The Nation magazine’s Palestinian correspondent is being investigated by the London Metropolitan Police after saying "we must normalize massacres as the status quo" during an anti-Israel demonstration last weekend.
Mohammed El-Kurd, who is described as the Nation's "first-ever Palestine Correspondent" on the left-wing magazine’s website, also denounced the existence of Israel and said "we must root [Zionism] out of the world" in his speech at the London rally.
The Metropolitan Police said it was "aware of the remarks" and was "assessing the matter and as part of that assessment will be seeking to speak to the individual concerned." The U.K. has strict laws relating to discriminatory speech and incitement to violence.
El-Kurd initially mocked the police department and critics of his speech, but on Monday claimed that he misspoke and meant to say that "we should NOT normalise massacres" of Palestinians specifically.
The Nation did not respond to a request for comment.
El-Kurd’s comments came amid a spike in anti-Semitic crimes and attempted terrorist attacks. On Saturday, London police arrested six pro-Palestinian activists who were allegedly plotting an attack on the city’s stock exchange. The Anti-Defamation League has reportedly tracked over 3,200 anti-Semitic incidents since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis.
While El-Kurd said on Monday that he opposes "massacres, murder and genocide," he has a long history of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments.
Last February, Princeton University's English department invited El-Kurd to speak at its Edward Said Memorial Lecture, where he defended Palestinian violence against Israelis. According to audio obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, El-Kurd asked the audience, "What else would you do if there is an occupying power in your backyard beating the shit out of your family?"
He appeared to defend Hamas’s slaughter of over 1,000 Israelis in October, saying it was a "response to weeks and months and years of daily Israeli military invasions into Palestinian towns."
In 2021, El-Kurd praised the "martyrs" and the "glory" of Palestinian terrorists on the 21st anniversary of the second intifada.
"Today marks 21 years since the start of the Second Intifada. Glory to those who resisted and sacrificed," he wrote in a Twitter post. "Glory to the martyrs, the women and men whose makeshift weapons confronted artilleries, the children whose stones intimidated tanks."
In other posts, El-Kurd has claimed that Israelis have an "unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood" and "harvest organs of the martyred [Palestinians], feed their warriors our own."
Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, El-Kurd has written just two articles for the Nation, the most recent one in November.
In one article, El-Kurd criticized journalists for reporting that Hamas raped Israeli women and decapitated children during the massacres, arguing that this "feeds on Islamophobic tropes." He said journalists who reported on such atrocities have "blood on their hands."