Soul Boom - An Israeli & Palestinian Walk Into a War: Here's What Happens

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Digging deep into Israel-Palestine conflict w/ Israeli Maoz Inon & Palestinian Aziz Abu Sarah, life after October 7th & Gaza and transforming grief into reconciliation. Is peace still possible? We dig deep into faith, trauma, justice, dignity, and the spiritual courage to imagine a future beyond war. SPONSORS!👇 🛒 Quince: ⁠https://growtherapy.com/soulboom⁠ 🛒 Nutrafol ($10 OFF + FREE shipping!) 👉 ⁠https://www.oneskin.co/soulboom⁠ 🛒 Get 25% OFF Cowboy Colostrum with code SOULBOOM 👉 http://cowboycolostrum.com/soulboom 👉 Fetzer: ⁠https://fetzer.org⁠ 🛒 ZipRecruiter (try it FREE!) 👉 https://ziprecruiter.com/soulboom ⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: ⁠Kartik Chainani⁠ Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Right now, for a limited time, everyone's part of the Buick team, even you. Buick's employee pricing for you event is on now. Get a purchase credit of up to $3,168 on a 2026 Buick Envision. Surround yourself with signature Buick refinement from an available massaging driver's seat to an expansive panoramic moonroof and a stunning ultra-wide 30-inch diagonal screen. Don't miss Buick's employee pricing for you event. Visit buick.com.ca for more details. Is peace possible in the Middle East, really?

It's not only possible, it will definitely happen. And there are only two questions that we should ask ourselves. When will it happen? And how many lives will be lost? All conflict ends in the ends in the ends. So so will the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is what the journey is. There has never been anything like this where we are right now.

The settlements in the West Bank, the bombing of Gaza, the killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians, kidnapping of hundreds more, all in a two-year span. It's gone way too far. There's no turning back. Listen, we don't need to lose more people. Every year we have more people die.

We have more suffering. We have more walls, more checkpoints, more security, more money invested in war, and we have less security and less be Israelis and Palestinians. Are you betraying? Jewish Israel, are you betraying Palestinian Arab by having these conversations? What else should I as a Palestinian do?

Yeah. Without working together, there's no hope. And peace is also one of the name of God in Arabic and in Hebrew. Salam and Shalom. This is the name of God. How did you not let the rage and pain of that on October 7, in 2023, turn your heart to cold revenge. I will start with the vision. So first, I lost my parents on October 7th. They were among the first victims of the Hamas attack.

Where do we stand here on Hamas? I am not that a big fan of race. What? Get out. It's Palestinian. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson. And I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spirit.

Revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Hey, I want to give a very special shout out to our sponsors, Quince, Neutre, Neutre, Venser, ZipRecruiter, links and promo codes on the screen and in the description. Enjoy the show. I lost my parents on October 7th. They were among the first victims of the Hamas attack. And I lost so many of my childhood friends. people I knew my entire life. And only four days after, Aziz reached out to me. Offering his condolences and that he's standing with me and with my family in this tragic moment.

And he knew that Aziz lost his brother early in 90s after he was tortured in the Israeli prison. So if Aziz who lost his brother can reach and stand with me, only four days I lost my parents, we are proving that reconciliation is not just. a fantasy. Reconciliation and peace is already happening between individuals. And we need to make this movement grow, that it's not going to be just the two of us. And we are in the future is peace. We are also offering a roadmap how to achieve that. The first chapter of the roadmap is to dream, is to have vision. Because it says in the Bible, where there is no vision, people perish. And this is exactly the moment we are. So we must be very proud and courageous

to share our dream, to share our vision. And yes, our vision is bold to end the century-long conflict in, not in Israel, between Israel and Palestine and in the Middle East. This is our vision. And that's the first chapter. And the second chapter of the roadmap is to amplify this vision. Because if we'll be silent, those who are, uh, are noisy and loud, they are speaking in our name. And bombs are louder than peacemakers' voice. So we must be very loud. And this is exactly why we co-author The Future is Peace,

why we are here today, and why we are trying to speak in communities, in temples and mosques, synagogue, universities, if it's here in the U.S., but also we've been to the Capitol Hill. In a few weeks from now, we're also going to be in Paris, in London, in Brussels.

Amazing. So this is the mission we took of ourselves to come and tell the world, we, Palestinian Israelis, are coming together. Will you give us a hint and partner with us that together we're going to achieve a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine? So we are not letting the not believer. We don't let the fact that they have no faith in the future to destroy our future. Wow.

That's beautiful. Before we move on, I'd love to hear what you have to say. You casually here mentioned that your parents were killed. I don't know how they were killed. How did that affect you? And how did you not let the rage and pain of that on October 7, 2023, turn your heart to cold revenge? You will be surprised, right?

But I was prepared. I was prepared. Me and my siblings, we were prepared for October 7th to know exactly what to do, how to act and what to say in this tragic moment. How were you possibly prepared? I mean, it caught everyone by surprise. Our parents, our parents who were killed, they prepared us. My father was a farmer.

And it's very difficult to be a farmer in the Negev, in the area they lived. And every evening around the dining, dinner, table, my father will share the challenges of walking in the farm. One day was a drought, and then there was floods, insects, wildfire. Every day there was a catastrophe in the field. And every evening, he will share the... Like the Bible out there. Locusts? It's the... Plagues, droughts. It's the land of the Bible. It is the land of the Bible. And he would say, he will share the challenges. Burning bushes? Burning bushes? I don't know. Wildfire. And as he finished sharing about the daily catastrophe, he will say, next year, I'm going to sow it again.

