IHIP News - Innocent Palestinians Forced From Their Homes, Survivor Speaks Out

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

We are joined by author Mohammed El-Kurd to discuss his story and the stories of so many innocent men, women, and children in occupied Palestine. Pre-order Jennifer’s new book Not Today, Fascists today: https://linktr.ee/ivehaditpodcastFollow Us:I've Had It Podcast: @IvehaditpodcastJennifer Welch: @mizzwelchSpecial Guest: Mohammed El-Kurd: @mohammedelkurdSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

All right, joining me today is Muhammad El-Kurd. He is an award-winning Palestinian journalist and writer. He's an editor at large at Monda Weiss and the first Palestine correspondent at the Nation magazine. His most recent book, Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal is out now and he brought me my very own copy. And Muhammad, you were born and grew up in Czech Jara, East Jerusalem. When you were 11 years old, half of your... home was taken over under an Israeli court order. What happened?

Like, did you have to share your house? Yeah, I mean, share is kind of an amicable word. It was, you know, we were forced to live in half of our home. The other half was taken by settlers, but to kind of paint an image, I want to say as absurd as it sounds, this is a reality that many, many, many, thousands of Palestinians live with. with. Our house and our neighborhood received so much media attention because we live in such a central neighborhood that was surrounded by all these international embassies and consulates. So all these diplomats would watch us be constantly brutalized and terrorized by the

Israeli military from their balcony. So our house and our neighborhood became the center of attention. But what happened was all of our families, in our neighborhood, it's 28 families. They were all dispossessed, forcibly expelled from their homes during the 1948 Nakaba. And then they were given these houses houses by the United Nations and in the 70s there were settler organizations Jewish American charities actually registered here as charities who have sued us claiming our houses are their own with falsifies document by divine decree saying that God hang on I have to ask some questions yes please so your family owned a home yes and then a court an Israeli court said you don't own this house anymore yes in the 70s and we in the 70s and then that

where were these people from that came in and lived in half of your house? The guy in half of my house is from Long Island. His name is... Okay. More questions. Yeah. So a person from Long Island, New York, can go to Israel and... If they're Jewish.

Okay. If they're Jewish. So I couldn't do that. No, you could not do that. And say, I want this house and who's the boss of who's house? that is who decides this why do they think somebody from New York gets to go take your families home explain this to me like I'm five well I think let me it's pretty incestuous let me paint you a picture I mean we we hear words like the court and the judicial system and and eviction and legal and we we imbue

these words with so much authority but what happens is these courts are built by Israeli settlers right the laws the ethnic cleansing is written into the law so I have been displaced from my home in accordance to Israeli laws and procedures and protocols. The guy that displaced me, yeah, is a settler himself. To paint you even a more cartoonish picture, I grew up watching this guy called Jonathan Yusuf walk around the neighborhood with a megaphone in his hand, chanting the most racist, Islamophobic shit, right, against us. This guy was a sitting city councilman who approved and,

rejected housing building permit applications. For example, in Jerusalem, where I'm from an occupied Jerusalem, if you want to build a home and you are a Palestinian, your chance of getting approved for building a home is less than 1%. Right? So they control how much homes we get to build, and then they can come up and conjure up whatever fake documents to destroy the homes we already live in. I have a question. I thought Israel was a democracy. That's democracy. That's democracy. in the area. So you're telling me that you didn't have the same rights as other people as this. Because I've been told this my whole life. No, it's, it's not a lie.

No, it's not a democracy. I think anybody with the least bit of critical thought is able to tell. It's not a democracy. I mean, there's even for Palestinians who own, who own Israeli, who have Israeli citizenship, there's a myriad dozens and dozens of laws that explicitly discriminate against them. And if you even look at the Israeli nation state law, in the Israeli constitution or what would be their constitution, the Israeli state law, it enshrines Jewish settlement as a national value to promote. This is written in the state law. This word settlement bothers me, settler, because it sounds quaint. Yeah, it sounds-

Yeah, let's go settle in for the night and watch the NBA game. Or let's watch love story on Hulu together. And you'd be like, all right, Jennifer, that sounds fun, we'll settle in. So it sounds like this quaint thing. But in your instance, Some of MF her from New York goes, I'm sure all expenses paid trip to Jerusalem. And once they get into your house, they're living in half of it. Yeah. And you're 11. They're expelling us from our house with the help of the military and the police.

