Mohammad Alkurd has reviewed dozens of chicken spots across New Orleans under the social media moniker “Mo Munchies,” but the best chicken he’s ever had came from his uncle’s food stand on a beach in Gaza. The meal — slow-roasted chicken paired with a fresh fruit smoothie — is one of Alkurd’s most cherished childhood memories, calling to mind the joy of gathering at sunset with family and friends and breaking juicy chicken pieces off the bone.  

Born in Amman, Jordan to two Palestinian parents, Alkurd moved with his family to New Orleans as a child. While he developed a love for the culinary traditions of New Orleans, this enthusiasm for food also stems from his time living in a refugee camp in Jordan, where his dad’s side of the family were displaced, and visiting other relatives in Egypt and Gaza, where other family members were displaced.

“My love language is food,” he said. 

For the past six years, Alkurd has been posting food content and sharing his favorite mom-and-pop shops across New Orleans, with his TikTok and Instagram videos amassing hundreds of thousands of likes. Getting laid off from AT&T this summer — where he had climbed the ranks from technician to management to corporate — was the best thing that ever happened to him, he said, because it gave him the final push to turn his hobby into a full-time gig. Since then, he‘s made a living through brand partnerships and providing social media content strategy for other businesses.  

But in the last month, Alkurd has stopped talking about food. Alkurd was glued to his phone as news spread of the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli citizens, which killed about 1,200 people and took 240 others hostage. In the subsequent weeks, he closely followed Israel’s subsequent military retaliation on Gaza, which has killed more than 14,800 and displaced 1.7 million. On a single day in October, two Israeli bombs killed 55 members of Alkurd’s family. As of mid-November, that number reached 200, Alkurd said. 

Alkurd stopped posting food videos. Instead, the local food influencer has entirely shifted his content focus to the war and the destruction the Israeli military campaign is wreaking on his family. 

“I still don’t know how to properly process what happened,” he said. So he turned his grief into action. “I had to think of a way to not only grieve, but also think about how I’m going to educate my audience.” 

The information he’s shared on his platform is wide-ranging: information about pro-Palestine protests and fundraisers across New Orleans, reposts from other creators discussing the unfolding humanitarian crisis and videos of himself urging his followers to post about Palestine on social media. 

Alkurd has also shared harrowing accounts of how the war is affecting his family. On Oct.19, he posted a video of his grandmother urging her family to not be afraid, even as she flinches at the blare of air strikes: “They ruined our houses and our little ones and our adults,” she says in the video. 

For Alkurd, the strength he sees in his family pushes him to use his own platform to share what his people are enduring. Since Israel began its military campaign against Gaza, the country has limited fuel, water and electricity from entering the densely populated strip of land. A series of telecommunication blackouts have restricted contact between Alkurd’s family in Gaza and loved ones living elsewhere. He has one uncle who simply sends a photo of his face to family members on WhatsApp when he has cell access, to make sure they know he’s alive. Before the blackouts, Alkurd’s aunt said that what she wanted most from Alkurd was for him to keep talking about Gaza, he recalled. 

In the past eight weeks, he’s gained twice as many Instagram followers than he has lost, netting him about 2,000 new followers. Still, Alkurd said he’s more focused on building a community than growing his follower count. 

Like many people on the internet, Alkurd is wading into a hotbed of polarizing online discourse. The influencer has made comments that some social media users have taken umbrage with.  

In one post, Alkurd critiqued what he describes as the censorship of pro-Palestinian advocates, writing that “the terrorist organization of Israel needs to cease to exist.” He added that the “pro-Israelis” who have been “enjoying the occupation” could return to “wherever they came from before colonizing us.” 

In another post, of a video taken during a recent protest at City Hall, Alkurd declares, “How can we be terrorists when we are victims of a 75-year illegal occupation?” In the video, he also announces that “armed resistance is justified when your land is occupied.”

One commenter responded: “Dude. Justified raping and kidnapping children? Really want to say that?” referencing the approximately 30 children who were held hostage by Hamas and mounting evidence documenting Hamas’ sexual violence against women and girls. (As of Nov. 26, Hamas had released 40 hostages and Israel released 150 Palestinian prisoners, 17 of whom were children, as part of a temporary military pause.) Another commenter wrote: “those who continue to believe that the oppressors are right are oppressors themselves who have never been oppressed a day in their life.” Alkurd replied, “Facts!” 

Alkurd takes issue with the focus on Hamas in the ongoing rhetoric about the war, arguing that focusing on Hamas is erasing the root of the problem, which is the displacement of and subordinate status of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. “If you are only looking at Oct. 7, then you have failed,” he told Verite News.

On another post, a user who said they were Jewish wrote that they found foodfluencer’s use of the term “Zionist tool” antisemitic. “History didn’t start 75 years ago, just as it didn’t on October 7th,” the user wrote. “You and I both know this is one of the most multifaceted conflicts ever. I pray for your family everyday.” 

Alkurd tries to delete comments and block followers whose views he finds hateful. Racism and “grotesque misinformation” is where he says he draws the line between keeping and removing comments. “A good community isn’t formed out of hate,” he said. “A good community is formed out of love.” 

Still, food is not absent from Alkurd’s newfound activism. A few weeks ago, he posted “The Ultimate New Orleans Palestinian-Owned Restaurant List,” featuring restaurants, coffee shops and corner stores across the greater New Orleans area. One establishment on the list is Palestinian-owned Pistachio Cafe, which Alkurd recently collaborated with in late October to raise money for Gaza. 

It had only been a few weeks since Lameer Hammad, the cafe’s owner, had opened Pistachio when catastrophe struck Gaza and violence spiked in the West Bank, where she has family. At first, Hammad was hesitant to speak up, but after a week or so of the unfolding violence, she knew she had to do something. So she reached out to Alkurd, and they helped spread the word about the fundraiser.

“If I’m not gonna speak up, who is?” she said. 

The collaboration was in keeping with the cafe’s Palestinian theme, as Hammad has said Pistachio is a tribute to Palestinian culture. When she visited her family in the West Bank, the occupied territory bordering the Jordan River, she was inspired by the coffee shops she saw everywhere, always full and boisterous. 

“I wanted to bring this back here,” she said. And so she opened Pistachio Cafe, where Palestinian art hangs on the pastel-green walls and customers can buy small stickers with drawings of Palestinian journalists Wael Al-Dahdouh and Plestia Alaqad along with their pastries and seasonal lattes. 

For Alkurd, too, working with food has always been connected to his Palestinian identity. Last month, he read some comments about his turn away from food content. “I thought this was just a foodie page,” one person wrote. “Stick to what you are good at,” another commenter wrote.

Alkurd pushed back, stressing that he created Mo Munchies as a way to celebrate the food of diverse cultures across New Orleans and forge a community around food. He always felt drawn to the mom-and-pop restaurants of New Orleans because of his time in the souks, or outdoor food marketplaces, of Gaza, Egypt and Jordan, he said. “I am always searching for that bite that transports me back to my roots in Palestine,” he wrote back.

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Josie Abugov is an undergraduate fellow at Harvard Magazine and the former editor-at-large of The Crimson’s weekly magazine, Fifteen Minutes. Abugov has previously interned for the CNN Documentary Unit...