Because next year will be a better year. I would learn from my mistakes. I will consult with other farmers. I will get the best seeds. I will fertile the land. I will open it for the rainwater to come. And I will so not with prayers and not believing knowing that next year will be better. And in the last 20th, it's also been through a spiritual transformation.

And one of those days I was able to look inside my cells into my DNA. And what is written there is that next year will be better. But it's also written there that it's up to me to make it better. Was this a vision that you had? I had two other vision that I would be more than happy to share. It wasn't a vision. I literally could see. It wasn't a vision.

I could literally to see that each cell of my body. body knows that next day will be better. But I cannot wait for politicians. I cannot wait for generals. I cannot wait for no one else. It's up to me. And my mom, and then I let us say, can I take the mandala from the book? Please.

Yes, this mandala. My mom was a mandala painter. And back in 2016, she gave me this mandala as a blessing. all our dreams can be fulfilled if we have the courage to chase them. And two nights after losing my parents, I had a vision. This was a real vision.

It took me a while to understand and to be open enough to share it with other people. But I was crying in bed at night and my entire body was in pain, I could see the entire humanity crying with me. I could see everyone. We were all crying. tears start going down our face to our bodies and our bodies were wounded from the wall. It was

horrible to see. They were burned. They were crushed and our tears washed and washed our bodies till we were healed. Our tears cured us. And then the tears started going down to the earth, but we could not see anything but blood. The entire land was covered with blood. So we kept crying and crying and then our tears start washing the blood away, purifying the land. And then I could see a path. Like I clearly as I can see you and I can see as this, I could see a path. I could see the path to peace and reconciliation. And I made a decision that in order to heal myself, to cure myself, I must choose this path.

Now, Mao's referenced your brother dying because of the IDF or Israeli security. forces. You were a teenager. I was 10. You were 10. Okay, but you stayed angry for some time. You were not prepared to move instantly to peace. Right. I grew up in Jerusalem. I'm the youngest of seven kids. I went to school. Literally, my first school was inside the old city next to all the holy sites. That's where I played soccer as a kid where probably many of the prophets mentioned in the Bible would have walked around. And my early interaction with Israel and Palestine, the conflict was through seeing soldiers, was it through settlers.

Our town would get raided by settlers, stuff that we still see today on television. I think I was shot at first time when I was seven or eight years old. And my older brother, Thaisir, during Ramadan, we get up early to do the before fast, meal and then the army came into our house israeli army took him from home for allegation of throwing rocks he refused to confess to the charges so he was tortured again something that's at least still happening in the last two years more than 70 Palestinians were killed in israeli prison some through starvation some through torture and by the time he was released from prison he was pretty much dying and soon after he was released, he died in a hospital.

I think Teyzer tried to prepare me. One of the stories I share in the future's piece is right before he died, he asked me, I got, you know, when you have a young, he was nine years older than me, and there's no one between us. So when you have an older brother, you go to him for every problem you have, and I would go to Thysir if I got somebody bullying me, anything. And I went to him and I said, it's one of the kids who stole my marbles. And usually he would march with me and he would go and get me my marbles back.

And in this case, he marched with me to the house. This is just days before he died, to the house of the kid who stole my marbles. And he said, you go in, you get your marbles on your own. And I did that. I wasn't comfortable with it, but I did it. And then when he died, to me, it felt he prepared me that you on your own in this world, that nobody is going to be there for you. And when he died, I was very angry, very bitter, and all I wanted was revenge.

Because if somebody kills your brother and when you're 10, you don't have the ability to rationalize. It's almost like if I walk to you now and I punch you right in the face, the first thing most people would think is to punch back. Very few people would say, let me take a step back and think about this logically. And when you're 10, you definitely don't think in that way. And so I was very angry and I wanted revenge and it took me eight years. the only thing that consumed me is how do you revenge your brother's death until I went to study Hebrew when I was 18 and I met for the first time an Israeli who treated me like a human being. Up until that point, all my interaction with Israeli's Israeli Jews was, I mean, some

soldiers would smile to me at that checkpoint. If you're carrying a gun telling me if I can pass or not, it's still, it doesn't feel you're treating me like a- human being. And I was in this class where my teacher was an Israeli Jewish woman, and she was just incredible. She walked to me. She saw I was uncomfortable in that class. She smiled. She was kind. She spoke to me in the few words in Arabic. And then in the next few weeks, she recognized who I am as a Palestinian. She brought stories about Palestine in the classroom. She didn't see it as me being an outsider in this classroom about Israel. She saw me being a Palestinian as part of that class. and my identity was equally important.

And that put me on this journey that Mao's and I now are walking in together, one person being kind, one person reaching out. Wow. That person had no idea when they were showing you that kindness, that that would help steer you toward having these conversations with the Pope on the daily show, with TED talks all around the world. Yeah. And this was during the Intifada?

This was before the second Intifada. Thaisir died during the first Intifada. Okay. My transformation was around 1998, so it was right before the second Intifada. Okay. Can you explain to people what the two Intifada's were? Yeah, the first Intifada in Arabic means to shake off. We use it to mean uprising.

