Mohammed El-Kurd: belief

Transcript context

…Who would want to do that? So from which pedestal or from which stage do you think you can be most effective? I was born and raised in Jerusalem. I speak perfect Arabic. I think my Arabic writing is much superior to my English writing, but I choose to write in English because I think there’s a disparity and there’s a chasm between what is said in Arabic in the street in Palestine and what is said here about Palestinians, both by anti-Palestinian racists and people who are pro-Palestine and advocates for Palestine. And I believe I and a few others from my generation, or many others actually from my generation, are working to fill that chasm. And I also believe that literature, culture, the public sphere, changing the public opinion, changing the narrative is important to affecting policy, to affecting change, affecting material change. I’m not going to go read a poem in front of a checkpoint and watch it catch in flames. I’m not that delusional about the power of words, but I do think that I have a responsibility and I have a privilege even to have a voice, to have some kind of platform, and if I’m not defining myself, if I’m not talking and representing myself, then other people will define me. And their definitions of the Palestinian people across the few past decades have not been kind or generous to the Palestinian people. That’s one thing. The other thing is I believe in the United States as a front for change. I believe we have a lot more leverage here than we do back home. Again, I believe, and someone said the other day, I can’t remember their name, but someone said “no stone unturned”, I believe in fighting on all fronts. But here, really, I can go protest in front of the Israeli Embassy without getting shot. There’s a lot of work to be done here. There’s a lot of people waking up. I would even argue that a reckoning is coming in the American public. More and more American people are concerned where their tax money is going or concerned what their politicians are invested in. More and more American people are saying, “Not on our dime,” are saying, “Not today. Not here.” Also, there’s many Palestinians in the diaspora here in the United States and Europe who benefit and could benefit from political education in the English language, because the diaspora across history, the Palestinians diaspora, has been effective in the ’70s and the ’80s and, ever since 2021, there has been a resurgence of the power and influence of the Palestinian diaspora. To ask another silly question, since you mentioned the United States, I don’t know if you follow the politics in the United States, but do you have a preference of Presidential candidates in the 2024 election?…

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