Gaza Poet Mohammed al-Qudwa with Maajid Nawaz
- A Premium Radical Podcast via Resistance Radio by Radical Media.
On Thursday 17th July 2025 Radical Media’s Maajid Nawaz spoke with Gaza poet Mohammed al-Qudwa for the long form premium Radical podcast.
The conversation covered Mohammed’s childhood life being born and raised in what was once Gaza, his love for representing Palestine in international karate tournaments, some readings from his acclaimed poetry, his reflections on Hamas, Israel, and the broader the conflict, and the story of his survival and escape from the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Egypt Today reports 12th January 2025:
“American actor Mahershala Ali reads Mohammed al-Qudwa poem to help the latter to get his family out of Gaza.”
We are please to offer this long form Radical podcast to our premium members as exclusive content. All regular subscribers are encouraged to upgrade here:
Mohammed al-Qudwa
Mohammed Al-Qudwa - found via his website here and on instagram here - is a Palestinian writer born and raised in Gaza City. His work draws inspiration from the details and experiences of everyday life. He studies software engineering at the faculty of engineering, balancing between the academic and creative worlds. He has facilitated creative writing workshops in collaboration with cultural institutions such as the Tamer Institute for Community Education in Gaza and the Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF) in Egypt. He is currently working on a literary project with "Passage transfestival, TDB (CDN), Nest (CDN) theatres across France. His first novel - The Final Destination, was published in 2022.
In his conversation for the premium Radical podcast with Maajid Nawaz, Mohammed reads some of his poetry recalling the horrific experience of many Palestinians who are shot at while standing in bread lines.
Click to play:
Maajid Nawaz reading Mohammed al-Qudwa:
“‘I stumbled over the name of my neighbour, who was bombed two days ago and fell.
When I called for you in the crowd, my voice choked in sorrows.
I did not die a hero, as the news says.
I just died because I wanted to live’.
So this one does have a sad sense to it. Talk to us about what brought this one about?”
خبز بلا تصريح:
تعثرتُ باسم جارتي
التي قُصفت قبل يومين
وسقطت
حين ناديتُكِ في الزحامِ
كان صوتي يختنقُ في الحسرات
لم أمتْ بطلاً كما تقولُ الأخبار
متُّ فقط… لأنني أردتُ الحياة
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “This one is written down when the American aid enter, like to separate the food for the Palestinian people like for this two months, the previous two months, and how they've been killing the people when they are just going to take the bread or taking the flour to make the bread. So I write it actually here, when I've been in France, and I've been thinking about how it could be possible to run, to have bread. And you just didn't go back to your home because you just died there.”
Maajid Nawaz: “So the Israelis were bombing the bread lines?”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Yeah, not bombing, shooting.”
Maajid Nawaz: “Shooting?”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Yes.”
Maajid Nawaz: “Was it through snipers?”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Well, it was in the area of the musa’adaat al amrikyyah, the American AID that they need to enter the food for these two months, after cutting the supplies from March this year, 17th of March, there is no supplies into Gaza when the ceasefire just over 17th of March.”
Mohammed also recalls his harrowing experience of lining up with his hands above his head in long refugee lines, being made to march through armed Israeli military corridors while trying to get out of Gaza as seemingly random individuals are picked out of the line by guards.
Click to play:
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Yes, but you need to have your ID card in the right hand. And in the left hand, anything white, white tissue, white, I don't know, anything white, you need to walk on this for three, three kilo…four kilometres. And until finishing this corridor, it was there was a lot of soldiers that they speak Arabic and they have a microphone, tell the people that anyone, it was in moody way actually: …‘the one who carry the backpack blue backpack and white t-shirt go out from this corridor come here take off all of your clothes!’ and we don't know if they take him or her as a hostage or they will leave him or her. You just need to continue walking. You cannot go and look for them, what they will do.”
In one reading, Mohammed mourns the killing of his best friend Sami by Israeli airforce raids on a hospital where he was working.
Click to play:
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Just to let the people know also, this text is for a friend, he's an artist friend.”
Maajid Nawaz: “So there is a real Sami person that you're writing to.”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “He's Mohammed Sami Kreqa’. He’s a visual artist. He (was) martyred in 17 October 2023 at the Ma’amadani Hospital. He's been working there with the children to inspire them and to work with them, to play with them, in 16th of October. And then 17th of October when they bombed it, we just didn't believe that he just passed away.”
Maajid Nawaz: “He died in the hospital where it was bombed?”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “He martyred, yes”
Maajid Nawaz: “..martyred, yes. I'm sorry to hear that. Let's hear the poem, the extract, if you are able to read it.
Mohammed al-Qudwa:
عزيزي سامي،
السماء محمرة جدًا في مدينتنا،
ولم يبق في هذا العالم شيء أخضر،
عيناك رحلوا.
أعرف جيدًا لو أنك هنا،
وأحتاج أحدنا حطبًا كي نطهو فيه طعامنا
لاقتلعت لنا جذع عينيك.