And so the first Intifada was Palestinian. It started after a few Palestinians were killed in Gaza. And people went out to protest. People were shot, killed. And then young people, especially, would go out to throw rocks at Israeli soldiers and settlers. And it lasted for a few years. It ended with the Oslo Accord. So it ended actually with a peace agreement.

The second Intifada happened in the early 2000s when the Camp David negotiations failed. And then there was this concept of there is no way then to make it happen. Sadly, I think President Clinton had a lot of responsibility in that when he said there was no, there's no partner, it's not working. Because even when negotiations fail, the last thing you want to do. That has been said a lot by the Israeli side and the Western side. We don't have a partner. Right. That has echoed a lot through your book.

Right. We challenge it because it's not true. There's always a partner. There's always a partner to talk to. And the idea you have to wait for somebody perfect is an absurdity. I mean, the peace agreement in Northern Ireland was the main figures in it. People like Jerry Adams, David Trimble, couldn't stand each other. So much so that even after the agreement was reached, David Trimble refused to ever shake the hands of Jerry Adams.

I don't know if he did maybe years later. But when they came here to the White House, he wouldn't shake his hands, even when they signed a peace agreement. But still they were willing. to do it. The idea is we're going to find somebody who we fought all the time is going to hug us and kiss us and say, oh, it's all good. We are perfect partners. That's not going to happen. People are hurt. People have a lot of pain. And we should persevere and not say, oh, well, it didn't work out. So they should have given Arafat more of a chance and just taking more time instead of kind of cutting things short. I think what needed to happen back then, a few things. Mousa and I talk a lot about,

we often go so much into which agreement we're going to have where the line is, but we ignore values of agreements. And the values should be equality, dignity, recognition, hailing, reconciliation, and safety and security. And if those things don't exist, say those again, that is really powerful to hear all those words together. We talked about, let's see if I can remember. Equality, dignity, recognition, healing, safety, and security, and reconciliation.

Those are very important. And I would add justice as well. These things are very important. And any agreement that don't employ these elements is going to fail. And I think Oslo ignored some of that stuff. Oslo was a good first step, but did not follow through. And when you ignore those things, eventually a peace agreement is totally going to fall apart. Right.

We had on the show a wonderful Canadian diplomat and thinker who's a fellow Bahai named Payam Akavan. And he's been involved in conflicts all over the world, Kosovo, and you name it. And he talked a lot about how peace is not just an end to war. Yeah. Peace is deeper than that. Peace is a shared experience of justice and dignity and reconciliation. It's not just, we're going to not shoot bombs at each other. I think people get that mixed up.

That's a ceasefire. Yeah. Which we don't even have right now. But I think you're absolutely right. Peace is much, much deeper. Maybe it could start with a ceasefire, but you've got to go way deeper. You cannot be satisfied only with a ceasefire. fire. And it's important like my father used to do to learn from our mistakes. But we need to

focus mostly on the future to fertile the land, to open it, to get the best seeds. And in our journey, we're investing in the future because we also, there are two narratives on the land, two different narratives, Palestinian Israelis. So we should acknowledge and recognize the other narrative, but not necessarily agree. So if one Palestinian can say regarding the Oslo Accord, it was Israel fault. And one day Israel will say it was the Palestinian fault. It doesn't really matter.

What matter is that we continue to pursue peace. And peace is also one of the name of God in Arabic and in Hebrew. Salam and Shalom. This is the name of God. And unfortunately, many times even religious people would come and ask the same question. You ask your first question. It's possible.

But if it's a Jewish or Arab asking these questions, he's basically doubting his own religion. Yeah. Because in our religion... Is God possible? Yes, exactly. Yeah. And I came, like I told you, I completely transformed in the last two in half years. And now I do believe.

And I'm coming from the most secular family or background. imagine. The most what? Secular. Secular. Secular. Secular. Most secular. I come from the most secular family or background you can imagine. And now you're all in. I'm all in because I've seen it. I've seen it in my vision. And after meeting spiritually, they're faith leader. It's the Pope what God comes there. Yeah. And I do believe now. And both of you have become Catholics. Again, we are meeting for maybe the next Pope. But I do. believe now, not only peace is possible, but yes, that God is possible to. But it's up to us to prove that. We cannot wait for miracles to happen. We need to pursue peace and justice. That's also

two of the only commandments, orders in Judaism that we must pursue. Peace and justice. So it's for all our life we'll need to pursue peace and justice. You know what's interesting. I was looking at this, my also just mentioned, that God's name in Islam and in Judaism, a Salam, peace, shalom. And in Islam, God has 99 names. And many of those names is a name and it's opposite. Can be both. God is both. And in Islam, God is not the opposite. You don't have God is jihad. You don't have God's war. Right. That does not exist. While many of the other names, it's one and its counter. He's the creator and the destroyer. Yes. He can be both in many things, except when it comes to peace and a couple other names, but peace is one of the ones

that doesn't have an opposite. I remember after October 7th, Noah Yuval Hariri wrote an opinion piece, and he had a thesis at its center that I thought was really interesting about, you have two people sharing a land. Both have a story of being victims. both have a story of being perpetrators. Maybe they don't see themselves so much as being perpetrators. But this whole idea that both Jews and Palestinian Arabs have been grossly victimized,

not just by each other, but by all kinds of civilizations going way, way back. But they've also been grotesque perpetrators at the same time. and that tension that that creates where they have these two angry kind of victim states. And I think that there's so much you agree on. And I imagine there's stuff you don't agree on about these narratives of the Holy Land. I can start with that argument.

