How to Be a Better Human - How peace can persevere (w/ Aziz Abu Sarah)

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

It’s extremely difficult to move past anger and hurt driving you towards revenge. War, violence, and suffering are driven by that cycle of emotions. Palestinian author, peacemaker, and entrepreneur Aziz Abu Sarah knows the feelings well, but from his own life experiences, he shares his belief that peace is achievable and another way forward is possible. In this episode, Aziz tells his story and explains his work to bring even the most seemingly intractable conflicts to a resolution that allows for justice, reconciliation, and safety for all.For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to make peace in a world that is filled with conflict. Sometimes the answer is big and dramatic. It's a signing of accords or two governments negotiating a settlement. But other times, the answer is smaller, more granular and individual. It's tiny bits of progress that accumulate over time into something bigger.

and individual. It's tiny bits of progress that accumulate over time into something bigger. Today's guest, Aziz Abusara, runs a travel company when he is not working as a peace activist. And those two occupations might seem very far apart. But as Aziz explained in his TED Talk, they're actually quite connected. Because to have peace, you need to be able to see the world differently. Here's a clip from Aziz's TED Talk. see the world differently. Here's a clip from Aziz's TED Talk. I worked in 70 countries and peace and conflict. And everywhere I worked, I found that we share the same problems. The cause of conflicts are the same. It's lack of recognition, not willing to understand each other, historical narrative, and not having a shared vision for our future. And not doing those things is a fatal mistake. We live next to each other,

and yet we are so divided. We cannot talk, we cannot meet, we cannot have a conversation. There are roadblocks, there are checkpoints, there are walls that divide us, there's societal pressure that makes us not being able to talk to each other. In 2009, I co-founded Mejdi Tours and later Interact International with my Jewish friend, Scott, to do that, to give a context, a place where we can build a movement of citizen diplomats, where you can have dual narrative tours, an Israeli and a Palestinian co-leading a tour, and then in many other dozen of other countries. So we can find a framework. We can say, dozens of other countries. So we can find a framework. We can say, how can I learn from you? What is it that we can push each other to do? Maybe that's the question. What have we learned from each other? We're going to be back with Aziz in just a moment. He has so much to say

that speaks to this current moment, but also to how we handle conflict more generally. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. Today, we're talking with Aziz Abusara about how to create peace and navigate conflict. Hi, I'm Aziz Abusara. I'm from Jerusalem. I'm Palestinian. I'm the CEO of Majdi Tours and co-founder of Interact International. And I define myself as a peacemaker. You run this tour company. You've traveled. You speak about peace.

Before I read your book, Crossing Boundaries, A Traveler's Guide to World Peace, I didn't necessarily think of travel and peacemaking as the same. It seems like after reading your book that you really do see those as two different sides of the same coin. And I hope you do now too, Chris, right? Absolutely. Very persuasive book. Very well written and convincing book. Yeah, I mean, this year we're expecting almost 1.6 billion people to travel internationally. 1.6 billion people to travel internationally. 1.6 billion people. And I keep thinking,

if those 1.6 billion see their travel as an act of diplomacy and as an act of peacemaking, and use our travel to overcome some of our stereotypes, we all have them, and we all need to overcome them, and travel is fatal to stereotypes. If we able to connect with someone who's different than us, hear a different narrative, the impact on not just each of us, the impact on the world is beyond our imagination.

I was last month in Kenya and I went to Nairobi and I met this amazing guy. His name is Typhoon. He's a tour guide. He was a street kid at ninephoon. He's a tour guide. He was a street kid. At nine years old, he became a street kid. And he's now 24, 25 years old. And so I did a tour with him and it was my favorite tour I did in Kenya. But he told me something at the end. He

said, I can't afford traveling around the world. I see the world through being a tour guide. And so when I guide somebody, I don't just tell them about Nairobi and what's special about Nairobi in my own life and how I went from being a street kid to a criminal to spending time in prison to becoming a tour guide. I also learn from the people who come to here. It's an exchange. And too many of us don't think of it as an exchange. And when that exchange happened, that's an act of peacemaking. That's an act of diplomacy. That's an act of friendship. And you stay in touch with these people because they touch your life in a way that it just