How are they treating these New Yorkers? I mean, with absolute, with absolute brutality, you know, with absolute brutality. We grew up witnessing this, the most egregious, horrific, settler violence and you're right settler is such a quaint word it is really colonial violence that we have experienced right colonial it sounds more like terrorists yeah and it is in a settler to me totally yeah i have had i have two sons and 11 years old all ages are very vulnerable but 11 years old child it's before hormones but really can pretty much figure life out and i can't imagine how traumatizing and terrorizing that would be to see your parents so scared and

feel powerless and you hurt for yourself but it's a really it's a really difficult position to be in as a child when you see your parents scared it really kind of fucks with you a little bit because your parents have always been kind of the rock explain to me and to the my listeners and viewers what kind of trauma that is and I and I know it's personal but I think it's important because it's happening right now and I'm from Oklahoma originally people from rural Oklahoma are subsidizing this type of thing and happening. So explain to me what that was like for you when these people come in and

hostily take over your home where you live as a family with your parents. I think there's an amazing thing. I mean, absolutely, it is very horrific and traumatizing. But it's when things happen collectively, when they are happening in mass, you really don't realize how absurd and abnormal they are until you leave. It wasn't until I was 16 that I realized that it's not normal. to be strip searched each time you leave your house. It wasn't until I was 14 that I realized,

oh, police are not supposed to be this brutal. It wasn't, you know, and that kind of like collective experience builds a certain camaraderie. And Palestinian people have managed to remain resilient despite all of this. Another thing also, I should say, is that the Israelis have been quite genius in their divide and conquer strategy.

Because in our, in Jerusalem, what we deal with is home experience, and home demolitions. Whereas in the West Bank, people deal with the loss of freedom of movement. They have to deal with settler pogroms. Their villages get set on fire. Whereas in the Gaza Strip, people are dealing with literal bombs and living for days and weeks under the rubble before they die.

Right. So there's this kind of hierarchy of violence that makes each of us say, oh, this is as bad as it is, it's not so. it's not so bad because I at least have it a little bit less crazy than my neighbor. And that makes it impossible to really reckon with the scope of the violence. You know, I think Palestinians at large are very stunted. And I think it's a coping mechanism because how can you? How can you not have any rights?

How can you not have any ability to fight back or resist without being maligned and terrorized? You know, how can you cope with that? It's really stunning. I read an article about a doctor who went to Gaza and he was helping people and he just said it really broke him. The way the suffering, the death, the, you know, so many children if they haven't been killed, their amputees. And it's really devastating as we all sit here and we're all told a bunch of stuff like

my whole life, I was told, you know, Israel is a big democracy. So I'm like, I support democracy. That sounds like. Well, all the people around them are terrorists. I'm like, well, God, 9-11 was fucked up. Yeah, those are those people are bad. And meanwhile, I'm working on living in the Bible belt, dealing with Christian nationalists and all sorts of things, right? And now as we see, and the truth is coming out as to what's happening to your people, to your homeland. And it is objectively a genocide. I find it very offensive. that when you express empathy for Palestinians, that you're, it suggested that you're a bigot.

I think that is a really diabolical form of gaslighting. It's gaslighting. That is really irritating me. I want to ask you this. There's a big questions that everybody always ask politicians. Yeah. Does Israel have a right to exist? No.

And then the one thing they say is, does Israel have a right to exist as a general, Jewish state. What does that mean? Well, let's talk first of all about the question itself. What does the question even mean? It makes no fucking sense, right? The question, yeah, does anything have a right? Because human beings have right.

But the idea, this is, by the way, the history of the question, does Israel have a right to exist? Is a question formulated by the now defunct Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs? And it is launched at people like you and me to distract us from talking about the focal point. So you could be talking about genocide or children being murdered or people being thrown thrown from their homes. And the journalist or the diplomat will ask you, does Israel first, I have to set the terms of engagement before anything else? Do you believe? And so the whole conversation is derailed. And now we're talking about rights for countries that do not exist, like the rights that do not exist for countries.

