TED Radio Hour - How to talk about peace

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

How do you rebuild trust after bloodshed? This hour, a closer look at two unlikely truces: LA gang leaders who negotiated peace and activists in the Middle East who chose dialogue over hate.Guests include peace activists Aqeela Sherrills, Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon.TED Radio Hour+ subscribers now get access to bonus episodes, with more ideas from TED speakers and a behind the scenes look with our producers. A Plus subscription also lets you listen to regular episodes (like this one!) without sponsors. Sign-up at plus.npr.org/ted.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

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From TED and NPR. I'm Manoosh Zamoroti. Right now, conflict, sometimes violent conflict, is in the headlines, in our feeds, and for some of us, right outside the front door. And when politics feels this charged, the idea of making peace, well, can sound pretty naive. So how do people, parties, or even nations at odds, reconcile with each other? Where do they even begin? Today, we are breaking down the slow, intentional steps that move people away from violence and toward cooperation. And we're doing it by going back to a moment in American history, Los Angeles, 1992.

That year, something almost unimaginable happened. Leaders from the two biggest gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, managed to end a years-long deadly feud that had killed thousands of people. The two parties negotiated a peace treaty. But how? Change moves at the speed of trust, right? Deep relationships and trust. This is Akela Sheryls.

And I consider myself to be a peacemaker. In the 1980s, Akela was a kid, growing up in L.A., when a cheap, very addictive drug started seeping into cities across the U.S. Crack cocaine. It turned his neighborhood into a marketplace for dealers, dealers who would defend their turf with violence. Crack cocaine came through the neighborhood like Hurricane Katrina. It uprooted families.

I mean, it decimated the neighborhood. You know, you had individuals who were hustling and selling dope that were making, you know, tens of thousands of dollars more money than they've ever made in their entire life. And so, you know, people started buying, went from 22, you know, handguns to, you know, 9mm, and AK-47s in tech nines. And it became a war zone. And that rage and anger because there was no therapeutic services, no counseling, nothing offered to us to help us to heal from the traumatic experiences that we were all witnessing.

Warfare between gangs was a normal part of life for Akela, who lived. lived in the Jordan Downs housing projects in the Watts neighborhood of L.A. He remembers being in middle school at the time. Markham Junior High School, we called Gladiator School. You know, ninth grade year at Markham, my best friend, Ronsel, pointer was shot in the head and killed, you know, at lunchtime on campus. In Watts, the four housing projects were each associated with either the Bloods or the Crips. If you wear blue, you're a crimp.

If you wear red, you're blood. By virtue of where he lived, Akila belonged to the Grape Street Crips. And at this time, you know, if you were from Jordan Downs, you were guilty by association. People automatically associated with you with the neighborhood, and then you have to defend yourself. The other gangs in the nearby housing projects were the P.J. Crips of Imperial Courts, the Hacienda Village Bloods, and the Bounty Hunter Bloods of Nickerson Gardens. Growing up in the Jordan Down Housing Projects in the White section of Los Angeles, I witnessed things no child should ever be subject to.

Akela Sherell's picks up the story from the TED stage. By the time I was 16, I had attended 20 funerals of friends. And like so many youth, surrounded by violence and poverty, I was desensitized and angry, and joining the neighborhood gang was my solution for safety and protection. Now, it's important to understand that black American gangs aren't inherently violent. less than 3 to 5% of so-called game members are actually committing violent crime.

More often, they're like surrogate families. We're protecting one another, but sometimes the only way we knew how to survive. Despite the violence and poverty surrounding them, Akela's family made a plan to get him out of the neighborhood and into college, just like his sister. So my sister, Lundy, who has always been one of my heroes, you know, was the first person in my family

to go to a four-year university and graduate. And she made sure that I got all my applications and everything done. And I got accepted to Cal State Northridge. And I went to college at the height of the war in 1987. I get calls from home about friends and family members who have been shot just consistently. You know, I felt like I was escaping the war. And I had an opportunity to really process, you know, why I felt like so much of the violence was happening in the community, right?