I can start with that argument. Okay. No, Harare. I think, yes, we both can be victims and we both can be perpetrators. But it's also very important to understand that there are imbalances of power underground.

Israel is a powerful nation with a powerful army. Can bomb Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Gaza. It has that ability. Iran. This fifth most powerful army in the world. Yeah. Yeah. And it has shown that it can do that.

And it has, you know, very powerful defenses. And it can, since a ceasefire, more than a thousand people have been killed in Gaza during a ceasefire. there is a power dynamic and there are imbalance and that we should talk about. There are things we can do to deal with that. And I think people who care about Israel should be able to say, like we're seeing some people now saying, this is not sustainable. You can't continue to do this. You can't get in one war after another, after another after another. There are things we definitely disagree on. You can't agree on everything. And I think that's,

That's healthy. If we agree, then everything, it would be a little bit weird that we do. Our narratives, there are many things. We might not agree in everything or disagree in everything. Our narratives, but what Palestinians look in history and what Israelis look at history, we see different narratives. Most Palestinians, for example, would tell you that you cannot trust Israelis when it comes to a peace agreement. There will always break every peace agreement and look at the ceasefire.

they say they'll have a ceasefire and they don't. But you have to also challenge your own narrative. You have to doubt your own narrative. Maoz yesterday we were doing a talk and shared his version of that and it'll be great if he does again. So I also have to tell him, look, there was a peace agreement with Egypt and it worked. There was a peace agreement with Jordan and it worked. So it's not always, oh, we can't trust Israel ever. This is not about trust.

It's about us coming together to find a solution. And so you have to push your own narrative as well, even when we might disagree. I have to go to Palestinian and say, no, we have to also doubt some of our story, just like I think Israelis have to also say, we shouldn't accept our narrative whatever my dad told me and whatever my grandfather told me and accept it as absolute the word of God. It's not. Our histories are not the word of God. The future is peace?

Is peace possible in the Middle East, really? One thing I love about summer is that getting dressed becomes simpler. You find a few things you like, wear them repeatedly until they deteriorate, and quietly hope nobody is maintaining records. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They make well-made essentials that naturally become the pieces you reach for, without even thinking, and they're actually made of quality material. So no more shirts that are quietly turning into cleaning rags.

When I'm out and about, my Quince Flow net Breeze Performance Tea has become part of my summer uniform. It's comfortable, it's durable, and recover. requires almost no decision-making. Three qualities I now demand from clothing and people. Everything at Quince has priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for exceptional quality, not a mysterious luxury surcharge for a tasteful beige logo.

Make your summer wardrobe easier. Go to quince.com slash Soul Boom for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash Soul Boom for free shipping and 365-day returns quince.com slash soul boom. Most so-called game-changing grooming products are not game-changing. They're usually the same goo in a darker bottle with the word advanced printed on it. Nutrafall men is different. It's physician formulated, clinically tested, and takes a proactive approach by targeting key root causes of hair thinning from within. I've been taking

Neutrophol men for a few months now. In my own experience, I've noticed less shedding, more visible thickness, and fewer hairs abandoning the cause. It's become such an easy part of of my routine. Four pills daily with a meal. I already eat, so I've found some useful overlap there. Nutrafol has formulas for different stages of life, including Neutrophol men for ages 18 to 49, and the new Neutrophol men 50 plus, specifically formulated for men over 50. Start Neutrefour today and make the hat optional. Visit Neutrofo.com and enter promo code Soul Boom for $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Find out why Neutrofoil is the best-selling hair growth supplement brand at NeutraFol.com, spelled N-U-T-R-A-F-O-L-L-com promo

code soul boom. That's neutrafall.com promo code soul boom. Summer ads usually start with beautiful people, beautiful abs, and beautiful sunshine. Not this one. Instead, you get a middle-aged TV actor eagerly sharing about his gut health in studio lighting. I started taking cowboy colostrum because I wanted better support for digestion and bloating. Cowboy makes true first day whole bovine colostrum from 100% American grass-fed cows. It isn't stripped down or heavily. processed. It's whole full fat, high in protein, and rich and naturally occurring bioactives, including immunoglobulins and growth factors. And yes, the baby calves get all the colostrum they need before cowboy collects the surplus. Nobody's walking into a barn and stealing breakfast

from an infant cow. So lower your pitchforks, America. So for a limited time, our listeners get up to 25% off their entire order. Just head to cowboy colostrum.com slash soul boom and use the code soul boom at checkout. That's 25% off when you use the code soul boom at cowboy colostrum.com slash soul boom. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands championing diversity, with 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide and 54% of leading positions held by women. Diversity. diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal group create the best beauty products for all people.

Visit Loreal.com to learn more. Hey, y'all's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust.

Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. It's not only possible, it will definitely happen. And there are only two questions that we should ask ourselves. when will it happen and how many life will be lost. And in the journey that we are inviting you, and first it's such an honor to be here with you, I've been waiting for that for a long time.

You're very kind. We prove that all conflict throughout history ends in the end. All conflicts. Doesn't matter if they last days, weeks, months, years, decades or centuries, all conflict ends in the ends in the ends. So so will the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is what the journey is in the future with peace, to transform revenge into reconciliation, trauma into healing, and despair into hope.