doesn't end the moment you leave the country. In your book, you talk about how of all the journeys that you've taken and you've traveled to more than 60 countries, how traveling across the town that you grew up in and deciding to take a language class felt like the longest journey of your life. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Yeah, I think when we think of travel, we think how far can I go and how, you know, how many flights can I get to and what's the longest amount of miles can I go? However, in reality, I feel that trips that impact us the most are the ones across the street. Because you get to meet your neighbors who you don't know.

And it's things that are close to you. It's things that affect you. It's things that trigger you. And for me, growing up as a Palestinian in East Jerusalem, those things that triggered me, growing up as a Palestinian in East Jerusalem, those things that triggered me, I never met an Israeli Jew and had a conversation with them, just a person to a person, a human to a human,

and not connected to the conflict directly. And crossing the street and going to West Jerusalem, which is walking distance from my home, was terrifying because I never felt that's a place I can be comfortable at. And then there I met with Israelis and with Jews in my Hebrew class. I was the only Palestinian in my class and I expected no one would like me. I thought everyone's going to be looking at me and going like, what is this Arab doing here kind of thing. And instead, I ended up meeting this most amazing Hebrew teacher

who welcomed me even in Arabic when she realized, I think, how uncomfortable I was. And then I started talking to the other students. And day after day and week after week, I started building these amazing friendships and changed my life forever. I think for some people who hear that, right? Like, oh, you chose to take a Hebrew class. That sounds like you were already looking for that. And yet that actually isn't really what the case was. You chose this very like practically. Yeah. If you live in Jerusalem and you don't speak Hebrew, it's a game over. You're not

going to be able to work. You're not going to be able to go to college. It's a language that's required for everything in Jerusalem. But my brother was killed when I was 10 years old, killed by Israeli soldiers. I decided I'm not learning the language. Even though it's required, this is not okay with me. I was so angry that I was like, I didn't learn Hebrew, even though it was mandatory in my high school. I still passed all my exams, although I probably shouldn't tell people how in case any students are listening. But at 18, I realized that was a dumb decision because now I need to go to college and I need to work. And if I don't learn the language, that's just not going to happen. And so it was totally out of necessity.

Can you just paint a picture for people who aren't already familiar with your story of where you were before you took that first step? Like where you came from, why your thinking was the way that it was? Because I don't think it's justifiable to say we have to start by saying we're all okay, rather than saying we have to acknowledge what's happened as well. You're absolutely right. There's a lot of injustices in the world. There are a lot of problems around us and we all go through painful moments and it defines who we are. And for me, I grew up in the first intifada. I grew up in the first Palestinian uprising and I didn't realize how abnormal my life until many years later. And I started meeting people like you, Chris, who would tell me their school years are different than my school years. Like my mom gave me an onion when I

went to school because I was afraid of tear gas. And tear gas makes you suffocate. And I told my mom, I don't think education is worth dying for. And I was seven, eight years old making this case to my mom, why just education is a terrible idea. I should quit school, this tear gas thing. I'm not willing to go through it. And she gave me an onion because if you put an onion close to your nose, it actually could help you not suffocate. And so that's just an example of what it means to grow up in that reality. And that reality makes you angry.

My brother was arrested when I was nine years old. He was 18 and he was beaten up in prison and ended up dying as a result of internal injuries. He was 19 when he died. And I grew up with these images of the Israeli soldiers breaking into our home and arresting him. And I went from being an astute and good kid to being angry, being bitter. And all I could think about is revenge. I felt there's no choice. If somebody kills your brother, then you are a bad person if you don't think of revenge. And so peacemaking seemed the dumbest idea in the world.