But I was fortunate that I met a professor who grew up in my neighborhood, who was a professor at Cal State Northridge, Johnny Scott, who took me on as a mentee and made me read the autobiography of Malcolm X, who made me read James Baldwin's The Evidence of Things Not Seen, and those books politicized me, and they gave me courage. And I had an epiphany that if I could transform, and transmute my pain into power, then I could help, you know,

some of my friends and family members to do the same. On campus, Akela led the Black Student Union. He started organizing rallies. And later, when he went back home to Watts, he took those organizing skills with him. So I come home from college and my brother Dao and a bunch of my partners is in there. And so I started, like, kind of talking about, you know,

like all of the resistance and movements of the past, you know, from, you know, the civil rights movement meant to the Black Panther movement. And that somehow we had to stop this killing because no one was winning the war that we were waging against each other. Akela and others had a vision for getting the Bloods and Crips

to sit down and sign a peace treaty to end the war. Step one, well, he had to get his partners in the Grape Street Crips on board. Fortunately for us, we had a bunch of the big homies in the neighborhood who were conscious, you know, and who were black nationalists and their philosophy who supported, you know, this type of conversation and dialogue.

So one of the first things that we started doing was marching in all of the housing projects. So every Saturday morning, we'd go to the housing projects, you know, 20 deep and we'd march down the middle of the street doing this, you know, call and response chant. I don't know what I've been told. African people are mighty bold, done destroyed the old plantation.

Now we're going to build a new black nation. Black power gets stronger by the hour. So you're giving them a common thing to rally around, be like, listen, we do have something in common. We might think we hate each other, but at the end of the day, this is the goal for all of us. That's right. Because we knew that cash record, they respected strength. If we came over there, we talking about a peace treaty, man, they were to ran us out of there, shot at us probably. And so we had an opportunity to check in with some of the individuals that we used to have conflict with.

You know, so growing up in the Jordan Downs, you know, Imperial courts, Nickerson Gardens were our enemies. We went back decades with these individuals. We grew up together in the same neighborhood, and some of us had kids by the same women. This battle, this war, was interesting. You know, it was like people who knew each other. And so this was like kind of we were starting to coalesce something. In the late 1980s, black activism and calls for black power were gaining new momentum. All your life you've been taught to hate who and what you are.

You're killing each other because you have. Have no love for yourself. The nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan was touring the country, speaking to large crowds, urging gangs to stop the killing. You got a start at home teaching black people. In 1990, Farrakhan visited L.A. and addressed thousands of people, including gang members from both sides. Crips and Bloods went to the sports arena to hear the message from Minister Farrakhan about how we're the greatest generation that our parents have ever produced.

And saying that, hey, we got to come together and stop the killing. So Minister Farrakhan was the national voice behind this work. Inspired by Farrakhan's words, Akila and others began gathering on neutral territory at the House of Jim Brown, the professional football player and civil rights activist. Jim Brown offered his house and his celebrity as a way of helping to galvanize that energy and to bring us together. And we had big meetings up there. We would bring different cats from all across the city to talk about this. possibility of a peace treaty and stopping the killing.

What happened in those meetings? Like, what do people say to each other? So we would get together and, you know, just talk philosophy and theory about what we can do if we actually came together and stopped some of the killing. And everybody is like on the same page saying like, hey, yeah, you're absolutely right. We got to stop this killing, man, because we got to preserve this next generation of our kids. And at one of our Wednesday night meetings, my brother Dao said, hey, man, you know, trying to organize the city is way too big. There's too many conflicts. He said, let's start with Watts.

Because the four major housing projects in Watts sit on a perfect 90-degree angle. This is when we got all up into our symbolism and stuff. And we were like, the Hypot news runs from the Nickerson Gardens to the Jordan Downs. We were like, if we connect these two neighborhoods, you know, we would create a domino effect for peace across the city. So we started focusing specifically on organizing the peace treaty

amongst the four housing projects in Watts as a catalyst for a larger movement nationally. They needed a ceasefire. But for that to happen, they needed a specific group of people to join their conversations, the young men who had weapons and who were committing the worst of the violence. Now, here's the thing. Less than 3 to 5% of so-called gang members are actually committing homicides and murder in the neighborhood. So at some point, it got to a place where it was like,

