Subscribe Today
Request a Clip
American activist and TV personality Marc Lamont Hill had a conversation with U.S.-based Palestinian writer and activist Mohammed el-Kurd at a Philadelphia bookshop café on March 10, 2025. El-Kurd said that the events of October 7 taught Palestinians the same lesson as plane hijackings and suicide bombings: that only through acts of violence will they garner world attention. He added, "I think Palestinian resistance factions are acting accordingly." El-Kurd explained that in the past, he was careful to distinguish between Israelis or Zionists and Jews. However, he pointed out that Israelis themselves fight under "what they call a Jewish flag" and claim Israel as the only Jewish state, while critics of Israel are expected to make that distinction.
Speaking about the arrest of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, el-Kurd noted that many Jews and non-Jews claimed such acts would not make Jews safer. He argued that this discourse suggests that antisemitism is more evil and dangerous than all other forms of racism. El-Kurd compared the Confederate flag, the ISIS flag, and the Israeli flag, saying that people would find it "a bit problematic" to have the former two flags in a church or mosque, yet many synagogues display Israeli flags.
Marc Lamont Hill: "Talk to me a little bit about the post October [seventh] logics that we should be thinking about and taking up as we talk about this possibility of resistance, liberation, and self-determination for the Palestinian people."
[...]
Mohammed el-Kurd: "What October 7 has taught us is what plane hijackings have taught us, what suicide bombings have taught us, and what all of these other things have taught us, is that the world is telling us, time and time again, that the only times we are going to put you on the screen, or we are going to listen to you or talk to you is going to be when you commit acts of violence. That's the kind of message the world is sending us, and I think Palestinian resistance factions are acting accordingly.
[...]
"I would always make disclaimers to these diplomats, as a child, that I don't hate Jews, I understand antisemitism, that we make a distinction between Israelis... Zionists and Jews, bla bla bla. But that burden – again, it's not my responsibility, I should not be in cross-examination, I should not be in the hot seat.
[...]
"The [Israeli soldiers] march under what they call a Jewish flag, they fight under the banner of what they call a Jewish army, they do everything in the name of Judaism, and they gloat about it. They say they're the only Jewish state in the world, they are the only Jewish army in the world, and yet we are asked to make the distinction.
[...]
"So today, in the discourse about the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil the Columbia student, there have been so many well-meaning Jewish people and also non-Jewish people, who have been saying that this kind of behavior, this crackdown, does not keep Jews safer.
[...]
"[All of this] is telling us that there is nothing more evil, there is nothing more dangerous, or there is nothing more profane than antisemitism. It creates a hierarchy, in which certain racisms are worse than others.
[...]
"I think it would be a bit problematic if churches had Confederate flags in them. I think it would be a bit problematic if mosques had ISIS flags in them, and yet you go into any random synagogue and there is an Israeli flag. That's f***ed up!"
Latest Clips
