, Amal Dunqul, and Suheir Hammad among writers who have influenced him and whom he admires.[22]
Career
In addition to his work in poetry and creative nonfiction, El-Kurd has worked as a journalist and editor. He is The Nation's first Palestine correspondent.[23] In 2023, Mondoweiss announced that he had joined its staff as culture editor; the publication later listed him as editor-at-large on its masthead.[24][25]
Writing and spoken-word
His debut poetry collection, Rifqa, was published by Haymarket Books in 2021.[26] Reviews and critical essays have described Rifqa as concerned with family memory, dispossession, occupation, resistance, and humor.[27][28][29]
In 2019, El-Kurd and oud musician Clarissa Bitar released the spoken-word album Bellydancing on Wounds through Rosewater Records.[30] His nonfiction book Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal was published by Haymarket Books in 2025.[31] Reviews described the book as examining dehumanization and the expectation that Palestinians appeal to outside audiences to prove their humanity.[32][33]
Views
Israel–Palestine conflict generally
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El-Kurd is noted for "unapologetically" speaking out against Israeli oppression of Palestinians in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, both about the specific, immediate threat to, and constant stress for families like his of eviction, but also all forms of oppression.[34]
El-Kurd blames the "Zionist project" – and multinational political, diplomatic, and economic support for it – for the displacement, subjugation, and statelessness of the Palestinian people,[34] sometimes mentioning the Palestinians displaced from their homes during the Nakba that started in December 1947, a count he places at 750,000, stating that Zionist militia massacred them and forcibly removed them.[35]
Israel–Gaza War
El-Kurd has stated that characterizing the "Israel–Hamas war" by that name does not accurately reflect what is happening on the ground because it ignores the antecedents (before October 7, 2023) of the current conflict, such a:[35]
- the 16-year Israeli and Egyptian land, air, and water Blockade of the Gaza Strip (which El-Kurd calls besieged)
- Israeli control of "every aspect of life in the Gaza Strip", including pharmaceuticals, food, water, travel, and freedom of movement
El-Kurd has spoken of racist remarks by Israeli officials, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, or remarks he characterizes as "genocidal". El-Kurd states that paying attention to such remarks is "the very answer to everything" in understanding the Gaza situation in 2023–4.[35]
Devaluation of Palestinian lives
Condescending attitudes in Western media and discourse
El-Kurd has said that suicide bombings, plane hijackings and the October 7 attacks have received so much attention because the victims, who are Europeans, Israelis, and Americans, are "seen as people". He has said that, in contrast, the Western media regards Palestinian deaths as "quotidian" and "business as usual". El-Kurd said that Palestinians who speak out about their experience as "victims of Zionism" are called antisemitic or hateful, or "at best ... angry, passionate and driven by emotion".[35]
Occupation structures that devalue Palestinians' lives
El-Kurd has stated that for Palestinians, "every corner" of life is filled with challenges and obstacles. He maintains that Israeli state structures are designed to oppress Palestinians, to make them want to leave, or to force them to leave.[34]
El-Kurd notes that occupation does not only mean that Palestinians carry a different-colored ID, that their freedom of movement is restricted, and that their land is constantly at risk of theft, but also that they "live a life that is devalued every few years", as he describes it.[35]
Persistence of Western colonialism
El-Kurd characterizes some tools of the Israeli state as techniques of colonization, such as isolating Palestinian villages by declaring the land around them to be national parks. He maintains that Israel continues to actively colonize Palestine and that there are still many regimes around the world propagating colonialism, adapting to an increasingly progressive world by making itself less obvious than what he calls the explicit colonization that Israel carries out.[34]
Shifting the attitude of Palestinians
Palestinian realization of self-worth
El-Kurd speaks of a Palestinian reality in East Jerusalem where oppression (evictions, demolitions) is hierarchical and normalized, muzzling and gaslighting Palestinian residents. He personally has questioned whether he would have the energy to fight back against oppression, as is characteristic of Palestinians, sometimes being "exhausted" from lifelong oppression. Breaking through and deciding to fight back, he described, was a moment of understanding the psychological warfare as a turning point to the realization that he was worthy (of housing, in this case) at the most basic level.[34]
He describes a Palestinian realization of worth – despite burnout and exhaustion continuing to be realities – regarding the right to five things:[34]
- worthy of housing
- worthy of dignity
- worthy to be able to rebel
- worthy to be able to advocate
- worthy of liberation
Palestinian unity against the Occupation
In 2021, El-Kurd stated that much of the Zionist project has involved:[34]
- Dismantling and fragmenting Palestinian unity
- Overthrowing the fabric of Palestinian societies
- Creating disparate realities between Palestinians living in Israel proper (Israeli Arabs), East Jerusalem, the West Bank east of the Separation Barrier, and in the Gaza Strip.
