Mohammed El-Kurd

This guy was a sitting city councilman who approved and rejected housing building permit applications.

For example, in Jerusalem, where I'm from, in occupied Jerusalem, if you want to build a home and you're 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.

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, even for Palestinians 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,

They're expelling us from our house with the help of the military and the police.

How are they treating you, these New Yorkers?

I mean, with absolute brutality.

We grew up witnessing 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.

I think there's an amazing thing.

I mean, absolutely, it is very horrific and traumatizing, but 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,