y'all got to bring your shooters in here. Because those dudes have to make the agreement. because when they make the agreement, then it's really over. So they all met at the local mosque. I mean, when we showed up to the mosque, the energy was tense because folks knew the conversation that we were coming to have. And there was familiarity, right? Because, again, we all grew up in the neighborhood

and we knew each other. And after several negotiations, tough ones, they came to an agreement. Here was the understanding of the ceasefire. Y'all stay in your neighborhood. We stay in our neighborhood. And we ain't got no conflict. If we run into each other on the streets, you know what I'm saying? We give each other a pass.

You know, their shooter was like as long as you ain't fringing on my business, it's all good. And vice versa. And our people said the same thing. And it was like, okay, cool. This agreement set peace in motion. On April 28, 1992, an unofficial peace treaty went into effect. Oh, man, it was unbelievable. The release of energy.

That night, oh man, I mean, the news of the peace treaty spread like wildfires through the neighborhood because we all grew up together and went to school together, you know, but because of the gang conflict in the war, we couldn't spend time. We couldn't hang out, you know, because somebody would see you and know that you from the, you know, from the other neighborhood and shoot at you, you know. And so the next day, Jordan Down hosted the Nickerson's. And that night, man, we had 3,000 people. People came from all across the city to celebrate.

What, like a party? So we had a barbecue party celebration, and then, you know, it's just like, it was like it became a family reunion. You know, it's like it was decades. I mean, we had a three-decade war, you know, so the release was just extraordinary. In a minute, Los Angeles explodes. The Rodney King trial and how Akila Shirals helped keep peace between the gangs on track. On the show today, how to talk about peace. I'm Manus Shumerode, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Please stay with us. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Shumerodi. Today on the show, how we talk about peace. We were just hearing from activist and organizer Akila Shirill's. He was a key player in negotiating the historic peace treaty between the Crips and the Bloods in Watts, Los Angeles. This treaty between the gangs had a ripple effect across the city, de-escalating violence in other neighborhoods,

and ending a decades-long war. But as Akela explains, getting to peace and then maintaining it, there are lots of roadblocks. Peace is not a destination. It's a series of peaks and valleys. And so getting people to understand that ebb and flow is important. And sometimes peace gets interrupted. The day after the two gangs agreed to a ceasefire, L.A. erupted with riots because on April 29, 1992, the police officers accused of assaulting Rodney King a year earlier were acquitted.

Black communities were enraged. Los Angeles remains under a state of emergency after rioting that left at least 16 people dead, many hundreds injured. And so as things started exploding all across the city, a bunch of us, got in our cars and drove down to the neighborhood because we were trying to stop people from, you know, you know, burning down the stores and all that kind of stuff and everything in the neighborhood because we was like, this is our stuff, family. Don't destroy your own community. The rebellion, as it was called, against the LAPD, slowed down the final steps of the gang peace process. So it wasn't until 1994, two years later, that the Watts members of the Crips and Bloods actually sat down to sign an official agreement.

We needed a treaty because we needed to memorialize the agreement that we made between each other. And that was important to us. And also something to pass on to future generations. Actually, I printed out the agreement because I wanted to see what it looked like. And it's really, you know, it's like, I suppose, any other peace agreement, the reopening of described neighborhood areas shall begin on the 29th, of April in 1994 at a very specific time, 1245 p.m. And the Crip and Blood Authorities in the Watts area shall help by their full cooperation to the Watts plan.

Did it feel historic that moment? Did it feel like something shifted and changed because the agreement was codified that you had negotiated your way to having a shared document? It did. None of us came to this work with formal, like, negotiation and mediation skills. You know, we learned in the process why we were doing it. And I would say that it felt historic to me because we were students of history. Like, I am, you know, an average reader. I mean, I've read everything from, you know, the Mexican Revolution, you know, Jing Chau Ping, the Chinese Revolution. I'm like, I'm a student of, you know, I'm interested in war and understanding peace efforts and stuff. You know, we were, we were like real activists and students. And so this was like, it was significant to us, the peace treaty, the document, you know, the agreement.