So the whole question is a non-starter. And it's meant, like the function of it is meant to be as a distraction. So I am very impressed and pleased when people are able to just say, this is not a priority right now, right? And also, no state has a right exists particularly no, I don't want to live in a theological state. I don't want to live under religious rule, right? I don't either. Yeah, and that's not a controversial thing to say. But I think people who are confronted with this question, what should be, what would be most helpful for them is to redirect and focus on the important

thing because, you know, in debate terms, in the world of debate, does Israel have a right to exist? Is a red herring, right? So it's a fallacy of debate. Well, I always think when I hear that, like, well, does Oklahoma have a right to exist? It used to be Indian territory. That's where the, you know, the Europeans that came over, it pushed all the Indians to Oklahoma because they were like, Oklahoma sucks. Y'all can have that land. And then the people in Kansas were like, well, we want that land. So it exists. Oklahoma exists. I raise my kids there. I own a house there. I love the Oklahoma City Thunder. It exists. And so then if people were to say, does Oklahoma have a right to exist as a Christian nation, which nobody would ever ask, does Oklahoma have a right to exist?

The only you ever hear is with Israel. And Israel exists. I don't know what to do about it. The water's out of the bottle. But then it gets to, does Israel have a right to exist? Does a Jewish state? So I have questions. for you about this. I'm an atheist, okay? I do not like any sort, whether it's Muslim, Jewish, Christian. I think a lot of people that think the same way living together cook up a lot of bad ideas. For sure. It's my opinion. Like look at the suburbs in American cities. Right. All white, all bad ideas. Yeah. So does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state? Does that mean that if I decided I wanted to move Israel, this great democracy as they pitch it? What I have, have rights. No, you would not have, non-Jews would not be full equal citizens in Israel.

But my family who's lived there for many, many generations for decades and decades and decades, we're all over the place in the diaspora. Some families in Jordan, some families in Kuwait, because we've all been expelled and we can't come, we can't ever come back. But any Jewish person, they could be born in the Philippines and have no ties whatsoever. They can just apply and get citizenship and live in Palestinian houses. You know what I mean? With premier rights. with premier rights with with they would be tried health care higher education health care that Americans pay for by the way yeah they would be tried in civil courts while we're tried in military courts it's it is it's the most absurd cartoonish

it's you know the colonial world that Americans read about in high school it still exists it still exists on steroids is you sometimes when I first came to this country I would tell people my experience living under Israeli rule and I felt almost ridiculous saying it because it sounded so cartoonishly evil that I wondered if people thought I was lying but thank God we have you know an abundance an abundance of evidence but again the question about whether Israel has a right to exist is just about putting you in cross-examination making you defend yourself removing Israel from the place of scrutiny and making your character whether you're a bigot or you're a racist or whatever

that's now what's under investigation and we're no longer talking about Israel but Israel is what it does, right? Zionism is what it does. People can define Zionism in whatever ways they want, but Zionism in its most recent crystallization is genocide. It's a genocidal ideology. And that's why it must be rejected. This is, I think, how we can escape these debates, you know,

that derail us from the focal point by looking at things materially. Zionism is a racist, colonial expansionist, brutal terrorist project. And I'm not saying that because I'm citing the Zionist pioneers who have said this in their early works when they wrote about it explicitly. And I'm not saying it because of my opinion, it's because the evidence is everywhere you look, you know? The evidence is everywhere you look. It's indisputable that it's a... And they want now the, it's my understanding that they want the greater Israel project. Yeah.

And on the idea of soldiers, they have a badge that expands the map of the existing footprint of Israel, which is why you see, I think it were up to two million people, people in Lebanon that are displaced, residential areas getting carpet bombed, people expelled, if not killed. I've read an article about like dropping white phosphorus on civilian populations. And then obviously I think Iran is because they want to balkanize that area because Israel has no natural resources. And once you see this shit, like I spent my whole life. like oh my god the middle east that's fucked up yeah and it seemed very complicated and so by design so far off right yeah and once you see it you can't really unsee it and then once

you see how powerful the propaganda is with both political parties here it's even more diabolical i mean and then it's just like what the fuck is actually going on it's amazing to me how this government, Israel, gets away with this shit. It's unbelievable. And then it's like, now it's like, oh, it's just Benjamin Netanyahu. No. It's like it's a much bigger problem than that. Genocide is not a one-man show.

