On July 12, the Financial Times (FT) ran a story titled, “‘We live in a new era’: the next generation of Palestinian activists,” which portrayed “young activists” who supposedly work to unite Palestinians in the West Bank with Arabs living in Israel. The piece mainly focuses on Mohammed el-Kurd, a writer who has denounced Jewish Israelis who are seeking to reclaim ownership of properties in the eastern part of Jerusalem that were confiscated from them or their families between 1948 and 1967 when Jordan occupied the West Bank, including the holy city.
El-Kurd and his sister Muna live in one of these properties in the neighborhood of Shimon Hatzaddik/Sheikh Jarrah, and both were recently arrested for participating in violent protests essentially calling for the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the area. That, in and of itself, is revealing — and, indeed, el-Kurd is seemingly an antisemite who in reality works to preclude the possibility of enhanced coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians.
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For example, El-Kurd has called the Israel Defense Forces “sadistic & bloodthirsty,” a slanderous charge reminiscent of medieval antisemitic libels. Similarly, he has said that the Jewish state “kills,” “blows up,” “burns” and “tortures” children in order to “instill terror” in them (see here, here, here and here). The so-called activist, which, according to the FT article is a “hero to many young people around the region,” has gone so far as to describe Israel as a “child killing entity” — a clear example of Jew-hatred according to the widely adopted IHRA definition.
In an even more repugnant Twitter post, El-Kurd claimed — without evidence — 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 some historians mark as the beginning of the genocide of some 6 million Jews mostly during World War II.
Furthermore, while El-Kurd’s claim to fame is that he “reports” on happenings in Jerusalem, he often simply disseminates lies. On May 10, for instance, El-Kurd posted a video to Twitter that he claimed proved Israelis were “readying themselves” to “invade” the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
But the clip actually showed Jews praying at the Western Wall.
El-Kurd also spread a fake story about a stabbing attack by “settlers.”
As if that were not enough, the Palestinian “hero” has stated that he mourns “all of our martyrs” — that is, including terrorists — and downplayed war crimes by Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization. He has also glorified terrorism and incited violence in the past.
Yet, El-Kurd is celebrated by the Financial Times.
And he is not alone.
The news outlet also quotes Riya Al-Sanah, who is described as a “civil society activist.” Her Twitter feed reveals what this at least in part entails: namely, justifying violence against Israeli civilians and security forces. On May 10, she posted photos of Arabs gathering large stones to throw at police atop the Temple Mount, claiming that they had “defended” the Al-Aqsa Mosque “from Zionist setter [sic] attacks.”
This was, obviously, a blatant distortion of the facts.
صباح الخير والكرامة ع القدس وولادها Palestinian youth been prepping all night/morning to defend #AlAqsaMosque from Zionist setter attacks today. #SaveSheikhJarrah pic.twitter.com/eJxqowMdlj
— Riya Al’Sanah (@RiyaAlsanah) May 10, 2021
Related Reading: Media Miss Real Story As Palestinians Riot on Temple Mount
When Arab Israelis in May carried out what have been described as “pogroms” against their Jewish neighbors, Al-Sanah wrote on Twitter that the violent rioters were protecting themselves from “ultranationalist Zionist mobs & Israeli military.” As HonestReporting has pointed out (see here and here), this narrative is demonstrably false.
In the same tweet, Al-Sanah promoted the mendacious allegation that Israel has “saturated” Arab communities with weapons “as a way to facilitate crime & social fragmentation.” However, the Gun Free Kitchen Tables project has found that most illegal guns in Arab Israeli society are either stolen from IDF bases, smuggled into Israel from Jordan or manufactured in the West Bank.
Furthermore, Al-Sanah the “activist” has repeatedly rejected the Jewish state’s right to exist; described attacks on Israeli Jews as “resistance;” called a Palestinian terrorist a “martyr;” and attempted to incite a new Intifada.
Related Reading: Media Draw False Equivalence Between Arab Rioting and Internally Denounced Jewish Response
Despite all this, the Financial Times nevertheless hail El-Kurd and Al-Sanah for being “part of a new Palestinian generation, whose calls for justice echo the same values of equality that fuel global campaigns such as Black Lives Matter.” [emphasis added]
FT, however, is not the only media outlet that has effectively whitewashed the antisemitism and anti-peace activities of these two members of the “next generation of Palestinian activists.”
Over the past two months alone, CNN, Foreign Policy, MSNBC, Le Monde and many other outlets have given Mohammed el-Kurd a platform to lie about the situation in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon Hatzadik, while simultaneously failing to challenge him regarding his antisemitic statements.
On June 2, El-Kurd was even welcomed as a speaker in the Dutch parliament. In his speech, he referred to Jerusalem solely as a “Palestinian city.” Afterward, El-Kurd taunted legislators for daring to ask basic questions regarding the contested house he lives in, and vilified them as “racists” when they suggested that Jerusalem is a multicultural city where Jews and Arabs can live together in harmony.
How can individuals like El-Kurd and Al-Sanah, who promote Jew-hatred and oppose coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians — and, more broadly, between Jews and Arabs — be presented as “activists” committed to seeking “justice and equality”?
Reach out to the Financial Times to demand that the article is either amended to include critical background information on Mohammed el-Kurd and Riya al-Sanah or altogether removed.
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