And even now, you know, 30 plus years later, there are very few folks, you know, from the neighborhood that was able to parlay their role in organizing the peace treaty so that it actually is serving them today. You know, people sacrificed a lot and gave up a lot. And that's why I don't, you know, I don't take this stuff lightly. You know, I mean, I'm dead serious about the work, you know, because I know I stand on the shoulders of a lot of folks, man, who have, who sacrificed everything, you know, for me to be here and for us to be where we are today. What happened after you signed the treaty? Because very often we hear, you know, well, it's that the peace can be fragile. And it takes just one thing to, you know, for all the work to become undone and for it not to be worth the paper that it's written on. That's right.

What happened next? Well, if you can imagine the day after the peace treaty, somebody got shot. Oh, gosh, no. But what the commitment was was to consistently coming back to the table to renegotiating the terms that bought us there. And that was the powerful thing that consistently happened. That every time something happened, we got back to the table. And we opened up that dialogue and conversation. And we did our, because in the past, man, somebody would come through the neighborhood and do a drive-by.

A couple of people would get shot and they'd come. Police would tell us, oh, the, the, the, the, the, the, you. The Nickerson's did it. And folks would just get over there and go over there and just shoot people down. But now, when things, when shots were fired, oh, folks was like, hey, get on the phone. Call our people over there. Hey, was that job? You know?

And we do our research and our intel. And then we'd come back and be like, hey, that conflict, you know, that shooting, oh, that was between such and such and such and such. That's not no neighborhood thing. That's between them, you know? Everybody stand back. let them handle it. If we can step in and mediate, you know, the conflict to a peaceful resolve, we'll do that. And the first two years of the peace treaty gang homicide stopped 44% in Watts.

Right. And we instituted inside of the housing projects, life skills training in each one of the housing developments through the community service center. We taught people how to make better decisions with their life, how to manage their bread, how to make hard decisions. Most of our folks in the neighborhood weren't getting basic life skills. So we were doing life skills training for all of the young people, men and women,

in the developments. In addition, we were able to secure contracts with the schools. And so we started running programs like at zero period at Lock High School. You know, and this was for students, you know, who were struggling with credits and stuff.

And most of these kids were the gang-involved kids. And it totally shifted the quality of life in the neighborhood. You know, so multiple folks started organizations to be able to access resources to be able to provide a set of quality services for folks in the neighborhood to address the trauma, to address the violence. So after the negotiation, after the treaty signing, that's when the work began to sort of rebuild, I suppose. And so here we are a generation or so later.

and has the peace held, Arthur, is it a radically different place? I would say it is a radically different place. The peace treaty held in its original form for 12 years. And then, you know, a new generation comes in. And peace treaty is no longer the language, you know, that folks use in order to kind of keep the neighborhood together. Now, we've never gone back to the type of numbers, you know, that thousand, you know, murders a year in the city. We've never gotten back to that And, you know

Knocking on wood, pray to God that we never do But this, the work is constantly, We have to constantly work To keep, you know, each generation From making the mistakes that we've made We secured a million dollars Grant to be able to hire ambassadors From each one of those neighborhoods

Ex-game members, ex-ex, you know, ex-convicts who were reputable folks in their neighborhood to serve as ambassadors in their respective communities. So in each one of the housing projects, we had five staff over there providing services. We launched the grassroots sports federation as a way of bringing people together. And we just continue to grow the work. Then I launched the Community Self-Determination Institute, you know, in which we employed, you know, over 80 individuals. He had millions of dollars in contracts with the city, county, and the state, providing, you know, everything from computer skills and technology to drop out prevention

and retrieval services in the school. So we became sophisticated and understanding how the system worked because that's one of the things that Jim Brown always wanted for us. He was like in the 60s, he was like when people was fighting for civil rights, he said, I was fighting for human rights and economic rights. He said, gentlemen, he said, if you give me an opportunity to tell you how your government works. He said, on how to access your tax dollars to provide a set of quality services to your families, he said, you'll never have to go back to drug selling or look over your shoulder around doing any type of illegal activity. He said, because there's more legal money out here than you can possibly imagine. He said, the thing that we have to challenge is our

scarcity mentality around these things. midst being a leader and a negotiator and a builder, essentially, of all this human infrastructure, you had your own horrific personal loss, your son. It was 2004, is that right? Yep. January 10th, 1145 p.m. What happened? You know, my son, you know, it was my mini-meat.