Like if somebody talked to me about peace when I was 10 or 11, I'd punch them in the face. I think it's unrealistic. And then at 18, when I was studying in that Hebrew class, I realized for the first time that I do have a choice, that I do have an agency, that regardless of what other people do to you, you make your own choices. And that actually, every time I chose to hate, I chose revenge, I chose that path. I was being a slave to the person who killed my brother. And not only did he kill my brother, now he's also ruining my life. He's controlling my life. That was such a redeeming thing, going beyond realizing that I can forgive, not because that person deserves it, but because I choose to forgive. And forgiveness is

kind of powerful because you don't need the other person to collaborate with you to forgive them. For peace, you need two sides, but for forgiveness, you only need one. And it doesn't condone, But for forgiveness, you only need one. And it doesn't condone, it doesn't accept, but it says, I am not going to let that control my life. And from that point on, this has become what I want to work for is bring people together and hopefully stop what happened to me from happening to other people. I've heard you talk many times about your father and the example that he played for you, because he's a person who, of course, has many grievances, very legitimate grievances that could have led him to be bitter and hateful. And instead, he always pushed you and the entire family towards an idea of taking the high road and reconciliation and controlling emotions in a way that often was really difficult.

And I think you disagreed with many times. One of the moments that I wanted to talk about is not a moment between Israelis and Palestinians, but actually a moment where you caught a thief in the house. It's one of the craziest things because I was with my parents, my brother calls and he says, I caught the thief in my house. I locked him in a room, come to my house as soon as possible. And so I get there with my dad. The whole family is there. All these guys are angry, you know, cousins, second cousins, Palestinian families are big.

I mean, tons of people were there and they wanted to beat up the guy. And my dad walks in, talks to him and lets him go. He gets his name, calls his family, and he lets them know this is what happened. And they sent a delegation basically to speak on their behalf. And in this delegation, they meet with our family. And we go back and forth into a Palestinian conflict resolution tradition. And it's not going to the police. It's not going to courts.

You have elders of the families meet together and go through what do we expect from them. They accept that their son did what he did. Basically, when he got in to steal stuff, he thought he had enough time. So he decided, you know what? Why not get a joint and smoke a little bit? So he smoked his joint, fell asleep,

and that's how my brother caught him. He was young, maybe younger, 18 years old. And so we're like, this kid needs help. That was one. And they said, OK, we'll get him help. We'll check him into a place to help him get over whatever he's going through. The second thing, he shouldn't come into our neighborhood. And they agreed to that for a few months just for emotions to go down. We don't want any confrontation between him and the young people

in our family. But it ended with money because there's the civic settlement where they have to make a payment. And it starts with how terrible the crime is. So it starts with a very high amount, started like a million dollars or something like that and you keep going down it's through this process of honoring different prophets and god and respectable people here so started because of god it goes down to half a million and then it goes down to 200 because of moses and because of jesus there's a lot of prophets in is. So eventually it ends up down to like $20,000. And they say, okay, we'll collect it. The whole family has to collect it. So cousins, brothers, everyone. And they bring it to us. And me and my brother, I remember just thinking, this is fantastic.

20,000, we're going to go crazy. Like what are we going to buy? Where are we going to travel? It's money we didn't count on. And my dad goes, no, we're giving back the money. And both of us were like, what do you mean you're giving back the money? We just got 20,000. Who gives back 20,000? This is absurd. And my dad goes, yeah, we have to give it back. And he explains to us that, you know, look at us.

We are a big family. I have 20 plus nephews and nieces. He looked at us and said, you guarantee that none of your nephews and nieces going to do something stupid. If people remember you as those who forgive, they will forgive you when one of our kids do something dumb. But if they remember you as the people who punish those who make mistakes, them. But if they remember you as the people who punish those who make mistakes, they'll punish us as well. And so I'm like, I don't like that. But okay, fine. I get it. At that point, I was too fixated on the money. I asked him why then keep the money like he had them give us the money and he kept it for a few days. I'm like, why did you do that? You could have just forgiven them on the

