Muna and Mohammed El Kurd: 100 Most Influential People of 2021
On Wednesday, TIME Magazine released its annual list of 100 most influential people. This year’s list includes Palestinian activists Muna El Kurd and Mohammed El Kurd.
The Palestinian twins came to popularity in May as the Israeli occupation forces increased their violence and aggression towards Palestinians, attempting to forcibly uproot residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, where they live, in favor of Israeli occupation settlers.
Muna and Mohammed, both longtime activists in various ways, protested the expulsion on a local level as well as internationally via social media.
Many of their videos- which displayed the realities on the ground and their own analyses- went viral. Combined, the two have nearly 2.5 million followers on Instagram alone.
The twins have been described by the magazine as having “provided the world with a window into living under occupation in East Jerusalem this spring,” which has helped “to prompt an international shift in rhetoric in regard to [Israeli Occupation] and Palestine.”
Both have appeared on many US news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, and Democracy Now, to address the IOF’s and settlers’ recent violence in Sheikh Jarrah.
The two activists were described by TIME as “charismatic and bold” for challenging “existing narratives about Palestinian resistance through viral posts and interviews, humanizing the experiences of their neighbors and pushing back against suggestions that violence was primarily carried out by Palestinians.”
The Kurd family is among a handful of Palestinian families that face a forced uprooting from their Sheikh Jarrah home, located in rightful Palestinian territory, East Jerrusalem.
The Kurd family have had their homes stolen by settlers multiple times, including in 2009.
Under International Law, the Israeli Occupation has no legitimate jurisdiction over Palestinians or their homes in East Jerusalem.
The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is in occupied East Jerusalem, which, like all other West Bank cities, was under Jordanian sovereignty till the Israeli Occupation took it in 1967 and annexed it in a decision that was not recognized by the international world.
Jewish settlers took homes in Sheikh Jarrah with the help of the courts, claiming that Jewish families lived there and fled when the Israeli Occupation was created in 1948.
The Israeli occupation refuses to return property and homes to Palestinians who have lost them in Jewish-controlled areas.
Jordan built housing in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to house the Palestinians who were displaced in 1948 and has lease contracts to prove this.
According to documents published by the Jordanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the documents belong to 28 families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood that were displaced due to the 1948 war.
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