Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon: Reconciliation over revenge

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1:54Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. Hello, I'm BBC presenter Rajan Datta and this is the interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. I want to get freedom. I like their freedom. A gender equal world would be a better world for men too. We need this is fire. We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end.

2:37For this interview, I met Palestinian and Israeli authors and peace activists Aziz Abusara and Maoz Inon in the BBC studios in London. Mao Zedong's parents were killed during the Hamas attacks of October 7th. Aziz Abu Sara's brother died after being detained for nearly a year in an Israeli military prison. Together, they forged an unlikely friendship across the Israeli-Palestine divide, becoming leading voices for reconciliation, arguing that peace can only be built through empathy, dialogue and a recognition of each other's humanity. Their new book, The Future is Peace, chronicles their eight-day drive across Israel and Palestine through checkpoints, holy sites, refugee camps and separation walls.

3:27Aziz Abusara and Mao Zedong talk about loss, forgiveness and why they remain hopeful despite the devastation of war.

3:36Aziz Abu Sarah:The first step in reaching a shared society, in reaching a shared future, is to look to the other in the eye and recognise him. Listen to his pain, to his suffering, to his loss. Not necessarily agree on everything, but just recognize and acknowledge the pain, the suffering, the trauma. Hear the dreams and aspiration. And then start working together to create and envision a shared future. The future's peace would never have happened if we didn't show each other empathy. When I reached out to Maoz, that was an act of empathy. When Maoz was on BBC a week after his parents were killed, saying, I'm crying for the children in Gaza, that was empathy.

4:19And because of that empathy, we're able to do so much together and we're stronger together. We cannot end this conflict each alone.

4:30Welcome to the interview from the BBC World Service with Aziz Abusara and Maoz Inon. I lost my brother when I was 10 years old. He was arrested a year earlier by Israeli soldiers from our home early morning and was taken to prison where he was tortured because he refused to confess the charges of throwing rocks at soldiers. And soon after he was released, he died from his internal injuries. I was at that time 10 years old. And as you can imagine, I was very angry. I was very bitter. And then you add to it living under occupation where first time I think I was shot at, I was seven or eight years old.

5:13And this has continued for a while. And I continued on that path of anger and wanting revenge until I was 18 years old. You were very close to your brother, right? Yes. So I'm the youngest of seven. I'm what you call the oops child. And he was nine years older than me. He was just a brother older than me. He was the person who took me to school on my first day in school. He was the person who came and helped me when I was bullied in school or by other kids. He was the person who protected me. We even shared the same bed. We all, the brothers slept in the same room and me and him had the same bed.

5:52We fought over television stuff though, always. He wanted to watch more for adults and I wanted to watch cartoons and he didn't care much for cartoons. And Malz, tell me about you, your parents' situation.

6:06Aziz Abu Sarah:Yeah, so my parents were among the first victims of the Hamas attack on Saturday, October the 7th. For the last 20 years, I'm living in Binyamin, a small town between Tel Aviv and Haifa. And early morning, my father shared a message on the family WhatsApp group that there is a war. They can hear the shooting, the shouts, the bombs and the sirens. and I woke up a few minutes after he shared this message and I called him. Basically, he shared again what he wrote in the message that they locked the house and they are in the safe room. I could hear my mom in the background, so I just told him, Daddy, I'm just waking up.

6:41Aziz Abu Sarah:I'll get dressed, drink coffee, and I'll call you soon. For the meanwhile, tell mom that I love her and I love you and talk to you soon. So while dressing up, I could see on social media that the wall was literally falling. So I called my father again, maybe five minutes after speaking to him, and this time there was no answer. So I called my mum and again there was no answer. I woke up, my three sisters, my young brother, again who's based in London for the last 12 years, and we tried to reach our parents, their neighbours, no one picked the phone till about four in the afternoon when one of the neighbours picked the phone and he told us that my parents' house is burned to ashes with two bodies inside.

7:20And your parents were some of the first to be targeted and killed in this attack. Yes. Now, the natural reaction to that would be a sense of desire for revenge. How did you deal with that?

7:34Aziz Abu Sarah:So we have decided to start the Shiva, the seven way of mourning in the Jewish culture, to start it Sunday morning. And on the second day, my young brother, again, told us we must make a family decision and spread it throughout the world. And he wanted this decision to be that we are rejecting revenge. He explained to us that by avenging our parents' death, we are not going to bring them back to life. We're only going to escalate the cycle of violence, of bloodshed that we both, Palestinian Israelis, have been trapped within for a century. And he said that to cherish our beloved parents, Bila and Jacobi, memory, we must pave a new path, a path to peace and reconciliation.

