Mohammed El-Kurd: evaluation

Transcript context

…In Rifqa, you wrote, my father told me, “Anger is a luxury we cannot afford. Be composed, calm, still, laugh when they ask you, smile when they talk, answer them, educate them.” So let me linger on this. Is there anger in there, in your heart? And does it cloud your judgment? Does it cloud my judgment? I don’t think so. I think our campaign to defend our homes was 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, where 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. I was 14 years old when I first flew to Congress to speak to Congress people and to speak at the European Parliament. At the time, I thought, “Wow, I must be such a brilliant 14-year-old for them to have me here.” Looking back, I didn’t know what I was talking about. I had horrendously broken English, and I 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… I think it’s loaded, it’s 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. 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 strip searches me every chance they get. That’s where the real anger lies. And I’m quite honestly proud of our unabashedness and our refusal to bow our heads or bury our heads in the sand. I think that’s the only way forward. So anger, or whatever it is, is a fuel for action.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.