Pod Insights How to Be a Better Human Re-release: How peace can persevere (w/ Aziz Abu Sarah) About this episode It’s extremely difficult to move past anger and hurt driving you towards revenge. War, violence, and suffering are driven by that cycle of emotions. Palestinian author, peacemaker, and entrepreneur Aziz Abu Sarah knows the feelings well, but from his own life experiences, he shares his belief that peace is achievable and another way forward is possible. In this episode, Aziz tells his story and explains his work to bring even the most seemingly intractable conflicts to a resolution that allows for justice, reconciliation, and safety for all.
This episode originally aired September 9, 2024.
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0:00 Chris Duffy? Hi, everyone. This week in the United States, it is Memorial Day, a holiday when we think about the real costs of war and armed conflict. And we are re-airing an episode from the archive. This is a conversation with the peacemaker Aziz Abu Sarr. This was recorded a year ago, but unfortunately, the topic and the conversation that we had with Aziz are just as relevant, if not more relevant today. I hope that you will enjoy this conversation in this episode. I hope that you will be just as inspired as I am to move away from conflict and into peace and reconciliation and justice. And we will be back next week with a new episode of How to Be a Better Human. Until then, here's Aziz.
0:40 Chris Duffy? You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. On today's episode, we're going to be talking about how to make peace in a world that is filled with conflict. Sometimes the answer is big and dramatic. It's a signing of accords or two governments negotiating a settlement. But other times, the answer is smaller or granular and individual. It's tiny bits of progress that accumulate over time into something bigger. Today's guest, Aziz Abu Sarr, runs a travel company when he is not working as a peace activist. And those two occupations might seem very far apart. But as Aziz explained in his TED Talk, they're actually quite connected. Because to have peace, you need to be able to see the world differently. Here's a clip from Aziz's TED Talk.
1:23 Speaker 01 I worked in 70 countries on peace and conflict. And everywhere I worked, I found that we shared the same problems. The cause of conflicts are the same. It's lack of recognition, not willing to understand each other's historical narrative, and not having assured vision for our future. And not doing those things is a fatal mistake. We live next to each other, and yet we are so divided. We cannot talk, we cannot meet, we cannot have a conversation. There are roadblocks, there are checkpoints, there are walls that divide us. There's societal pressure that makes us not being able to talk to each other. In 2009, I co-founded Mejdi Tours and later Interact International
2:05 Speaker 01 with my Jewish friend, Scott, to do that, to give a context, a place where we can build a movement of citizen diplomat.
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3:46 Speaker 01 Where you can have dual narrative tours, an Israeli and a Palestinian co-leading a tour, and then in many other dozen of other countries. So we can find a framework. We can say, how can I learn from you? What is it that we can push each other to do? Maybe that's the question. What have we learned from each other?
4:08 Chris Duffy? We're going to be back with Aziz in just a moment. He has so much to say that speaks to this current moment, but also to how we handle conflict more generally. Don't go anywhere, we'll be right back.
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5:31 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to environmental change.
6:14 Chris Duffy? In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
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7:09 Chris Duffy? Today, we're talking with Aziz Abu Sarah about how to create peace and navigate conflict.
7:14 Speaker 01 Hi, I'm Aziz Abu Sarah. I'm from Jerusalem. I'm Palestinian. I'm the CEO of Majdi Tours and co-founder of Interact International. And I define myself as a peacemaker.
7:26 Chris Duffy? You run this tour company. You've traveled. You speak about peace. Before I read your book, Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler's Guide to World Peace, I didn't necessarily think of travel and peacemaking as the same. It seems like after reading your book that you really do see those as two different sides of the same coin.
7:43 Speaker 01 And I hope you do now, too, Chris, right?
7:46 Chris Duffy? Absolutely. Very persuasive book, a very well-written and convincing book.
7:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, I mean, this year, we're expecting almost 1.6 billion people to travel internationally. 1.6 billion people. And I keep thinking, if those 1.6 billion see their travel as an act of diplomacy and as an act of peacemaking, and use our travel to overcome some of our stereotypes, we all have them, and we all need to overcome them, and travel is fatal to stereotypes. If we able to connect with someone who's different than us, hear a different narrative, the impact on not just each of us, the impact on the world is beyond our imagination.
8:31 Speaker 01 I was last month in Kenya and I went Nairobi and I met this amazing guy. His name is Typhoon. He's a tour guide. He was a street kid at nine years old. He became a street kid and he's now twenty four, twenty five years old. And so I did a tour with him and it was my favorite tour I did in Kenya. But he told me something at the end. He said, I can't afford traveling around the world. I see the world through being a tour guide. And so when I guide somebody, I don't just tell them about Nairobi and what's special about Nairobi in my own life and how I went from being a street kid to a criminal, to spending time in prison, to becoming a tour guide. I also learn from the people who come to here. It's an exchange.