Can you imagine people believing that the Northern Irish conflict would have ended just a year before? People would have said it's naive, or if we talked about South Africa before the end of apartheid, or if we talked about Colombia, or if we talked, every conflict, if you went right before it ended, almost weeks before and told people, you know, the future is peace. It's going to end soon. People would have laughed at you, just like people sometimes might look at Mao Zan and I'd say, oh, yeah, right. But then it happened, and Northern Ireland was solved, and South Africa apartheid ended, and and all of those. And just like those conflicts have ended ours will as well.

And Europe, for centuries, for eons, was the center of world conflict. Those wars raged from before the Romans, you know, for centuries and centuries. If you would have plopped down in the 1820s and said, oh, by the way, and, you know, a hundred and some years, there's going to be generally just peace all throughout Europe for decades and decades people that have laughed in your face. Exactly. I'm Jewish. Yes.

And only seven years after the last survivor of Auschwitz was released, Israel and Germany signed a reconciliation agreement. agreement. Only seven years after. Who would think that possible in 1945? And it happens. And it's the same with Israel and Egypt. Two weeks before President Zahdat of Egypt was visiting Israel in 1977, the majority of Israelis were against negotiation, not against peace, not against Led Swap, against negotiation. And the prime minister, a few years before, Golda Mayer, said there will be no peace, in our lifetime. And Moshe Dayan, an Israeli war hero, said it's better to have Sinan Peninsula without peace than peace without Sinan Peninsula. And Anwar Sadat wasn't born a peacemaker. He was

the president who waged war of surprise against Israel in 1973. And then four years after, the children of Israel are waving and waiting for President Sadat with two flags in their hands, in the main streets, the main cities of Israel, the flag of Israel, and the flag of Israel biggest enemy till the day before, Egypt. And we are here to dream about it, but also to offer a plan, a roadmap, how we can achieve peace between Israel and Palestine. And this is exactly the work we are doing. But a lot of people would say, oh, that's all fine.

All those conflicts have worked out. But this is different. there has never been anything like this where we are right now. The settlements in the West Bank, the bombing of Gaza, the killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians, kidnapping of hundreds more, all in a two-year span, three-year span. This is, it's gone way too far. There's no turning back. I understand that. I understand when people say this.

We often look at our own pain, and, To us, it's the greatest pain in history. It's the greatest thing we can feel. And so it's normal for people to say, oh, but this is different. The Northern Irish also felt it's different. It's hundreds of years. If you talk to people who come from nationalist background

in 1960s and 70s, I say, we're under occupation of the British Empire for so many years. If you talked to people in Rwanda, they would have said, we have experienced a horrific genocide. There will be no peace if you went to them in the early 90s,

if you talked, early mid-90s, if you talk to people in every conflict, it's unique. There is things that are unique. But what is not unique is that in many situations, the same agreement that was reached after a horrific war, genocide massacres, so on, stuff that we could not imagine, the same thing that would have been reached before

is what was reached after. And what Mao and I come together to say in the future speech, saying, listen, we don't need to lose more people. In most conflicts in the world, we can reach an agreement through negotiations and through diplomacy, much easier than we can do it through bombs. In fact, bombs will only make us further from this agreement. If anything, our own conflict proves it.

You know, if you went to Jerusalem 40 years ago, things were bad, but not as bad as today, significantly less bad than today. Every year we have more people die, we have more suffering, we have more worlds, more checkpoints, more security, more money invested in war,

and we have less security and less peace Israelis and Palestinians. We have the data on our side that says the more we invested in the traditional security, let's make more violence, the less safe everyone has become. Right. You've caught a lot of flack for your work, I imagine. Are you betraying Jewish Israel? Are you betraying Palestinian Arab by having these peace tours and these conversations?

So actually, on the ground, we are feeling as supported and loved, as ever before. Okay. We do get some criticism. We do get some people who say it's never going to happen. But as we walk, if the streets of my hometown Binyamina or using the public transportation or meeting people in the street, and also there is a huge demand for us to come and speak back home in Palestine and Israel.

Wow. Yes. And there is a Palestinian-Israeli peace movement. And this is basically what we came to share with you, right? and with your audience. Yeah. So don't lose hope because we on the ground are creating it as we speak now. And in less than 10 days from now, we're going to have the biggest peace rally that was

held in the Holy Land, maybe for a few decades, if not more, where thousands and maybe even more Palestinian Israelis will come together. Where? In Tel Aviv, the biggest convention center in the country. And we're going to demonstrate that we are. dialoguing, that we are working together, that we are investing in a shared future, investing in reconciliation, and that we are on the same side. Israelis and Palestinians are on the same side of humanity, of dignity, of equality, and while there is no political imagination, we are here

to offer a political imagination and a roadmap, a roadmap to a future where we can all live in peace. Yeah. Yeah. Are you betraying Palestinians, or do you feel that with 50, 60,000 killed in Gaza for the last

three years? Absolutely not. I think what we do is to stop that killing. We don't ignore reality. And in the future speech, we talk about the reality. We talk about the occupation. We talk about Gaza. We talk about, I mean, the first chapter, we interpret

you, Dr. Thaer Ahmed, who talks in details about war crimes. We talk with Abd al-Rahim, who have lost 50 people in his family in Gaza, and just this week lost two nephews in Gaza. And so we talk about all this reality. We don't ignore it, and this is very important. We meet the people. We cry with them. We understand the pain.

