Politics

Pro-Palestine Author Appears To Defend Protesters’ Right To *Checks Notes* Hijack Airplanes

Airplanes

(Photo by Charly TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)

Ilan Hulkower Contributor
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Pro-Palestine activist Mohammed El-Kurd drew backlash after posting a tweet apparently implying that plane hijackers should not face prosecution or criticism.

“You can’t protest peacefully. You can’t boycott. You can’t hunger strike. You can’t hijack planes. You can’t block traffic. You can’t throw Molotovs. You can’t self-immolate. You can’t heckle politicians. You can’t march. You can’t riot. You can’t dissent. You just can’t be,” he tweeted Monday.

In a recent interview with Jacobin, El-Kurd described Hamas as a movement that seeks to “end the siege” of Gaza, “free Palestinian political prisoners” and end what he described as Israeli apartheid. He also argued that Hamas is wrongly treated as a “delegitimized boogeyman in the Western imagination.”

The Palestinian author also told the outlet that Zionism is a colonialist project, that there should be no Israel “in my backyard” and that ” Israel cannot take out Hamas militarily.” El-Kurd is the author of a book of poems, one of which proclaims that “Jerusalem is ours.”

The tweet quickly attracted widespread mockery.

“Heaven forbid you can’t hijack planes or throw Molotov cocktails and murder people,” StopAntisemitism tweeted.

“Damn bro, it’s truly a sign of how oppressed we are when we don’t allow people to *checks notes* hijack airplanes,” another twitter user posted.

“Wokeness is so out of control they don’t even let you do a 9/11 anymore!!” wrote Armand Domalewski.

Not all users were so dismissive, however.

“Reminder that plane hijackings used to be perfectly normal and were mostly non-violent. 9/11 was an outlier and the first of its kind,” user @FreeRosedark wrote.

The tweet has been tagged with a community note pointing out that pre-9/11 plane hijackings generally involved violence or the threat of violence.

This is not the first time El-Kurd has attracted criticism for his comments on Israel. At a January pro-Hamas rally in London, he told the crowd, “We must normalize massacres as the status quo.”

He later walked back the remarks.

“Obviously not an idiot and would never say that. I was clearly saying we shouldn’t be complacent, we shouldn’t normalize massacres,” El-Kurd tweeted after the rally. “Willfully distorting my words is an indication of your own bankruptcy. I’m allowed to misspeak.”