Right. And just like with Trump, if Trump dies, we still have a dipship problem in America. Yeah. We still have a fascist problem in America. 100%. You know, it's not a one-man issue. And so. Netanyahu's approval rating is through the roof, you know?

Is Israelis are so, but this is, I think there's, there's just a problem with the whole logic. This is a nation, you know, that has built up its military capabilities and yet it pretends constantly that it's on the brink of extension. They raise their students to believe that every, they say we live in a bad neighborhood. Israelis have either really public or really secret peace agreements with almost all of the Arab neighbors and yet they say we live in a bad neighborhood right they have gas agreements with Jordan they have disagreements with Egypt they have a peace agreement with the UAE and whatever and the and yet they tell everybody we

live in a bad neighborhood and everybody wants to kill us at any time so you're living you have the nooks and you have the military support and you have the diplomatic and economic cover from the US and you have all of these capabilities and yet you're constantly living in this like siege mentality where you believe you're on the brink of extension and so that harbors a certain mental a certain like victim mentality that's like in my opinion akin to psychosis it's like the biggest question I ask myself all the time is that can people's minds be changed people who have been so indoctrinated because they see

the evidence but they reject it they reject what they hear they reject what they see and so it's it's hard to tell I do think that I don't I can't speak for other people, but I can speak for middle Americans. Yeah. I do think that their minds can be changed, but there's two avenues that they can go down. There's one, which is like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Green, America First people. Yeah. And they are using the Palestine issue to say, they're killing Christians in Palestine. And they're spending our money and they get free health care. And that's not America first. And your tax dollars shouldn't pay for that. Where I come from, Mohammed, that's going to hit hard.

That is going to be a very powerful message. A problem I personally have with that is because I understand white Christian nationalism because I grew up around it. They feel the exact same way about homosexuals, trans people, immigrants that they claim Palestinians feel with the, oh, they're going to throw them off the roof, they throw gays off the roof and all this stuff. I'm like, sounds like the gays are getting killed by the Israelis to me, but call me crazy. But so I worry about, but nonetheless, whichever route it goes, I think the dam is broken.

I think the dam regarding Israel, now they've drugged us into this war that Marco Rubi are on State Department has acknowledged that Benjamin Nautiou drug us into war. And I think the dam is broken. And I think what we're seeing right now is you're going to see, you know, Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL bedwetting all over the place just goes bananas all the time. And they're watering down this anti-Semitism is real. And I hate all forms of bigotry. But also, the biggest problem I see in America right now is anti-black racism.

Yeah. It is the fundamental problem in this country because we've just removed black representation from the South. Yeah. And this is far more pressing to me. 100% than anti-Semitism. But your analysis material, this is what you just touched on is that you're looking at the world through a material.

And now you're looking at facts and what's actually happening materially. But what happens in this country specifically and in the West largely is that we focus so much on words and language. And oh, is from the river to the sea? It's from the river to the sea, anti-Semitic or does Israel have a right to exist? And we're not talking about real things. Like you said, you know, black people in the South have no representation. Palestinians are being killed. But it's really a masterful trap they have set up for us where we're constantly drug into speaking about.

rhetorical shit and semantics and blah, blah, instead of talking about systemic procedural, policy-driven violence. Yeah, Benjamin Netanyahu always says, Iran says death to America. And I'm like, so what? They're enemies. For 40 years, they've said death to America and they haven't done jack shit. Are you that triggered by that? Also, what does he, Iran and America are enemies. Does he expect Iran to chant, I love America? Like what?

I don't know. It's just, it's so ridiculous. And you're right because they frame it by all of these words. And then the river to the sea, I watched this whole like mini documentary on my phone the other night. And it was the Israelis were saying it from the river to the sea. And so it's like you can't have it both ways. But aside from all of that insanity, let's talk about Nicholas Christoph's piece in the New York Times, detailing the rape of prisoners by Israeli forces. And this has caused a massive Zionist meltdown.

They were protesting in front of the New York Times. Benjamin Netanyahu's bedwet. He says, I'm going to sue the New York Times. I'm sure Jonathan Greenblatt is just on a 24-hour tear bender texting everybody he knows. God only knows what he's up to. How do you feel seeing this after mainstream media's complicity and whitewashing and demonization of Palestinian victims and martyering of Israelis deaths? How do you feel about Nicholas Christoph's peace?