What we're saying is because of all this happening, we need to stay. We need to stop the killing. We need to find the solution because there is no other direction. What else should I as a Palestinian do? We talk to each other and it's important to say we don't believe in only talking. We do action. We are asking for governments to around the world to intervene. We are asking for people to intervene.

We are asking for every citizen of the world to say, this is not far away from us so we don't care, but rather every one of us should care about what's happening in Palestine, what's happening, in Iran, what's happening in Sudan, what's happening. We can't separate ourselves and say, this is only my problem. And by doing this work, I believe I'm helping Palestine. I'm not normalizing the occupation. I'm not accepting the occupation. We are coming together and saying, if we work together, it's much more likely.

We will bring equality. We will bring justice. We'll bring peace. We'll bring a reality that would make Ma'os safe and equal in the country and will make me safe and equal and have dignity that way are no different. Without working together, there's no hope. You referenced the peace accords

between Israel and Egypt, just a few years after Egypt's invasion, failed invasion. The will of the people doesn't seem to be there. Everything kind of I see and read online feels like the will of the two people is for more conflict and more wars and more kind of justice.

But you referenced that to say that Israelis at that time didn't even want there to be a conversation with their deadly enemy, Egypt. I'm still having trouble rectifying just the rage, the pain, the trauma, the anger I hear from both sides, the screaming that's happening right now,

and this vision that you carry forward. This is the future that all our ancient prophets promise us in their prophecy in all Abrahamic religion. The prophecy is always the same is that we all live among together in peace and in harmony.

And in our broken world, in our broken reality, this is the time for the prophets to show up and to fix to fix what is broken. And prophets, as I see, they got two roles. The number one is to say

that if we'll continue to act as we were acting so far, a great distraction is going to come upon us all. And the second role of the prophets is to show us the right path. But we cannot wait for those prophets. Each one of us, each one of us, reign, should act like he is the prophet. And then we'll achieve the great peace that we all deserve. And this prophecy for me is being weaved all through the journey in the future is peace. And in the epilogue, we are proven.

We are proving that our prophets, ancient prophets of the Abrahamic religions, they were right. So we need your help to join us in this journey and to prove that they were right. and with the words of an Israeli author, Amos, in which he said, if you're walking by and you see a building on fire, you have three options of what you can do. The first option, you run away. This is what people often do. They see a problem and they say, why should I get involved?

If I get involved, I get entangled in it. But the problem with fire, it doesn't stay in one place. It keeps spreading. So if you don't try to solve it, just like we see with Israel and Palestine, with Iran, with so on, it spreads. it gets to us as well. The second option, he said, you create a committee to investigate,

who should we blame for the fire? And I think our Congress does a very good job with that. The problem by the time we discuss who to blame, everybody in that building would be dead. Yes, there's importance to learn, and like Mao said, to understand what happened and the mistakes, but we have to save lives first and foremost.

And the third option, he said, you get a bucket, you fill it with water, and you throw it on the fire, fire. But some, many will say, I don't have a bucket. Then you get a cup. You fill it with water and you throw it on the fire.

And then some would say, I don't have a cup. He said, then you get a spoon. You fill it with water and you throw it on the fire. I like to add, some might say we don't have a spoon. He didn't say this part. You spit on the fire. You'll pee on the fire. You do something

to that fire. But the truth is, one person with a spoon can't put out of fire. Maoz and I even if we have a pocket, even if we have a hose, we can't put out the fire. The only way it works, every one of us can say, I have a pocket, you have a cup, you have a spoon, you have, everyone got something else,

together we can put out this fire. Let me ask what might be a dumb question, and we might cut it out of this episode. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Is that anti-Semitic? This is a loaded one. This episode is brought to you by Fetzer. You know, there's this tendency in modern life to believe that every problem has a material solution.

More technology, more productivity, more money, more apps reminding you to breathe while you ignore the fact that your soul feels like a raisin. But the folks at the Fetzer Institute believe something deeper. They believe that behind humanity's biggest challenges are spiritual ones. Loneliness, division, disconnection, our inability to see, each other, the planet, or even ourselves as sacred, and they're asking a really beautiful question. What if shared flourishing begins with the sacred? Fetzer supports stories, communities, and spiritual solutions from people around the world who are healing division, caring for the earth, and creating deeper human connection through faith, spirituality, and reverence for love itself.

Not dogma, not forcing one belief system, just the radical idea that, hey, maybe the soul matters. Honestly, that's a conversation we care deeply about here at Solboom. You can explore their spiritual solutions library and learn more at fetzer.org. That's fetezer.org. Thanks, Fetzer. Apparently, nearly half of hiring managers say a candidate's enthusiasm about the job is the most important factor when considering them for a role, which makes sense. enthusiasm matters. Enter ZipRecruiter. When you need to hire for your business, ZipRecruiter can separate the candidates who are really excited about your opportunity from the ones that are just, eh, meh. ZipRecruiter has a new feature that quickly lets you see the most interested candidates first,

so you meet the right people faster, and now you can try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash soul boom. ZipRecruiter's smart matching technology connects you with qualified candidates instantly, and candidates can tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job, which is very helpful, because I am passionate about spreadsheets, hits differently when you hear the sincerity. Plus, ZipRecruiter's new feature puts the most qualified candidates at the top of your list. Use ZipRecruiter and find enthusiastic talent fast.

Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash soul boom. That's ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. First, for me, it's not anti-Semitic. And it's difficult also for me to explain. I was born and raised in Israel. in a Jewish state, not knowing, not becoming friends or familiar with no Palestinian

whatsoever. So I don't really know what anti-Semitism is. I grew up in a completely different environment. So we don't have anti-Semitism in Israel. Like we don't use the word Zionism. I don't consider myself as, it's not even a question. Am I a Zionist? Am I post-Zionism?

Zionist, anti-Zionism? I'm Israeli. I was born and raised in Israel and I'm Israeli. So for me telling that from the river, Jordan, from the river to the sea, Palestine should be free. I think everyone should be free. Everyone should be free. And I'm willing to dialogue, to negotiate, to discuss, to partner with everyone that

believes in the, that is willing, not even believing in my values, that is willing to dialogue with me. So if someone will chant, whatever is going to chant, I will ask him, are you willing to dialogue with me? Are you willing to share your own stories? Your own pain, your own trauma. I want to listen. And I would listen to him, to his pain, to his challenges, to everything that he wants to, is willing to share with me. And then if we will be open enough, I will share my own.

We are all traumatized. We are all victims, but we can choose not to live within. victimhood. We can rise over victimhood. And this is exactly what Aziz and I are doing in the future peace and many others, many others, Palestinians, we are rising over victimhood because we realized that if we will stay victim, we are losing our agency to change the future. And the future is peace is a reminder for all the readers that each one of us doesn't matter if he's here in L.A., in the U.S., Palestine, Israel, anywhere. in the world, each one of us has the agency to change the future.

Wow. I can add, there are many statements being said online from the river to the sea is one, and there's some on the Israeli side as well. And I hear Israelis all the time talk about how there's no such thing as Palestinians. We talk to anybody who's willing to talk to us, because the moment you say, I'm not going to talk to this and I'm not going to talk to that, majority, we talked about pullings. Majority of people in Israel and Palestine right now

don't see, there's so much pain, there's so much anger, there's so much buy of the political nonsense that if we listen to them, none of us are going to talk to each other. I do think, though, we all should be smart to make sure the language we use is something people,

if you want to really engage, people can understand. It's not about what I only want to say, it's also how do I get you to understand that point? How do I get you to listen to what I'm trying to say? And that's why to me stories are more powerful. I want in the future's piece, to me telling the story of Hind Rajab

is much more powerful than arguing about anything when it comes together. Telling the story of Abdharrahim is much more powerful than any argument. Telling the story of Ma'os, of Yonatan Zigen, of these individuals is what gets people to listen. And slogans, I understand for protests, they work, but they're not going to really make somebody go, let me think about this.

Or change my mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not going to change my position because of slogan. The contrary, I'll just be trench even stronger in my own beliefs. And if we want to reach out, then we must dialogue. We must look into each other in the eye and start feeling, listening, caring.

offering our empathy. And this is what we strength and manifest and demonstrate in the future is peace. Mao, you started Abraham hostels bringing people together and there's another perspective

here that hasn't been shared and that's the Baha'i perspective. So the Baha'is were in the Holy Land in Palestine area since the 1870s, 1880s, it's a land that's so diverse. It's Druze, Christian. People don't know how many Christians,

tons of Christian communities scattered all throughout the area. Jerusalem is the epicenter of the three Abrahamic faiths. How can we remind the people of these three great, beautiful Abrahamic faiths of their common unity? Yeah. So we should do it in every aspect of our life. So this is exactly why me and my co-founder to the Abraham hostels, we branded it under the name of Abraham as a reminder, first to ourselves, to our families, that we are united.

That's somewhere down the line, we were one. And if we'll work together now, we'll be one again. And it's again, it's a choice that we can make. And this is exactly, and even in our, so in the Abraham, the logo. We had there was like big capital letters in in English and then the size of the font in Arabic and Hebrew was the same to practice equality. So this is part of everywhere we go we need to manifest our unity, our humanity and our faith that we are all coming, we are all created in the image of God. And this is something so we can do

it with our family, we can do it with our friends, with our colleagues, and also in our business. So as many of us will manifest those facts that we have so much in common. But unfortunately, we are living in a divided and polarized world. And those who are in power now thriving over this polarization. And the way to counter it is not by fighting them, is by partnering. with those who we are supposed to be against. So when Aziz and I are partnering now, this is, we are calling it co-resistance.

We are not just building a shared future. This is a co-resistance. And if we'll invest more time in, co-resistance. Co-resistance. Yeah. Okay. It's much more powerful as we see it.

Then yes, it's important to go protest. And yes, it's important. to support and donate maybe to peace organization or humanitarian rights organization. But if we, the people, the common people, will start working together under the values of justice, of peace and what we shared before, then of course we're going to change the world.

It's, again, it's definitely going to happen. And this is the mission we took upon ourselves. You know, Jerusalem is amazing. place and people I think both of us come from travel background I started Abraham hostels and then started the Fausia Azar Inn and then started the Jesus Trail all of these and I started Medjdi tours and that two did a lot of similarities and one of the things we did was this idea kind of we manifested in in the future species two tour guys from different backgrounds together and when I first told people I want to bring an Israeli tour guide and a Palestinian tour guy

and have them call lead a tour, and then later do it in Northern Ireland or in South Africa, other places, they laughed at me and they said, they're gonna fight, they're gonna kill each other, they're gonna walk away, your company gonna go bankrupt, you're gonna lose any penny you have. I'm like, I'm broke already, how bad could it go?