أعرف لو أنك هنا،
لأخذنا نصرخ بأغاني"الشيخ إمام".
ونبتسم لحال لا يروق لنا.
نبتسم لأننا سويًا..
Dear Sami,
The sky is so red in our city,
There's nothing green left in this world,
Your eyes are gone.
I know very well - if you were here,
and one of us needed firewood to cook our food with,
you would have plucked out your eye sockets.
I know if you were here,
we would be screaming ‘Sheikh Imam’ songs.
And smiling at a situation we don't like.
We would smile because we're together.
Maajid Nawaz: “It's beautiful. I'm going to read the English for people. If there's any word you're not comfortable with in what I read, let me know and we can readjust the word. But I do want our viewers and listeners to have a sense of what you've just read there. And of course, to remind everybody, this is Sami, who, as you're saying, Mohamed, was martyred while looking after children in a hospital. Which hospital was it again?
Mohammed al-Qudwa: '“Al-Ma’amadani Hospital.”
Maajid Nawaz: “Right. And the hospital was bombed, was it?
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Yes, on 17th October, 2023.”
Mohammed al-Qudwa with his late best friend Mohammed Sami Kreqa’
Mohammed also explains how frustrating it is for everyday Palestinians to have to shake off the spectre of both Hamas and Israel.
Click to play:
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “…the people they just go out against Hamas and ‘we need to accept anything to finish and end over this war!’…And imagine that you are Palestinian and you take your notes from the Israeli government, you will be absolutely a spy. So they don't need you to go against Hamas. But they published that: ‘yes, go out against Hamas!’ Because if you went now out, you will be a spy for Israel.”
Maajid Nawaz: “So if I've understood you correctly, you're saying there was an indigenous Palestinian Gaza movement to criticize Hamas to protest Hamas. And then when Israel decided to support that, it undermined that movement because it made the movement look like they were siding with Israel. And actually, people that are critics of Hamas would be better without Israel supporting them publicly, and even privately.”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Of course. Yeah, of course, because if I just tell you that Israel support this liberation, of course, you will be as the one that: ‘OK, no, I'm not a spy. I don't need to go for this protest against Hamas’. And this is actually what happened, because the first post that all of the writers, all of the people that they understand the situation very well, they posted that: ‘don't worry if the Israeli government published that, they will publish it because they don't need you to go against Hamas’.”
Maajid Nawaz: “Yeah, they benefit from Hamas being supported, you're saying?”
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “In some way, yes.”
All this is done while Mohammed appeals to listeners not to project heroism onto Palestinians, who simply want to live.
Click to play:
Mohammed al-Qudwa: “Yeah, because all the news, they just need to put us as heroes. But we are not heroes. We are just a human. We need to live a life. When you meet someone: ‘you are from Gaza! Oooh.’ No, I'm just a human. I'm just a man. Okay, I'm surviving now. I survived from a big genocide. But in the reality, I'm just a man. I'm just a human. I'm not a hero. I don't need to be a hero. If there is no war, I will not be a hero. I don't need to be this hero in your eyes. I need just to be as a normal man walking in the street.”
In a particularly sobering extract, Mohammed reads the below from a poem he wrote to his imaginary future child.
عزيزي،
لا تقلق إن غبت عنك يومًا،
لا تبحث عني،
ستكون أنت خارج هذه المدينة،
وأنا هناك، بين الركام، عالق.
Dear,
Don't worry if I disappear one day,
Don't look for me,
You'll be outside this city,
And I'll be there, stuck in the rubble.
Premium members of Radical Media are able to listen to the long form podcast between Maajid Nawaz and Mohammed al-Qudwa at the top of this page.
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Our conversation with Mohammed al-Qudwa is Radical Media’s eighth premium members’ podcast.
Our first was with American public commentator Sam Harris, which focused on Maajid Nawaz’s political objections to Sam Harris’ ongoing public support for the precedents sought by imposing Covid mandates.
Our second premium podcast raised epidemiological critiques to Covid mandates and was held with a signatory to the Great Barrington Declaration, Stanford’s Professor Jay Bhattacharya.
Our third podcast a personal and political exploration of World Council for Health Dr Tess Lawrie’s life and career to date.
Our fourth premium Radical podcast was with Dr Wilson Sy, who has published peer reviewed statistical analysis raising serious concerns about systemic euthanasia in the UK using end of life protocols, known as the Midazolam scandal.
Our fifth premium Radical podcast was with Lois Perry, who is the Executive Director UK/Europe for the Heartland Institute. Lois formerly resigned as Leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and before that had been the founder of Car26, an organisation opposed to Great Britain’s headlong direction towards Net Zero by 2030.
Our sixth premium Radical podcast was with with Dave Anderson on his new book ‘The Real Black Agenda: Why I’m Done Asking and Busy Building’.
Our seventh premium Radical podcast was with Bek Lover on his Albanian roots and history, his American-Muslim identity and then on to the Middle East war between Israel and Iran.
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