8:18Aziz Abu Sarah:How easy was that for you? First, it was very easy, I must say, and it took us maybe one or two minutes to make this decision. And I wanted to avenge the deaths of my parents, not with Hamas, but with the Israeli government. Because the Israeli government promised them, promised us, promised the people of Israel that we are secure and safe. That the wall that was the most invested barrier humanity ever created is going to defend them. And the Israeli government said that Hamas is a strategic asset to the state of Israel, and in that way, they are weakening the Palestinian authorities. So I was furious, I was angry, I was bitter, and I wanted to punish the Israeli government.

9:03Aziz Abu Sarah:But from the teaching I received from Aziz and from other Palestinian peacemakers, I learned that the most powerful choice we can take is the choice of forgiveness. As long as we are letting this anger consume us from the inside, we are a slave who are accountable for their death. And so I decided to choose radical forgiveness. Only three days after losing our parents, Aziz reached out to me. And we were friends only in Facebook. We met for maybe 10 minutes back in 2014. And Aziz sent a message maybe three days after October 7th that he's offering his condolences and he's standing with me and with my family in this tragic moment.

9:48Aziz Abu Sarah:I lost not only my parents on October 7th. I lost childhood friends. I lost people I knew my entire life. But I won Aziz. Aziz, you're holding hands at the moment and I can tell you're still close. But Aziz, I want to ask about your journey from this sense of anger and bitterness and desire for revenge. How did that follow through? How did that develop? Yeah, my journey was quite a bit longer than two days in which I have a lot of admiration for always being able to reach that conclusion two days. But I was 10 years old and at 10 years old, nothing really prepares you for such a loss. And it felt like somebody punching me in the face.

10:24And when you're 10 years old and somebody punch you in the face, you don't go, let me take a few steps backward and think about this logically and analyze what is the right and the wrong thing to do. You go the opposite direction. You want vengeance. You want to hit back. And that's how I grew up until I was 18 years old when I realized I refused to study Hebrew in high school because it was to me the language of the enemy. And I realized if you live in Jerusalem and you don't speak Hebrew, you're kind of in big trouble. You're not going to go to college. You're not going to work. And I looked for the best place to study Hebrew, which is Ulpan, where Jewish immigrants go to learn Hebrew.

11:03And I was the only Palestinian in that classroom. I was very blessed or lucky to have a teacher who went out of her way to make me welcome, an Israeli Jewish woman. And that was the first time I met an Israeli Jewish person who treated me like a human being. Most of my interactions were with soldiers and with settlers, and they were not positive interactions. And she recognized my identity. She recognized who I am as a human being. She went out of her way to make me welcome. And that interaction set me up. And this journey that eventually led to me working with Maoz and do the work we are doing and interact and co-authoring the book.

11:44Let's talk about the book and how you got to write it. I mean, what was the purpose for you to make this book, to do this book?

11:52Aziz Abu Sarah:So for me, we start writing the book, The Future is Peace, only a few months after I lost my parents. It was part of my journey to healing. And we've both been on journeys that changed our life. And we both love reading books. So we combine those two loves into The Future is Peace. So the book is a journey. And we are inviting you, the readers, to join us on an eight-day shared journey across the early land. and each day is taking place in a different location and each day is a chapter. So altogether a chapter and we are living within a broken reality. So much devastation, suffering and loss that we experienced in the last two and a half years but we experienced for the last century and we believe that stories can fix, can heal this broken reality.

12:40Aziz Abu Sarah:So we are sharing stories from biblical time, from the Greek mythology, from the ancient history, stories of hundred years of conflict, of our personal life, and most important stories from the future. Now, you wrote separately, as it were, but the book is you together. What was that process like? Did you check each other's writing? And did you say, I don't like that? Did you disagree with each other? So we did write separately, and we wrote together as well, because every chapter has our unique voices. But we also ended almost every chapter with a joint part reflection together. So we had to collaborate on that.

13:17We did read each other chapters. We commented, helped each other here and there, but we never did any censorship on anything, literally anything. But were there situations where, for example, you would use different terminology? I mean, I'm thinking, for example, of security fence, which is what the Israelis would call it, and apartheid wall, which is what the Palestinians would call it. I mean, did you ever have that disagreement?

13:41Aziz Abu Sarah:This is exactly what we are saying and manifesting that we don't necessarily need to agree on terminology, on the past, on the present, but we must and can and are finding a common ground for the future. So instead of arguing how to name this or how to name that, sometimes win the argument, sometimes lose. But while we are in the argument, people are losing their life on the ground. And we say, OK, let's agree to disagree. That's fine. solve this conflict through a dialogue, not through war and bloodshed. And this is how we are presenting both narratives and maybe even other narratives that do exist on the ground.

14:20Aziz Abu Sarah:And we not say who's right, who's wrong, who suffer the more, who suffer less. Both people are traumatized, both people are in pain, and both people deserve a just future. I mean, that leads me on to a major theme of your book, which is the need for empathy. Why do you think it has become seen as a weakness? How do we counter that? I think empathy is a very short supply everywhere in the world, not only in the Middle East. It's true in the UK. It's true in the United States, for sure. And why? Because I think people see empathy as giving up on what you believe. If I empathize with you, that means maybe my story is not valid, that my pain is not valid.