It's like people used to say that you had that kid because we were just, we just looked so much alike. Graduated from high school, went to all boys private school, Vervent Day athlete, scholarship, Humboldt State University, proudest day of my life. Came home from winter break, went to a party in an affluent, you know, black neighborhood on the west side of L.A. with some of the kids that he had went to high school with, and they said some kids had crashed the party. Some kids from one of the local gangs had crashed the party, came in through the back door. They had to push everybody out on the street,

and so they said they were out there, you know, on the street waiting for their parents to come and pick them up. And my son had a red Mickey Mouse sweater that my daughter gave him for Christmas, you know, tied around his neck. And maybe they mistook his red Mickey Mouse sweater for gang colors or whatever. But, you know, conversation short, shot my son five times. Obviously, there's no explaining it.

But what do you think was the situation that something is, you know, the color of a sweatshirt would still incite such violence? You know, something happened, you know, to this kid. you know, that cause them to have a callous heart because you don't just kill someone and you wake up skipping and singing and dancing the next day, you experience your victims facing dreams and imaginings and flashbacks. Your life is intrinsically connected to your victims for the rest of your life. I mean, him being able to reconcile what he did, you know,

will determine whether or not he's able to live somewhat of a balanced life in this world. Right. But you know how the streets are, man. The streets are relentless. When folks found out that it was my son that was murdered, you know, cats from that neighborhood called my partners and gave us the name, address, and telephone number of the kid who murdered my son and gave us a green light to go and kill him. I mean, my daughter called me and told me that a bunch of the homies and my son's friends were

getting together in the projects and they was about to go on a mission for Terrell. But, you know, that's not my legacy. and that's not Terrell's legacy. And so I jumped in my car and drove over in the projects and pulled up in the parking lot where everybody was gathering at and told folks that,

hey, man, ain't nobody going on no mission for Terrell. I was like, nobody is going to go kill someone and put another parent through the heart-eighthap and heartbreak I'm dealing with. And I was like, we can't do this, family.

And it was a transformative moment. And believe it or not, one of my homies told me, you know, and didn't say it directly to me, but it was indirect saying that, you know, because I wasn't willing to go and kill this kid who murdered my son, he was like, you know, maybe you didn't love your son that much.

Oh, God. Right? And I, because, you know, the conditions response in the neighborhood, you know, is, you know, an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Yeah. But my whole position was that, man, that eye for a tooth for tooth game has left

us all blind and toothless, family. I'm like killing this kid that's not going to bring Terrell the back or harming somebody that's close to him. him is not going to bring us any closure, fam. I was like, I want to harness the atheric energy of Terrell, the electromagnetic current that he was and do something much more profound with his life force in the world. And so I was like, hey, we're going to forgive this kid to save his life.

And I hold space that one day I'll be able to meet him and be able to ask him to question what happened in his life that caused him to perpetrate this act. Because, see, I don't believe that people are their worst experiences. I don't condone what he did, but I don't define him by what he's done. You know, I mean, I hold space, you know, for his healing. Because I tell you, it was the killers, the so-called, you know, quote-unquote killers that came in the room that helped to bring forth the peace treaty that saved so many lives. And those cats, those, those dudes who were the shooters in our neighbor, back then, went to jail, paid their debt to society, their home now. They are some of my

closest friends and some of the individuals today in the neighborhood who still keep things from going overboard today. And I know the power of redemption. You know what I'm saying? And so we're not our worst experiences. We're not the things we've perpetrated. We're not the things that have been done to us. These things are only informing who we become. They don't define who we are. The cycle of violence remains an extremely concentrated problem with unequal impacts. Residents in low-income urban communities of color are 15 times more likely to be harmed by violence, but yet three times less likely to get help. And for black males ages 14 to 25, violence is the number one cause of death. Overwhelmed police departments are joining forces