I think the most revealing thing, first of all, as you said, the rape of Palestinian prisoners, and honestly, the most horrific accounts that you read, we've been reading them for a year and a half, if not two years. They've been reported on by Mondiweis, Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, many, many, many, and they've largely been ignored by the likes of the New York Times, while the likes of the New York Times have published, you know, the widely discredited, wildly debunked, screams without words. article. But the most revealing thing about the article is that it was relegated to the opinion section, right? Much like the article about the Israeli soldiers using Palestinians as human shields,

it was put in the opinion section, much like the article about the Israeli snipers targeting Palestinian children in the head and the doctors who went and recorded it. It was relegated to the opinion section. Words from the IDF, words from the Israeli military military, words from the Israeli positions and governments and policymakers, they're all treated as facts. They're at the very top of the article in the prominent first page news section and facts and genocide is relegated to a matter of debate and a matter of opinion it's buried um but i want to talk a little bit more about like kind of the systemic involvement of the new york times right because there's one thing you know to be complicit and like turn a blind eye and obfuscate and not report

things or like use passive voice i mean i remember this like a crazy a crazy there was a time where when Israel bombed a cafe in Gaza. This is like 2014. And the headline was like, cafe goers find themselves poised for tragedy. That was the headline. I've seen this kind of shit. It's insane. It's crazy. But beyond the obfuscation and the redlining and talking out the sides of their mouths, correspondence that are currently reporting on the matter, on Israel, on Palestine, have direct ties to Isabel Krishna, two of her sons served in the Israeli military while she's actively reporting on us. Her husband works at a think tank whose job explicitly stated is to enhance the image of Israel in the Western world. And she reports for the Times.

Ronan Bergman worked in the Israeli military intelligence and he's reporting at the Times. And the examples are countless. So it's not just complicity of bad editorial standards, but there is literally material ties. that the New York Times and other mainstream papers have to the state of Israel. Meanwhile, if a Palestinian journalist, let alone like comment or like a post that is misconstrued in any some way that shows them as biased, they're immediately fired. Arabs and Muslims are literally, I hear this from people at the New York Times and people, other, Arabs and Muslims are literally prevented from reporting on the matter because they're told they're too attached to it. They're too emotional about it. their activism, whatever. Meanwhile, people whose sons, who they themselves have served in the

military military can report on it without any scrutiny. It's insane. It's, it's completely insane. And also when you pile on the fact that first I want to say that story about the kids getting sniped, BBC Al Jazeera and others reported it. Dr. saw the MRI's very substantial rock solid factual reporting. The head and the heart. That was the one where I was just like, they're assassinating little kids. They're assassins, like sniping little kids. That was for me, like, just a complete changing moment for me. Not changing because I didn't have an opinion to change.

It was a threshold cost. It was very eye-opening. But then when you find out that I think it's 260 journalists is the last count. Maybe you know the most current one. But the last I heard was 260 journalists. A few are American citizens that have been killed. like Israel. And then you think about people who are journalists and their loyalties are to a genocidal war criminal homicidal regime over their fucking fellow workers. There's such a moral rot

to that. It is so morally rotten. It's like it because I'm so loyal like one of my best traits is I'm fiercely loyal. I'm fiercely loyal to my friends and to my friends and to my family. And I do not understand that type of disloyalty to your co-workers, disloyalty to facts, disloyalty to integrity, to the truth. And I feel like there is a through line with the moral rot that we're experiencing here. When I find out that politicians, when I lived in Oklahoma, that were Democrats, that are Democrats. And I thought, well, they're so liberal. These people are great people and I'm speaking about like Corey Booker or Chuck Schumer when you're a woman that lives in a red state where there's a total abortion ban and the politicians are crazy Christian

nationalists you're trying to put the Bibles in schools and all this crazy shit you hear somebody like Cory Booker or Chuck Schumer speak and you're like oh my god these people are amazing yeah because the politicians in the backdrop of where I live horrible is low horrible right so then you find out like what did it for me was after a lot of loss, like, why aren't they fighting? Why are they voting for Christy Gnome or Little Marco? Why are they confirming all these people? Why aren't they fighting this guy? And then you really start digging into it and you realize they take a bunch of APEC money. And I just feel like taking money from those types of organizations has to break you. And then it just breaks

every other component of your life. And the through line is like our politicians that are voting to support that they are way more plugged in to top intel. Of course. They know what they're doing. Yes. They know what they're doing and they're okay with that. I mean, the racism against Arabs and Muslims in this country is so, so, so, so rampant and so institutionalized.