spot. He said, no, if I had forgiven them on the spot, they would not have felt the pain of losing the money or the gratitude of giving them the money back. So by making them collect the money, feeling they lost it, and then keep it for a couple of days and then go back and give it to them, that made them understand the gesture

a million times more than just forgiving them on the spot. So I often think what brought me into conflict resolution and peace building, and even though it's not my dad's job, there's a lot of what he did that I watched growing up that has taught me so much. And this is one of those moments. We're going to take a quick break, but then we'll be right back. And we are back. TED Talks are normally solo, but Aziz came on stage with his friend, the Israeli peace activist Ma'uz Inan, and they had a conversation

describing the tragedy of October 7th and their work in pushing for a different path forward, rather than bloodshed and suffering. Here's a clip from their talk. The first voice that you're about to hear is Ma'uz. You know, it was only four days ago, last Thursday, we buried the remains of my parents. My mom was burned so badly, she could not be identified. I lost them on October the 7th. I lost so many of my childhood friends, their parents,

their children. Many were kidnapped to Gaza. I was drowning in an ocean of sorrow and pain. I was broken into pieces. We met only once before October 7th. Even that was for two minutes, maybe. But you were among the first ones to reach out, send your condolences, support, and I will always love you for being there for me in my hardest time. You know, Maoz, when I sent you that message to offer my condolences after your parents were killed, I was surprised by your answer, not just to me, but your public answer. Because you said you're not only crying for your parents,

you're also crying for the people in Gaza who are losing their lives. parents, you're also crying for the people in Gaza who are losing their lives. And that you do not want what happened to you to be justifying anyone taking revenge. You do not want to justify war. And it's so hard to do that. So much easier to want revenge, to be angry. But you are a brave man. You and I met at TED, and you were giving this talk jointly with an Israeli peace activist, Mao Zedon. And the talk is really beautiful. I got a little bit of the sense beforehand that people felt maybe a little bit like this was such a risky subject to have you and Mao's talk. And like broaching these issues was really out there and dangerous. I wonder what you think about that, whether people feel like these topics

are so fraught that we shouldn't talk about them at all. And then about the idea that actually this is kind of core to what it takes to just be humans in community with each other at all. I think conflict avoidance is what causes conflicts to escalate, to even think a conversation about peace, a conversation about coexistence, a conversation about how to talk about these things is dangerous. And it could throw things off. How are we going to deal with it is what gets us to where we are today in the world, where people are unable to talk to each other, where friendships are falling apart, where you see what's happening on some

campuses, if you really want to deal with extremism, wherever it is, the antidote to extremism is us, is showing what's the alternative to it. Ignoring it isn't the solution. And in that aspect, I am very grateful that when I reached out to Ted and said, I think this conversation should happen, not only did they respond, but also had it as the first session and like premiered session there, because I know many communities have been afraid to do that. And in reality, my feeling is they usually suffer more because they don't have any guideline.

They don't have any guideline. They don't have any conversation. They don't have any relationships that has been created that could help in these kind of moments. I think that one of the things that is really scary about, I mean, specifically talking about Israel, Palestine and the ongoing situation in Gaza, it seems like one of the really scary parts is that you're going to say something wrong. It's not possible to not accidentally say something that is offensive or ignorant because

you just don't know. And that's not to say there are people who are deliberately saying things that are inflammatory and offensive. But even if you're trying to do it right, you're going to stumble. I beyond agree with you. I think we know nothing about the other sides in many situations. I looked at numbers in the U.S. shows that only about 38% of Americans have known a Muslim person. That is really low. And if the only thing you get about

Muslims in America is on the news, you're probably terrified of Muslims. They scare you because often, unfortunately, the coverage is not positive. It's only when something terrible happens. And so if you start engaging in dialogue, you will have stereotypes. We all do. And you're going to say some things that are wrong and you might fall in Islamophobic tropes, just like if somebody who didn't know Jewish people might fall into anti-Semitic tropes. I think as long as the intention isn't there and you're willing to learn, we should be gracious. We should be there to help instead of the Katya kind of thing. kind of thing. And oh, here, I found that they said something horrible and use instead those moments as a learning for all of us. Because like I said, we all do it. I told the story at TED about my dad and how his first peace meeting, he asked if the Holocaust did happen. I was leading that organization where my dad asked that question. I could have got fired. Yeah, it's a really loaded and intense moment to have your father, as you're organizing the meeting, ask probably the most tense question possible to say, did the Holocaust really happen?