with community leaders to say that arrests alone will not end the cycle of violence. Many solutions are being proposed. But what we're proposing is an internal solution, a solution led by those most impacted by violence, a solution that lifts up non-traditional leaders to play a key role in creating safety in their own respective communities. In 2014, Newark had been on the top 10

most violent city lists for almost 50 consecutive years. With a modest investment from local philanthropies, I launched the Newark Community Street Team. I hired 16 credible messengers, Many of them ex-game members and formerly incarcerated folks who have deep relationships in the neighborhood. We trained them in conflict resolution and mediation strategies and deployed them in high violence areas and asked them to use their relationship capital to intervene and mediate gang disputes that could leave the violence. We launched a safe passage program to ensure our kids went to school safely because violence often happens before and after school.

We launched the city's first trauma recovery center to provide therapeutic services, to victims to help them heal. We also provided mentoring and outreach and case management. You see, safety isn't just one intervention. It's a shared strategy and requires an ecosystem of programs that residents trust. When we started our work in Newark in 2014, the city had 103 homicides.

In 2024, we had 37. Now, in other cities are primed to replicate the successes that we had in Newark, but very few essential community organizations have the know-how to become a permanent part of the city's public safety workforce. Family, we're about to change all of that. With a generous investment from the audacious TED community, we launched in scaling safety, an initiative to put the public back in public safety. Our solution is simple. Redefined public safety by investing in a coordinated set of high-impact resident-liant,

programs that create real lasting change. We redefining public safety. We're putting the public back into public safety. You know, we believe that those who are closest in proximity to the violence have to be equipped with the skills, the tools, and the resources to actually do the intervention, the prevention, and the treatment. And we have to wrap the support around them. You know, peace has to be incentivized.

It doesn't happen any other way. Akela, how do you do it day after day after day? What's your secret? Is it coffee? Is it sleep? What? How? It's spirit. It is spirit. Right? I consider myself to be a spirit-centered activist. You know, I work on intuition, you know, and by divine law, right? Inspiration, imagination, intuition, you know, all the things that move me. I feel like spirit has called me to do this work. And I don't have a choice, you know. And I was fortunate. that I had kids young. My kids are all adults. I have grandkids and stuff, and I get to love that. But this is my child now. You know what I'm saying? This work around community-based public safety

and community violence intervention. This is my life's work. And I'm going to leave it all on the table, family. I'm going to leave it all on the table. That was organizer and activist Akela Sherills. You can see his full talk at ted.com. On the show today, how we talk about peace. I'm Anoush Zamorodi, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Anush Zameroidi.

Today on the show, how we talk about peace. And we want to bring up a situation that has felt absolutely irreconcilable to many. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's been going on for decades. And today, the two sides seem to be more at odds than ever. But there are those who keep slowly, steadily talking about the possibility of healing. Aziz Abu Sara and Meos Inon are both peace activists, one Palestinian and one Israeli. In 2024, just months after the October 7th attacks, and a few months into the subsequent bombing of Gaza,

they sat down eye to eye for this painful but beautiful conversation. on the 10 stage. You know, Aziz, only four days ago, the Thursday, we buried the remains of my parents. My mom was burned so badly, she cannot 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 thorough and pain. A few nights after losing them, I had a dream. I was sleeping at night, crying. My entire body was in pain, and through my tears, I could see everyone crying. The entire humanity was crying with me.

Our tears went down on a face to our bodies. Our bodies were wounded, damaged from the wall. And then our tears washed our bodies and healed it. Our tears washed the blood from the ground. And then the ground was beautiful and shining. And on that ground, I could see the path, the path to peace. I woke up, shaking, and immediately I knew that this is the path I must choose, the path of not taking revenge, the path of reconciliation.

