Mohammed El-Kurd

محمد الكرد

Born: Jerusalem (Sheikh Jarrah), Palestine

Domain: Journalism & Media

Recognition: GLOBAL

Biography

Mohammed El-Kurd is a Palestinian journalist, writer, and poet from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem who rose to international prominence as a chronicler of dispossession in his own community. Born in 1998 on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nakba, he grew up amid an ongoing effort by Israeli settlers to take over Palestinian homes, an experience that became the foundation of his public voice. In 2021 El-Kurd, alongside his twin sister Muna, became a leading figure in the #SaveSheikhJarrah campaign, using social media and direct on-the-ground reporting to bring global attention to the threatened expulsions. Their advocacy and documentation earned the siblings a place on Time magazine's list of the hundred most influential people of the year, a striking recognition for activists so young. He went on to be named The Nation's first-ever Palestine correspondent, a landmark appointment that placed a Palestinian journalist reporting from the ground at the center of a major American magazine's coverage. In that role and in widely read essays, he has argued forcefully for the right of Palestinians to narrate their own story and has challenged what he describes as the failures of mainstream Western media. El-Kurd is also an acclaimed poet; his debut collection Rifqa, published by Haymarket Books in 2021, fused literary craft with political testimony, and he has lectured and given readings internationally, blurring the line between journalism, literature, and advocacy in a way characteristic of a younger generation of Palestinian writers. El-Kurd matters as one of the most influential young Palestinian media voices of his era, a journalist whose reporting from Sheikh Jarrah helped reshape global conversation and who broke new ground by representing Palestine within the American press on his own terms.

Why This Person Matters

Named to Time's 100 most influential people and The Nation's first Palestine correspondent, he is among the most influential young Palestinian media voices, reshaping global conversation through reporting from Sheikh Jarrah.