Yeah. Instead of people getting mad at him, getting mad at me, saying, how could you bring your dad? And he starts saying this nonsense stuff. Instead, one of the Israelis in the meeting, he gets up and says to my dad, I don't expect you to believe in something you never learned about. But if you want, I can help you learn about it. And you make up your mind after I'm not pushing you. And he had his father, who was a survivor from Auschwitz, take my dad and then 70 other Palestinians who had the same question, but were afraid to ask that question because they didn't want somebody to think they're anti-Semitic, even though in their mind, they're like, we don't know, did that really happen or not? They all went to the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem with three Holocaust

survivors and spent the whole day there hearing their personal stories, learning about the Holocaust. And that ended up creating a project that's still happening today in the organization that I used to run, the Parents Circle Belief Families Forum, where Israelis and Palestinians are learning about each other's history,

going and asking and dealing with hard questions, including did the Holocaust happen, but also what happened in 1948 to Palestinian villages? Did people get displaced or not? And not being afraid to ask those hard questions, not comparing pain, not comparing stories, but really understanding. That's the essence of peacemaking. You have to ask those hard questions.

We come from a place of ignorance. We don't learn about each other. So affording each other that grace instead of like, I got something on you is such a key moment for peacemaking. You talk also about how an Israeli friend of yours came to visit you at your house. And it was her first time being in a Palestinian neighborhood surrounded by Palestinians. And she had all these stereotypes in her head house. And it was her first time being in a Palestinian neighborhood surrounded by Palestinians. And she had all these stereotypes in her head about how dangerous it was and how people would want to attack her. And there was a moment where, in fact, the neighbors start banging

on the door and she's really scared. And the reason they were banging on the door was completely different than what she thought. Yeah, it's Sharon. We actually were about to start doing a radio show together. And we did for three years, me and her. And it was her first time coming to East Jerusalem. She was in my house and the door started banging. And she was definitely like, what is going on? Why are people banging on the door? And what happens, there was a fire close to her car. And they were afraid that her car will burn. And even when they say there was a fire close to her car, and they were afraid that her car will burn. And even when they said there is a fire, she thought somebody put a fire there to burn her car in the beginning. And it was the exact opposite. They were like, oh, please tell your guests to move her car because there is a small fire that happened and want to make sure her car is safe. And I can tell you

maybe a million of those stories. The more I spend time with Israelis and Palestinians and they get to know each other, we're not that different. I think we are sold this lie that we are so different and it's us versus them and we must hate each other. We have been divided in a way where you can demonize and dehumanize the other so easily

because you don't know who the other is. And now it's easier in some ways to meet abroad between Israelis and Palestinians than to meet in Israel and Palestine, which is absurd. But when that's the reality, it becomes so much easier for people to buy into this narrative that they just all want to kill you. They all hate you. They all sleep and wake up thinking, and how can I kill somebody? And you'll find a few of these videos online that will show you people who think in that way. And you think it must be everybody because those kind of videos that have individuals who speak that hate language, unfortunately,

Individuals who speak that hate language, unfortunately, get spread much faster than this conversation you and I might be having. So people don't maybe always share it as much as, oh, look, they want to kill us. And when you make decisions out of fear, those are always flawed decisions. And that's how we get to a situation where incredibly smart people, incredibly thoughtful people will say the craziest thing because they are motivated now more by fear rather than are moment of ignorance and emotions get instantly heightened, right? All of a sudden people's backs are up and their blood is pumping. How do you lower the temperature in those moments and get back to communication? You cannot win an argument with somebody who's in that situation. Anyway, you shouldn't try to win an argument. Instead, I try to tell stories. I always resort to storytelling because people can see something, be moved, let their hearts beat differently when they hear a story about the other side that