And you've been walking this path for decades. We met only once before October 7th, even that was for two minutes maybe, but you were among the first one to reach out, send your condolences, support, And I will always love you for being there for me in my hardest time. No, 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,

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. I needed much more time when my brother, Thaisir, who was 19 years old, was killed by Israeli soldiers,

I was angry, I was bitter, and I wanted vengeance. I was 10 years old, and I thought there is no other choice. And only eight years later, when I went to study Hebrew with Jewish immigrants to Israel, that's only when I realize that we can be allies, we can be partners. And I realize that I do have a choice, regardless of what other people do. The choice is always mine. And I do not want to take revenge, that when I choose to be angry and hateful, I'm being a slave to the person who killed my brother. These last few months has been like a nightmare that never ends. Everyone I know in Gaza have lost family members. My friend, Abder Rahim, he lost 50 people in his family. This photo,

you can see all these kids have been killed. And in the upper middle photo, the father of these kids was in Israel when they were killed. And he wanted to come back to see his kids one last time. He couldn't. He ended up back to Gaza, but never was able to make it to his house. What's amazing, though, is Abd al-Rahim is just like you. I talked to him yesterday, and he said, I'm still as committed to peace as I was before. I do not want my story to lead to hate. And even now, as his parents are in northern Gaza, unable to get food, unable to leave, he's still committed to this message. And it makes me wonder, how do you make such a choice in the midst of so much tragedy?

You know, I've been interviewed like a hundred times in the recent months, and this is the most easiest question. It's for my parents. It's my parents' legacy. And when we put the remains in the ground, I realized that they prepared me for that moment. They taught me what to say and how to act after they will be killed. My father was a farmer.

One year I remember that there was a drought. And then the second, there was a flood. And the third, there were insects. And at the end of each of those devastating season, my father will always tell me, Maoz, next year I'm going to saw again. Because next year is going to be a better era. And my mom was a very talented mandala's painter.

She painted thousands of mandala. And from all the mandala she painted, she gave me only one as a present. This is the one she gave me. And on this mandala, this is for you. I made it for you. And on the mandala she gave me, she wrote, We can achieve all our dreams, if we'll be brave enough to chase them.

And in the last 20 years, I've been chasing and fulfilling many dreams, coalition with as many stakeholders as possible, reaching share value and common ground between the partnership, writing a very detailed roadmap and executing. And I was partnering with Palestinians, with Israeli, with Jordanian, with Egyptian, and I learned that the first step in reaching a share society and a share future is knowing the other side narratives. And following your work for many years,

even though we met only once, I think there is no one in the world that know better how we can take our divided narratives and make them into a shared future and a shared society. So thank you for all what you have done so far. Really, it's amazing. No, Mao's, I worked in 70 countries and peace and conflict. And everywhere I work, I found that we should,

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 are societal pressure that makes us not being able to talk to each other. to talk to each other. And I know this because my dad's first time ever going to a synagogue was in the United States when he came to visit me. He went to a Friday prayer, but the mosque was too full, and the Muslim community rented a synagogue. So he ended up praying in a synagogue. And he came back and told me,

and he was so excited about it. And I thought, Jerusalem is full of synagogues. And yet his first time ever being in a synagogue is in the States. That's how divided we are, how little we know about each other. But we also must learn to ask hard questions, be honest and willing to listen. My dad's first time to a peace meeting was one that I organized. And when he came, he asked a question that I thought, oh, my goodness, how could you do that? He said, did the Holocaust happen?

And just like the gasps we hear here, everybody in the meeting was terrified. I thought I'm going to lose my job for my dad asking the question and regretted inviting him to the peace meeting. But you know what? Because of that question, one of the Holocaust survivors in the meeting, he took my dad in 70 other Palestinians of the Holocaust Memorial. It was the first time such a big delegation going there,

and they had this hard conversation. Later, the Israelis in the meeting ended up coming and having a similar conversation about Palestinian history narrative, going to a town that was destroyed in 1948 in the Nakba. I've been working in the last 20-some years and finding ways to ask those questions. 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 in 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, how can I learn from you? What is it that we can push each other to do?

And maybe that's a question. What have we learned from each other? Yeah. Yeah, so regarding to your father questions, I think it was November that a very, very good Palestinian friend asked me. Maoz can ask you a difficult question. I said, you are my friend. You can ask whatever you like.

She asked me, Maas, maybe your parents' house was burned from a crossfire from the IDF and not from the Hamas. And she was literally denying October the 7th. And I was shocked. I didn't know what to say. And then I stopped for a second. And I told her, you know what? What does it matter? What does it matter?