15:06what I've gone through, my experience. And it's the same on terminologies, what Maoz just mentioned. People feel if I don't fight for the terminology that I use, then that takes away my narrative and my story and my pain. And that's not true. I think you are much stronger when you're able to listen, when you're able to empathize, when you're able to show that you care about those who the world want you to believe are your enemy and people want you to believe that you're I mean, you're actually much stronger. And what we realize in our case, I mean, our partnership would never have happened. The future's peace would never have happened if we didn't show each other empathy.

15:46When I reached out to Maoz, that was an act of empathy. When Maoz was on BBC, a week after his parents were killed, saying, I'm crying for the children in Gaza, that was empathy. And because of that empathy, we're able to do so much together and we're stronger together. We cannot end this conflict each alone. But did you get pushback from your own communities or, you know, from friends or whoever for doing this, for working together like this, for thinking like this?

16:15Aziz Abu Sarah:So maybe at the beginning, it was mostly the two of us and few other peacemakers, Palestinians and Israelis. But now the peace movement is growing, is gaining momentum. So we say we are not willing to be divided by Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Jews, Christians. If there should be any division, it should be those who believe in equality, justice and peace and those who don't yet. Do people ever just regard you as being cute, idealists, ineffectual? I mean, we are cute. Let's be clear. But you know what I mean? Nice words, but a small minority. So again, we are a minority, but so is the extremists, Hamas and the settlers.

16:59Aziz Abu Sarah:there are always settlers in the West Bank they are a minority too but they gain power so we don't need to be the majority we need to activate those who are with us the future is peace and it is an injection of agency, injection of hope that your voice matters that you matter and you can change the world and yeah many do tell us you are naive it's a wishful thinking and we tell them, those who believe that bombs will bring quiet that war will defend and war will bring security they are the naive because they failed. They failed all throughout human civilization. So we, Aziz and I, in the peace movement, we are the rational, we are the pragmatic, we are the voice of reason, and we know, based on history, that all conflicts end in the end.

17:43Aziz Abu Sarah:And so will the Israeli-Palestinian.

17:48You're listening to the interview from the BBC World Service.

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20:25And it did strike me too, in their body language, that these guys are genuine mates committed to creating positive change. Okay, let's return to my conversation with Aziz Abusara. and Mao's Inon. Now, I know that you met the last Pope, Pope Francis. Current Pope, Pope Leo II. And you've met him too, right. Absolutely. Wow. So tell me what the meeting with Francis was like, first of all. I mean, what did you talk about? It was a really out-of-body experience in the sense we met him in Verona. There were 12 ,000, 13 ,000 people in the audience in the old Roman arena there. And we got up to speech.

21:07There were other people speaking before us. Everybody gets up, asks a question, sits down, and that's it. And we got up and we're just sure that the two of us have lost loved ones. And we are here together because we reject revenge. And everybody in the arena just gave us a standing ovation. And it was this loud applause and people cheering with us. And so Pope Francis stood up and just signaled to us to come to him. And as soon as we saw the signal, we zoomed in. And he just stretched open his arms and gave us this big, long, to me, it felt like 20 minutes hug. It was a few seconds where I felt this long hug and it felt so like really out of body experience.

21:51And then he talked to us about quite a few things. One, he took a moment of silence and he told everyone in the audience before you speak, take a moment of silence and think about what can you do? not just what the world can do what can you do to help these two people and then two brothers two brothers two brothers it was the first time somebody calls us brothers which again set us on this journey but then he he did two things one he told us about that conflict in itself is not bad you'll always have conflict you have conflict with your wife you have conflict with your children the only place where there is no conflict he told us is uh dictatorship and cemetery and the Cemetery.

22:32Right. And so he said, conflict is fine. It's about what you do with conflict. Do you solve it with violence or dialogue? And then he asked us, what can I do for you? And this shows a humility of leadership we lack today all over the world. Pope Francis was a leader that we desperately needed in time of absence leadership. And we told him that we've been trying to get to the G7 and ask them to adopt this policy of supporting peacemaking in the region, supporting civil society, supporting people like us. And they have not been helpful. They have not even met with us. And he was going to the G7 a few weeks after.

23:10And so he took our demands with him. And guess what? The day after the G7 in the communique, it was word by word what we have requested from Pope Francis. The power of the Pope. Yes. The power of someone who cares. It doesn't have to be the Pope. Everyone has a little bit of agency of what we can do. And the moment people care, it doesn't matter what position you are, whether you are the Pope or whether you are a janitor. You do have a voice. And when we don't use our voices, others speak in our names. I want to talk about the approach that you take. Now, I know that you've worked in conflict resolution and tourism, peace through tourism, is a very major part of your philosophy.