shocks them and makes them go, wait, but that doesn't fit into my narrative. So if I'm talking to Palestinians, I'll share stories of Ramil Hanan, whose daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, or Ma'oz Inon, whose parents were killed on October 7th, and say, here's two people who don't hate you, who are actually angry about what's happening in Gaza now. And Ma'oz often says, I cry for the children in Gaza, just like I cry for my parents. And they never heard somebody who would say anything like this. And so it really touches their heart. And then if I'm talking to Israelis, I tell them my story. And I said, look, my brother was killed by Israeli soldier. And I'm here not to tell you I hate you.

I'm here to stretch my arm and my hand and say, I want to work with you. I want us to live together. I want us to be neighbors. I want us to care for each other. And that always shocks people because it's not what they expect from the so-called enemy. Stories are the key to all the problems we're facing because it really goes down to bad communication and to propaganda and to misinformation. And the best way to counter all of that is through storytelling. In your book, you have a quote from Ibn Battuta that travel makes you speechless, but then it turns you into a storyteller. Yeah, he's my favorite. First, he was one of the first ever explorers in general. He's lived about 700

years ago and was born in Morocco, in Tangier, and traveled all over from China to India to part of Europe to the Middle East to everywhere. And then he wrote his whole story. And Ibn Battuta said, yes, travel makes you speechless, but then it turns you into a storyteller. And he's absolutely right. Because when you come back from a trip that was all sightseeing, what do you tell your friends? Okay, I saw the pyramids, and I saw this, and I saw this, and that's it. It's the stories that make your trip interesting. It's the stories of the people you meet. It's the stories of what they overcome. When we travel, sometimes we get so much

into the sightseeing mentality that we forget the people. And I think the best thing about every country you go to, every city, every town you visit, are the people who live there and what they offer you, the different sense of humor, the different food, the different stories. It's fascinating. It makes me fall in love with these places. And those are the people I remember. You're also very thoughtful about which stories you're telling and whose stories you're listening to. When you lead these tours, and especially when you lead tours in Israel and Palestine,

you have joint tour guides, an Israeli and a Palestinian. And that, of course, is showing a narrative from an Israeli side and a Palestinian side. You also talk about diversity within communities, too. So it's not like this idea that all Israelis think the same way and all Palestinians think the same way. On one of the tours that you were leading, people expected the disagreement to be between the Israeli and the Palestinian guide. And instead, it was you and the Palestinian arguing over where the site of the crucifixion of Jesus. Both of you are Muslim, neither was Christian, but this was like, you had different perspectives on where the most likely historical site was. I joined the tour that two of my tour guides were guiding, an Israeli and a

Palestinian were going through the Holy Sepulchre. And my tour guide went to a Catholic school as a kid, and I went later on to a Christian Protestant college. And so we both were given a different history of where Jesus was crucified and buried, resurrected. And so the two of us ended up going into this long conversation, debate over where is the exact site of the crucifixion and burial and resurrection. And you have this group, you know, the Israeli guy just sat down and was like, you guys figure it out. I'm not part of this conversation. And you're right. I want my travelers to understand there is no one voice on any of these issues. And I want them to hear

unheard voices. When I plan a tour, normally I like to say I plan the tours in a responsive way. What are the things that we are responding to? What are the voices that are not heard? What are the narratives that are ignored? And sometimes these are major narratives and they're not necessarily like small things. Like I challenge you, you look at the tour to Egypt today, you will find 90 plus percent, if not 99% of the tours,

not meet anyone except their tour guides. The whole trip, one person, you leave the country with one perspective. But there are farmers. Why not meet with a farmer? There are people who work in recycling that I often meet with. There are artists that I bring to meet with people when we are in Egypt.

