Notorious anti-Israel activists Muna and Mohammed El-Kurd, who each have a record of supporting terrorism, have been included in TIME Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most-influential people in the world.
Mohammed, in particular, has repeatedly disseminated baseless anti-Israel smears and clear-cut antisemitic tropes while inciting violence on social media. Mona, too, has posted undeniably antisemitic, terror-supporting content, including at least one image of Hitler.
For example, Mohammed earlier this month rejoiced as six Palestinian terrorists broke out of Israel’s maximum-security Gilboa Prison. “I am going to bed with a smile on my face and dreaming of the day all prisons are abolished,” he tweeted, calling the incident “excellent.”
Mohammed’s support for Palestinian terrorists dovetails with his long history of shockingly antisemitic remarks. For instance, in May he called the Israel Defense Forces “sadistic & bloodthirsty,” a slanderous charge reminiscent of medieval blood libels. Similarly, he shared an Instagram post that promoted claims that the Jewish state deliberately kills Palestinians to harvest their organs.
He has furthermore said that Israel “kills,” “blows up,” “burns” and “tortures” Palestinian children in order to “instill terror” in them. Mohammed, who was recently hired by The Nation as its “Palestine” correspondent, has gone so far as to describe Israel as a “child killing entity” — an overt example of Jew-hatred according to the widely adopted IHRA definition.
Related Reading: From Terror Supporter to ‘Palestine Correspondent’: Meet Mohammed El-Kurd, The Nation’s Latest Hire
In an equally repulsive Twitter post, Mohammed claimed — without proof — that “Holocaust survivors” threw Molotov cocktails at his home. He also accused a Hong Kong-based Jewish author of “ethnically cleansing” and “Kristallnachting” Palestinians, the latter being a reference to the Nazi-initiated pogrom in Germany in 1938 that various historians mark as the beginning of the genocide of some six million Jews.
In a similar vein, Mohammed El-Kurd in June praised the “eloquence” of black nationalist Kwame Ture, who in 1970 called Adolf Hitler a “genius” and the “greatest white man” in history. In Ture’s words, “The only good Zionist is a dead Zionist.”
In July, Mohammed retweeted a video in which Ture accused Zionists of being “followers of the Satan.”
This is only a small selection of the slanderous content El-Kurd spreads on social media. There is much, much more. His entire online presence is built on maliciously smearing Israel in the name of “Palestinian rights.”
Which makes it so puzzling that Time could include him on its ‘Most Influential People’ list. Instead, the El-Kurds’ entry simply describes the twins as having “provided the world with a window into living under occupation in East Jerusalem.”
To say that this fundamentally mischaracterizes who they are and what they believe in is a gross understatement.
Pro-Hamas Narrative Regurgitated
The entry is problematic in other ways. At one point, it recaps the Hamas-initiated outbreak of violence earlier this year thus:
In May, tensions in Sheikh Jarrah spilled into the nearby Old City, where Israeli forces attacked worshippers at the al-Aqsa mosque; Hamas militants in Gaza responded with rocket fire into Israel. “
Apart from praising terrorist supporters, Time can’t even get basic facts right.
HonestReporting has thoroughly debunked the narrative that the 11-day conflict in May was a response to Israeli actions. In truth, media reports largely excised a TikTok trend in which Palestinian youths randomly attacked Jewish civilians, as well as the Palestinian rioting atop the Temple Mount that necessitated a police response to restore the peace.
Misrepresenting upholding law and order as Israeli forces attacking worshippers is a stunning inversion of reality.
Furthermore, the decision by Hamas to fire rockets towards Jerusalem constituted a massive and unwarranted escalation, not to mention a war crime.
El-Kurds Hailed While Modi & Trump Castigated
That the El Kurds twins’ entry fully omits their role in spreading malicious misinformation online is striking. By way of comparison, the accompanying text for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s entry condemns his “mishandling” of Covid-19 his government, and calls out his government for “eroding the rights of India’s Muslim minority” and having “imprisoned and intimidated journalists.”
Former US president Donald Trump, who was also included on Time’s list, was also roundly criticized. His entry suggests that he is “a menace to the Constitution” whose “only rule is ruthlessness.” Trump is castigated for his “assault on the Justice Department, his extortion of foreign allies, his obsession with domestic enemies.”
Clearly, there is room at Time to be critical. So why were the El-Kurd twin terrorist backers treated with kid gloves, as if their deeply troubling lies about Israel should be ignored?
Dismayed by the inclusion and presentation of the El-Kurds in the list? Contact Time Magazine CEO Edward Felshenthal to — respectfully but firmly — make your voice heard. Email him here.