My parents are dead. And they are dead because of the conflict and the war that has been going on for so long. And it's our mission to stop it. And I learned so much in the recent months from speaking in dialogue with Palestinians. I learned that we must forgive for the past. We must forgive for the present,

but we cannot and should not forgive for the future, not to ourselves and to no one else, if you won't make the future a better future. I learned that our stories were split in the past with the different chosen son of Abraham. And for many centuries, our stories were parallel. And the gap between them is becoming wider as wider as we are getting to the present.

And it became to get wider with the beginning of the Zionist movement and the Palestinian nation movement. And with all the war, we've been waging on each other, it's becoming wider and wider. And now, in the present, it's as wide as ever. Our stories was never apart as they are now. But there is a miracle.

There is a miracle. Our stories meet. They meet in the future. We meet in the future that is based on reconciliation and recognition. That is based on security and safety. And of course, an equality. And now we must use the same steps I used to fulfill, or we used to fulfill our previous dreams,

in making this dream into reality. We are all dreaming of peace. We are building a coalition. Palestinian, Israelis, supporter from all over the world. We share the same values and common ground. Right now, we are writing a very detailed, informative roadmap, and we are already starting to execute. And what we are doing now tonight, we are executing the first two chapters of our roadmap.

We are amplifying our voices and building our legitimacy as the leaders of the future. And I would not ask for a better partner, for a better companion than you, Aziz. When people hear this, and I think we are much stronger together than ever alone, We've been doing so much work and campuses with anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate, with helping people in our own community, finding ways to organize. But I think people can hear this and think, so you can lose people in your family and not be angry? And I think that's a mistake.

We are angry. I am very angry. Every time I read the newspaper, I'm angry. Every time I talk to one of my friends in Gaza, I am angry. But the thing is, I do not let anger, and we do not let anger. drown us in hate and wanting vengeance. Instead, I think of anger like a nuclear power. It can lead to destruction and it can make light.

And my hope is that we continue to use anger as a way to bring people together, to ask ourselves, what can I do to make things better? And that's bring me to the most important... I love you. And it brings me to the most important lessons I learn. that hope is an action. It's not something you find,

not something you can lose, it's something you are making. And I came up with a very basic formula, recipe, how to make hope. First, like love, you cannot do it by yourself. You are doing it with others. And you are starting, we are starting, because it's now it's we,

we are starting by envisioning a better few. And then we are acting to make this future into a reality. It's act. We must act. And through the process, we always need to convince first ourselves and all our coalition and everyone that is willing to listen, that our actions are effective. It's very simple. It's very simple.

And this is what we must do. And I believe that if we will be brave enough, and brilliant enough, we can make this future into a reality in the new future, that by 2030 or before, there's going to be peace between the river and the sea. You know, we say today ideas change everything, and I have an idea. People look at us and think, we are divided because you're Israeli and I'm Palestinian, and Muslims and Jews, but if you must divide us, people should divide us as those of us

who believe in justice, peace and equality, and those who don't yet. And our work here is to invite everyone, to invite you to join us into our work, into bringing everyone together to take a stand that says, we are not enemies. Do not be mistaken. We lost our family members.

We did not lose our sanity. We did not lose our minds. we are here together saying we will fight in the same side for justice and for peace. Thank you. That was Aziz Abusara and Meos Inon. The two of them have co-written a book called The Future Is Peace, a shared journey across the Holy Land, which comes out in April. You can watch their full conversation at ted.com.

Thanks so much for listening to our show this week. If you liked it or you got something out of it, please rate us on Apple or leave a comment on Spotify. We love hearing from you. This episode was produced by Katie Montalione, Fiona Girin, and Harsha Nahada. It was edited by Sanaz-Meshkampur and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Matthew Cloutier, Phoebe Lett, James Delahousy, and Rachel Faulkner White. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineers were Nisha Highness and David Greenberg.

Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewey. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Helen Walters, Roxanne Highlash, and Daniela Ballerazzo. I'm Manus Shomerode, and you have been listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.