And, you know, we do the same in Northern Ireland. You have Catholic and Protestant. You do it in South Africa. I have a black and white. But it's in every country. No country is homogenous. And again, this goes back to the idea that wherever you are, you can challenge those set ways of thinking and is actually kind of fundamental to building a more just and

equitable society. It's where you spend your money as well, which is really important. If all your money is going to a big tour company, a big major hotel chain, we are enforcing an injustice in this world. Local people should be part of the travel industry and should be part not only in telling their stories, but also in benefiting financially. You know, we got to spend a fair amount of time together in Vancouver and I had, it was such a pleasure to get to know you and to see your public talk, but also to have dinner with you and talk casually.

And something that I've been thinking about since then, when I think about our interactions, is how there are ways that identity can really get flattened when we talk about these big issues like the conflict in Palestine and Israel. There's this way in which you, for example, can be presented only as this very serious person, right? This victim of the conflict, but also a peacemaker. But you are also so much more than that. You're hilarious. You're funny.

You're complex. You're not any one thing. So how do you personally push back against that? It's a challenge I've faced through my whole career. push back against that? It's a challenge I've faced through my whole career. One, I use a lot of humor in everything I do because that's part of who I am. And if I was as brave as you, I would have done stand-up comedy more often. I've done it a couple of times and man, it is so hard to put yourself out there and hope people will laugh in the first 30 seconds of speaking. Well, certainly if there's one of the two of us that's brave, it may be that neither of us is

brave, but certainly it's not me. You are, you absolutely are. But yeah, I try to definitely show that I am not only one identity. I don't want you to only look at Palestinians with pity or look at us only as victims. We are much more than that. I grew up, like many Palestinians, loving poetry. I started writing poetry when I was seven or eight. It was terrible poetry, but I still wrote poetry when I was that young. I used to call the radio almost every week to read my poetry. Now I'm very embarrassed of the kind of poetry I read on the radio.

But that's how our culture is so different than what people think. And often I get like, oh, your culture is so much a culture of death, which is not the culture I grew up with. You have people like Samiha al-Qasim who wrote, the day I'm killed, my killer will rifle through my pockets and he'll find three tickets, one to peace, one to the fields and the rain, and one to the conscience of a humankind. I beg you, my killer, do not waste such a thing.

Do not ignore these tickets. Take them. I beg you to travel. And I say, that is one of our most famous poets. And it's not a poem about glorifying death. It's telling his killer in a time where he feels so much conflict around him, I don't want this to continue. Even if the price is my death, I don't want you to live in this reality.

And that's what I want the world to know. We're not only victims. Even in these hard moments and looking at what's happening in Gaza and so much death and so in Gaza and so much death and so much suffering and so much pain, if you only see people as victims, if you only see them in one small box, it's much easier also to dehumanize them. It's much easier to not see them as normal people who have dreams, who want to be teachers, want to be doctors, want to be comedians, want to be all these things. And that's what I want people to know about me.

And I want people to know about Palestinians in general, Muslims, Arabs in America. That's where we start. It feels like so much of bridging divides, whether it's during a war or against prejudice or anything, it starts with being willing to see a person as more than you might start by expecting. Because there is this desire to say like, okay, we're going to put you and have you talk within Israeli. And of course, the Israeli will say this, the thing we all know what they're going to say. And the Palestinian will say this, the thing we all know what they're going to say. It leads only to tragedy and further entrenched conflict. So

we have to find ways to have new narratives. And those narratives start by seeing people as they actually are, rather than flattening them into these one line descriptions. I refuse to be interviewed anymore. After October 7th, I can't tell you how many calls I got. It's like, we're going to have an Israeli and you just fight it through. And I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not willing to reinforce that kind of image. To me, one of the really meaningful things that I hear from you and that I hear from Israeli peace activists as well is there aren't two sides here. That is a false narrative.