So I started this business with the Jewish friends. And what amazing is you put an Israeli and a Palestinian together and they find so much tour guides, not necessarily even far left, like very liberal progressives, even sometimes centrists, and they start sharing stories about a place like Jerusalem, and they realized, wow, it's not that far off. I mean, King David, the story of him wanting to build the temple of Jerusalem,

what does God tell him? He says, you have too much blood on your hands. This is the guy that God calls him in the Bible. You are after my own heart. And he says, you cannot build a temple because you had too much of blood on your hand. And so we would start sharing these stories about Abraham, about David about and these are all figures that if you're Christian, if you're Muslim,

if you're Bahai, you love those stories. They're part of who you are. It's part of you grow up in Jerusalem. Even if you're secular, you know these stories. You cannot avoid them. And the story, like I would go to the mosque, to Al-Aqsa mosque, and there's a story of the prayers. And it says, when Prophet Muhammad went up to heaven, God told him you must pray 50 times a day. And he came down and he met Moses, and I'm going to paraphrase, but Moses goes, dude, you're going to fail as a prophet. If you're going to have 50 prayers a day, you should go up and negotiate. And he goes up and negotiates and it goes down to 45 and to 40,

into 35 and 30. And he keeps going up and down and Moses keeps telling him, you should go lower, you should go lower, you should go lower. And I tell this story at Al-Aksa Mosque, because that's where it would have happened, and eventually goes down to five prayers. and that's how Muslims end up being five prayers, thanks to Moses, thanks to Judaism. Otherwise, it would be very difficult.

But the same story exists also in the Bible about Abraham negotiating with God. And he says, don't destroy Saddam and Gamora. What if it has 50 righteous men? What if it has 40 righteous people? What if it has 30 righteous, a human being, 20, 10? And this concept comes from both, and we're like, oh, wow, there's these stories.

We borrow, we learn, we have so much shared stories in our own heritage and traditions that when we start the guiding of two tour guides, ended up 80, 90% about learning of how our stories are actually similar. And then there's a 10, 20% that we might disagree. And still, it's a learning. Okay, you see it this way, I see it this way. What can we learn from each other? And that's a different way of coming and saying,

this is my position, this is your position, you're wrong, I'm right, but rather, okay, let's figure out how our narratives can marry together. Look, the Bible, chapter one and chapter one or two and chapter three, tell you two different stories of creation. And they're not identical stories. Some would argue they're contradictory stories. And I love that because if everything falls perfectly, I always think something is wrong.

I'm being sold of propaganda. When there is some disagreements, it makes you think. It makes you be critical thinker. And that's a healthy thing. And whether it's an Islam, you have Lhanafi, Shafi, Maliki, Hanbali, you have different schools of thoughts and they don't agree on a lot of things. That's healthy. If we agree on everything, as Pope Francis told us,

it means we're under oppression and dictatorship. And the only place there's full agreement is a cemetery. And we don't want to be there. we all will end up there, but while we're alive, we don't want to be there because cemetery is death. That's why there is no disagreement. And it should be noted that the rock were purportedly Abraham sacrificed Isaac or Isaiah in the Quran, right? Ishmael in the Quran.

So different sons, different stories, different sons, is there under the Alaksa? Under the dome of the rock, yeah. Dome of the Rock. Yeah, yeah. And by the way, the two of us will be taking group and will love to have you join us in October to follow the path of the book. Anybody can sign up for it. But we especially would love to have you to join us.

Okay, good. October, 2026, we're going to be following the path and meeting the people that we meet in the book. If I can taste your mom's hummus. Yes, that's it. That's what she said. You got it. One thing we ask everyone who participates in this podcast is the definition, personal definition of soul. The word soul is a rich and mysterious, mystical word.

Perhaps we learn something by seeing it through a Jewish lens and an Arab Muslim lens. Anyone? Soul is something that is lasting forever. And the soul of Tysir as his brother and my parents, Bill and Jacobi, is here with us now. You shouldn't have gone first. It's hard to top that. Yeah. We'll do yours.

We'll edit it in before his because you can't. He always does the mic drop, doesn't he? He had the J-Dade. He had the J-Dade joke with John Stewart. Yeah, that was really good. How'd you meet him, J-Date? I think soul is a part of us that keeps our conscience alive and it's a part that very deep in that sometimes we can ignore

but it's a part that keeps us keeps us in a mission it's to me my human soul is what keeps yeah it's what that poem said it's the ticket to the conscience of a human kind it's it's our soul. Out of the Israelis and the Palestinians, who likes the office more? Wow, that's a good question. I do. I think, again, many Israelis,

I have to confess it was coming out only when my first kids were being born and I was too busy with struggling and making sure my business doesn't go bankrupt and taking care of the family. So I wasn't following all the people. But it's, you know, when I told our friends and neighbors and family that I'm coming here, including my kids, they are 20, 18 and 14. Dad.

You made it. You're cool now. I hear that from so many guests. It's extremely popular in the Middle East. It's subtitled everywhere. People, people, if you might not want to tell them who you are when you come because you'll have a lot of people lining up for autographs. It's, yeah, it's very, very popular. I love it.

Thank you, gentlemen. Thanks for coming on Sol Boom. Thank you. All right. Can we take a photo together? Yes. The Soul Boom Podcast. Subscribe now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

and wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.