Mohammed El-Kurd

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 Jerusalem, what we deal with is home expulsions 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 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.

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?

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 to exist?

Human beings have rights.

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 from their homes.