People being killed is a tragedy and people being oppressed is a tragedy. And you can feel that across both sides. You don't have to present it as it's I'm a Palestinian, so I will only care about these deaths. And I'm an Israeli and I will only care about these deaths. That's the way that people keep dying. We can't get to a better outcome. And that's true all over the world, right? Like if you only care about white people dying, that's a real problem because people do often get mad about the idea of like empathy across the issues. I often tell people, if you need to know the nationality of a victim before you decide if you're for it or against what happened to them, you've lost it. You've lost the most important part of our humanity is if I need to decide if a child who's killed,

first, I need to know if he's Palestinian or Israeli before I feel that it's wrong or not, or I should justify it or not. What has happened to me? Then the problem is me, if that's what I need to know. And I think that's the essence of our conflict. That's the essence of the problem now is too many people, especially in the US, I would say even more than Israel and Palestine, too many people have gotten into this, I want to know who so I can figure out who do I want to justify. I can't accept that as a reality. I think empathy should exist for every innocent person, for every victim, for every innocent life that is being lost. And there are thousands and thousands of those. When my friend Maoz lost his parents, I sent him a message

a day after, because I didn't think, oh, well, he's Israeli. I'm not gonna like, a day after, because I didn't think, oh, well, he's Israeli. I'm not gonna like, that doesn't even cross my mind anymore. And I know anytime something happens in Jerusalem and he calls me to check on my family, he doesn't think, oh, well, let me figure out he's Palestinian. I shouldn't check on him. We got to overcome this mentality. Now, I often ask people to do this. I say, if you see something and you think it's justifiable, that has hurt innocent people because it's your side, switch the sides. Always close your eyes and think, what if it was the other way around? Would I have felt the same way?

And I ask myself that question all the time, because it's a good test to knowing where is my humanity, where is my heart, and to keep myself connected to my values and not to a nationality and not to a political discourse. I want to be rooted in values. That's what's more important to me than anything else. So it's a good test for all of us to do. And I also think that maybe one of the things that complicates this a little bit is that there is a difference between forgiveness, empathy, peace, and justice, that those are not all exactly the same. And we should pursue all of them. But I think sometimes they get lumped together in a way that makes people find it easier to dismiss them all.

So how do you think about those kind of four goals, forgiveness, accountability, peace and justice? How do you think about them in the current situation where it feels like all of them are so far away? Two things you can do without a partner. Empathy, you don't need a partner. And forgiveness, you don't need a partner. So I think those we all should be striving to do, regardless of what's happening. And you see somebody like Yonatan and Ma'oz and these partners and Ramil Hanan, who I mentioned, and they have empathy despite having so much suffering.

So I think that's the first step is learning and pushing ourselves toward having empathy. With peace, if you really want peace to last, it must have some just elements of it. It has to have justice. It has to have equality. It has to have dignity. It must create a different reality. And those who want peace without any of that, which I think what a lot of people wanted

before October 7th, honestly, I've heard politicians talk about it. They wanted quiet. They didn't want peace. They didn't care that people's lives were not right. They didn't know that there was oppression. That doesn't last. It might last for five years.

It might last for 10 years. But it doesn't last forever. There's no way it would. If you really want a lasting peace, you have to also work for equality, for justice, and so on. And then reconciliation is a long-term project. It's not a one-day thing. I just came back from Northern Ireland. It's been 30 years almost for the peace agreement.

And you will hear everyone there says, we're still in the beginning. We are not done. If we take our eyes off the target, we will get back into where we were 30 years ago. Peace agreement is actually only a beginning and we'll work on it for 100 years later. That's how you maintain peace. So it's not a one moment and it's an action. It's not a feeling. If you complaining why we don't have peace, why we don't have hope, then maybe you need

to roll your sleeves and start doing something about it. Well, Aziz, it is always such a pleasure to talk to you. And I really appreciate you making the time to be on the show. It was such a joy. Likewise. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Chris. That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Aziz Abusara. His book is called Crossing Boundaries, A Traveler's Guide to World Peace. And his travel company is called Mejdi Tours. That's M-E-J-D-I Tours.

I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects, at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by Daniela Valarezzo, Ban Ban Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas. On the PRX side, we've got Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Goreville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible. If you're listening on Apple, please leave us a review. That would be great.

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