Mohammed El-Kurd: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, May 15th, 1948 is commemorated every year as the anniversary of the Nakba, but I would even argue anything, this is like a… A very popular idea is that the Nakba did not begin or end in 1948. The ’48 was rather a crystallization of the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. What happened was is that many Zionists paramilitaries 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 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 Nakba. And you see it in Sheikh Jarrah, you see it in Silwan, you see it in Harran, and all of these people losing their homes. In many cases, time and time again, I grew up and my grandmother told me the stories about the Nakba. 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 it. Many, many people who were separated from their… My grandmother herself, she lost her husband for a few months, for nine months. He wasn’t imprisoned by the Israelis. She told me all of these stories, and she wasn’t just reminiscing about them. She was 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. But now they have replaced their artillery with the judiciary. They have replaced the slashing of the pregnant women’s bellies in the Deir Yassin massacre with laws that say, “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 Nakba is the Balfour Declaration, which was a promise, quote-unquote, “promise” made by the British to the Zionist movement in 1917, 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. d 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 Zangwill said that this was a country without a people, and Palestinians who have existed there, who have cultivated the lands, who had diverse cultural and religious and political practices, they were completely erased. And other people like Jabotinsky were a lot more explicit and a lot more honest and said that, “We need to fight the Palestinians because they loved their land, much like the Red Indians loved their lands,” and he had a paper called the Iron Wall: Colonization of Palestine Must Go Forward. And all of these schools of thoughts were then shopping around for imperial support for their cause. They tried to get support from the Ottoman Empire, they tried to get support from Germany, this is in the 1800s, and then they got support from the United Kingdom. A great book to recommend is The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, traces the Zionist movement, oftentimes in the Zionists’ own words. So today what we’re seeing is a continuation. And people like Jabotinsky, who are profoundly and explicitly racist, who have called for genocide, who have called the Palestinians barbaric, who have said and done racist things… Jabotinsky also was the founder of the Irgun, one of the other militias that later merged to become the Israeli army, which was responsible for the Deir Yassin massacre, which was responsible for the bombing of the King David Hotel, this is a person who is 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. What do you say to people that describe Israel as having historical right to the land, so if you stretch, not across decades, but across centuries into the past?…

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