He concluded that the collective protests against expulsion in his home neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah showed unprecedented unity among the different groups, overcoming the delusions that separation had created.[34]
Activism unconstrained by perceived respectability
El-Kurd argues that activists should move beyond messages that are generally perceived as respectable in Western society and media, to deliver fully truthful messages about Palestine-Israel and other conflicts. Respectability, he states, is dressing a certain way, expressing healing a certain way, speaking only on certain topics with "respectable" vocabulary and qualifiers. Disregarding respectability manifests itself in various ways, including:[36]
- Topics: Activists should advocate for sanctions against Israel, and call out Israeli expansion and Zionism, which he calls a racist ideology.
- Vocabulary: mainstream Western news outlets camouflage the intensity of violence that Israeli forces inflict on Palestinians, e.g., using the phrase “forced eviction” instead of “ethnic cleansing.”
- "Flattening" humanization: those who empathize with Palestinians and humanize them may inadvertently "flatten" Palestinians' reality, i.e., fail to encapsulate the entire scope of Palestinians' humanity, by, for example, portraying them as helpless victims. El-Kurd is known for his willingness to tell the blunt reality of Palestinian existence in its full spectrum, including disdain, rage, hatred, joy, revolution, and fear, and encourages pro-Palestinian activists to do the same.
Shifting the narrative in global media
El-Kurd has stated that the first step in achieving reparations of changing realities on the ground is to get people to understand "the correct" narrative and "on the right side of history", a grassroots narrative from Palestinian "street culture", not a narrative coöpted by Palestinians who are the elite or who have ties to U.S., Israeli institutions or the Palestinian Authority, which he says is corrupt and a "co-pilot of the Israeli occupation".[34]
El-Kurd challenges Western media that regularly ask Palestinian guests to denounce violent protests or attacks by Hamas and other groups, characterizing these questions as inciting, bigoted and disrespectful. To one such question from a CNN anchor, El-Kurd responded: "Do you support the violent dispossession of me and my family?" He said that the incident was an example that Palestinians will no longer accept "racism and misrepresentation" on Western television, and that, like him, they "really don't take shit" any longer.[34]
Accusations of antisemitism
Poem with metaphor "harvest[ing] organs of the martyred"
A poem titled "Rifqa",[37] in the eponymous 2021 book, contains a line in which "they" (i.e., Israelis) "harvest organs of the martyred, [and] feed their warriors our own."[38] The poem contains a footnote referring the reader to the 2009 Aftonbladet Israel controversy about Israeli doctors allegedly harvesting organs from Palestinian and some Israeli corpses without the permission of their families. El-Kurd said, "It's a metaphor, it's not something I literally believe. I'm just now realizing that they actually think, or are pretending to think for purposes of exaggeration, that I actually believe Israelis eat Palestinian organs.... At first it was comical, but now it seems very sinister. The line is about the practice of withholding Palestinian bodies and [...] exploiting the bodies in ways that have been documented and are widely discussed."[39] He spoke at a Harvard University event titled "Confronting State Violence" in October 2022 at which he told of his experience with "violence that is systematically, institutionally sponsored". More than 30 people protested his attendance by showing Israel’s flag and waving posters.[40] The Anti-Defamation League called for Georgetown Law School to cancel an invitation for him to speak at the university in 2022.[41]
London speech mentioning de-Zionization and massacres
El-Kurd's speech on 14 January 2024 at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign "March for Palestine" demonstration in London was widely criticized as antisemitic for its mention of de-zionization as well as the mention of "massacres as the status quo",[42] with British MP Robert Jenrick calling for the arresting and deporting of individuals who make such remarks.[42]
El-Kurd stated: "Zionism is apartheid, it's genocide, it's murder. It's a racist ideology, rooted in settler expansion and racist domination. We must root it out of the world. We must de-Zionize because Zionism is a death cult".[42] He described Hamas militants killed by Israel as "martyrs", which could potentially violate UK and Israeli laws.[42]
Concluding the speech, El-Kurd stated "Our day will come, but we must not be complacent. Our day will come but we must normalize massacres as the status-quo",[42] which some interpreted as a reference to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed.[42] At first, the activist responded to reports of the controversy by stating "Lots of ppl reporting this speech to the police. Idgaf. Zionism is indefensible".[43] However, El-Kurd, whose native language is Arabic, later clarified multiple times on X that he had misspoken, by forgetting to negate the verb in the sentence:[44][45]
It is clear from the context of my speech on 13 January 2024 that I denounce massacres, murder, and genocide and that the closing of my speech was to state "we should NOT normalise massacres." I was also clearly referring to the massacres perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian people. I reject the bad faith attempts to slander me as someone who would encourage or promote unlawful violence. I don't want to waste more time on this matter, because we all should be focusing on the horrors in Gaza
He further stated that he was "obviously not an idiot" and "would never" call for violence.[46]
London's Metropolitan Police launched a formal investigation.[42][43] El-Kurd later said on social media that the police had interviewed him and then dropped the case.[47]
Works
- El-Kurd, Mohammed (2021). Rifqa. Haymarket Books. ISBN 9781642595864.
- Foreword to Aranguren, Teresa, and Sandra Barrilaro, eds. (2024). Against Erasure: A Photographic Memory of Palestine Before the Nakba. Haymarket Books. ISBN 9781642599800.
- El-Kurd, Mohammed (2025). Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal. Haymarket Books. ISBN 9798888903155.
