A prominent anti-Israel activist called to "normalize massacres as the status quo" during an anti-Israel rally in London on Saturday.
The remarks were made by Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian Arab activist with a history of antisemitic statements who has spoken at prestigious universities, including Harvard, Princeton, and MIT.
“I dare you to look into the eyes of a Gazan child and tell him you tried your best,” he said. “Our day will come. But we must not be complacent. Our day will come. But we must normalize massacres as a status quo.”
The police have begun looking into the speech given given the appearance of an endorsement of mass murder.
“Officers are aware of the remarks, the commentary surrounding them, and the subsequent statements issued by the speaker,” Metropolitan Police said. “They are assessing the matter and as part of that assessment will be seeking to speak to the individual concerned.”
El-Kurd claimed in response to the uproar over remarks that he misspoke and meant to say that massacres cannot be normalized. However, he attacked his critics rather than apologize for the words that actually came out of his mouth.
El-Kurd used eliminationist rhetoric elsewhere in his speech, saying that “Zionism is apartheid, it’s genocide, it’s murder, it’s a racist ideology rooted in settler expansion and racial domination, and we must root it out of the world.”
He also called Zionism a "death cult."
El Kurd has maintained his consistent anti-Israel rhetoric since the Hamas massacre of October 7, when terrorists murdered over 1,200 people in southern Israel and took over 240 people hostage. In the immediate aftermath of the massacre he blamed Israel for the massacre of its own people, writing on X (formerly Twitter): “Occupation, colonization, and land-theft are the root cause of the ‘conflict.’ Everything else is retaliation.”