Mohammed el-Kurd. Photo: Twitter.

If you heard a loud thud on Wednesday, that was our jaws hitting the floor when we heard a shocking confession from one of the media’s most beloved Palestinian activists, Mohammed El-Kurd. El-Kurd says he knows that Israel is not an apartheid state.

In footage of his virtual appearance at Adelaide Writers’ Week that was shared on the Israellycool blog, El-Kurd suggested he uses the loaded term to describe Israel because of the weight it carries in terms of shaping public opinion, and admitted he is “less concerned with the accuracy of the word”: 

I think what the word itself as a word — I’m not even talking about the legal definition of the word “apartheid”; I’m not talking about about the crime against humanity — but the negative word that is “apartheid” and the negative connotation it carries in the psyche of the public. I think it’s capable, and it has been, engineering and establishing a cultural shift in the way people approach and talk about Palestine.

But I’m less concerned with the accuracy of the word. You know, me and my friends have these arguments about like, “it’s settler colonialism,” “it’s apartheid,” “it’s police brutality,” “it’s ethnic cleansing,” “it’s this, it’s that.” I don’t care. As long as there is a conversation happening in which the villain is portrayed clearly, I think that’s good.

The admission, which was made in front of a packed audience at the Australian arts festival, confirmed what many of us have long suspected: pro-Palestinian “activists” like El-Kurd do not care one iota about the truth when it comes to Israel — they are happy to spread demonstrable lies if doing so furthers their twisted anti-Israel agenda.

For anti-Israel activists like “journalist” El-Kurd, the facts don’t matter.

Their goal is to destroy Israel’s credibility with whatever sticks, the truth be damned.

Don’t be their pawn. Arm yourself with the facts. https://t.co/efMvLebfZU

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) March 8, 2023

The fact is, El-Kurd has repeatedly accused Israel of maintaining a system of apartheid with regard to Palestinians.

A quick glance at his Twitter account shows he has used the term countless times in an appeal to people to single out the Jewish state for boycott action. In one such tweet, he praised Ben & Jerry’s for its controversial attempt to stop selling its ice cream in the West Bank and encourages more companies to follow suit, while in another post he accuses Israel of being both an apartheid state and a “genocidal regime.”

Indeed, El-Kurd has made a career out of promoting the apartheid libel to Western audiences and charges up to $10,000 a pop on the lucrative speaking circuit, including numerous appearances at American colleges.

This is despite the fact that El-Kurd, who is the resident “Palestine correspondent” at The Nation and was featured alongside his twin sister Muna in TIME Magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, has a long history of supporting Palestinian terrorism and spreading antisemitic propaganda.

Now that El-Kurd has owned up to the reality of the pernicious apartheid libel, will media outlets stop treating his every utterance as the unadulterated truth?