It's unbelievable. But I think, I don't think the Democratic Party has a chance of survival if they don't change course on Palestine. You know? It is absolutely atrocious that Donald Trump is in power. It is. But Kamala's loss should serve as a lesson, you know. And we've understood from like Intel that was recently released, that her stance on Gaza has really hurt her chances of winning.

And but what Democrats do is that they cater to a non-existent voter. They want to like hold two things at once and the Zionists are mad at them and we're mad at them. And they need to move on policy because that's, where the majority is people I think across the board in America even people who don't know are I think more and I think polls pull's verify this I think people are more pro-Palestinian because it's it's not hard to make up your mind once you open you even the headline could be whatever it is and they could obfuscate it in however way they want and they can talk about it in the passive voice and they could the the pictures speak for themselves yes and to

put it, this is going to sound very American in me, but Americans, our culture is predicated a lot on film. And one thing that we've done really well is films, Hollywood, and it's a part of our cultural identity. And we root for underdogs. We root for justice, at least in our minds we think we do. Does American foreign policy, has it always done that? That's another podcast for another day that I'm sure we could go on and on about. But in our minds at the top of it, we think we root for the underdog. We root for the underdog. We want to write wrongs.

And the Democrats need to tap into that because I believe that is a collective in the American psyche. And I have to tell you, a lot of people in Middle America don't care about Palestine. Don't know, don't want to know, don't care. Just don't want to pay for it. And the argument that Democrats can make so that this is something that is succinct across all party is that we have to protect universal human rights. And we truly are the party of life. They lie to you and say they're the party of life. They lie to you and say they're the party of family.

All of the things that we're talking about fall under that umbrella. Now, when I have moved out here, people that are more plugged into. international news like I said once I've seen this it's it's unsettling it sits kind of at the top of your brain all the time what's happening over there and and how some of our politicians I expect MAGA to do it to fund all of that the Democrats are the ones that disappoint me the most on that you take money from that but I agree that it is going to be a defining line for the Democrats that they are going to have to acknowledge that and if they don't acknowledge the genocide if they are genocide deniers or genocide obfuscators, then they cannot make a moral argument for anything under that.

Yeah. People have completely lost faith in electoralism at large, but specifically in the Democratic Party, because they saw Biden fund and facilitate genocide while making all kinds of moral attacks against his opponent. It made just no, no, no credibility whatsoever. But I, I, I, really think, you know, Palestine in a lot of ways has broken American politics. It has. And the American expression is that the chickens are coming home through us, right? Yeah. Yeah. The chickens are coming home through.

Do you feel a little bit of hope that people are opening their eyes, that you're sitting at a podcast table from a woman that's from the Bible Belt, who now knows about what's happening in your homeland and the murders and the general. genocide and the war crimes and that I care. Do you feel a little bit of hope that there is a collective awakening? I feel hope and the hope also is backed by statistics and I also believe that hope, as corny as this sounds, I really believe it's like a political commitment, a political obligation. We cannot win if we don't believe that we will win.

But on top of my hope, I just also feel such a need and a necessary, sorry, a need and And it's such a necessity for people to be more brave. I think it's time for us to raise the ceilings about Palestine and about other things. But after three years of genocide, we cannot be still stuck in debates about what is this mean and what is this phrase mean and what is I mean? We have to talk about life and death

and either you're with life or you're against it. I completely agree, Muhammad. Thank you so much. I want to promote Muhammad's book. Thank you. That's kind of you. Perfect victims and the politics of appeal. Muhammad al-Kurd.

Please like this episode and order Muhammad's book or go to your local bookstore, support local. This is something we all need to pay attention to and something we all have to have compassion for and something we all need to hold our politicians' feet to the fire for because we cannot be complicit in this. Mohamed, thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure.

Thank you, thank you.