9:14 Speaker 01 And too many of us don't think of it as an exchange. And when that exchange happened, that's an act of peacemaking. That's an act of diplomacy. That's an act of friendship. And you stay in touch with these people because they touch your life in a way that it just doesn't end the moment you leave the country.
9:30 Chris Duffy? In your book, you talk about how of all the journeys that you've taken and you've traveled to more than sixty countries, how traveling across the town that you grew up in and deciding to take a language class felt like the longest journey of your life. Can you tell me what you mean by that?
9:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think when we think of travel, we think how far can I go? And how, you know, how many flights can I get to? And what's the longest amount of miles can I go? However, in reality, I feel that trips that impact us the most are the ones across the street. Because you get to to meet your neighbors who you don't know. And it's things that are close to you. It's things that affect you. It's things that trigger you. And for me, growing up as a Palestinian in East Jerusalem, those things that triggered me, I never met an Israeli Jew and had a conversation with them, just a person to a person, a human to a human,
10:26 Speaker 01 and not connected to the conflict directly. And crossing the street and going to West Jerusalem, which is walking distance from my home, was terrifying because I never felt that's a place I can be comfortable at. And then there I met with Israelis and with Jews in my Hebrew class. I was the only Palestinian in my class. And I expected no one would like me. I thought everyone's gonna be looking at me and going like, what is this Arab doing here kind of thing? And instead, I ended up meeting this most amazing Hebrew teacher, who welcomed me even in Arabic when she realized, I think, how uncomfortable I was.
11:08 Speaker 01 And then I started talking to the other students and day after day and week after week, I started building these amazing friendships and changed my life forever.
11:18 Chris Duffy? I think for some people who hear that, right, like, oh, you chose to take a Hebrew class. That sounds like you were already looking for that. And yet, that actually isn't really what the case was. You chose this very practically.
11:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, if you live in Jerusalem and you don't speak Hebrew, it's a game over. You're not gonna be able to work. You're not gonna be able to go to college. It's a language that's required for everything in Jerusalem. But my brother was killed when I was 10 years old, killed by Israeli soldiers. I decided I'm not learning the language. Even though it's required, this is not okay with me. I was so angry that I was like, I didn't learn Hebrew, even though it was mandatory in my high school. I still passed all my exams, although I probably shouldn't tell people how in case any students are listening. But at 18, I realized that was a dumb decision because now I need to go to college and I need to work. And if I don't learn the language, that's just not gonna happen. And so it was totally out of necessity.
12:16 Chris Duffy? Can you just paint a picture for people who aren't already familiar with your story of where you were before you took that first step? Like where you came from, why your thinking was the way that it was? Because I don't think it's justifiable to say we have to start by saying we're all okay, rather than saying we have to acknowledge what's happened as well.
12:35 Speaker 01 You're absolutely right. There's a lot of injustices in the world. There are a lot of problems around us and we all go through painful moments. And it defines who we are. And for me, I grew up in the first Intifada. I grew up in the first Palestinian uprising. And I didn't realize how abnormal my life until many years later and I started meeting people like you. Chris would tell me their school years are different than my school years. Like, my mom gave me an onion when I went to school because I was afraid of tear gas. And tear gas makes you suffocate. And I told my mom, I don't think education is worth dying for. And I was seven, eight years old, making this case
13:17 Speaker 01 to my mom, like, just, education is a terrible idea. I should quit school. This tear gas thing, I'm not willing to go through it. And she gave me an onion because if you put an onion close to your nose, it actually could help you not suffocate. And so that's just an example of what it means to grow up in that reality. And that reality makes you angry. My brother was arrested when I was nine years old. He was eighteen and he was beaten up in prison and ended up dying as a result of internal injuries. He was nineteen when he died. And I, I grew up with these images of the Israeli soldiers breaking into our home and arresting him.
13:57 Speaker 01 And I went from being an A student, good kid, to being angry, being bitter. And all I could think about is revenge. I felt there's no choice. If somebody kills your brother, then you are a bad person if you don't think of revenge. And so peacemaking seemed the dumbest idea in the world. Like, if somebody talked to me about peace when I was ten or eleven, I, I'd punch them in the face. I, I think it's unrealistic. And then at eighteen, when I was studying in that Hebrew class, I realized for the first time that I do have a choice, that I do have an agency, that regardless of what other people do to you, you make your own choices.
14:39 Speaker 01 And that actually, every time I chose to hate, I chose revenge, I chose that path. I was being a slave to the person who killed my brother. And not only did he kill my brother, now he's also ruining my life. He's controlling my life. That was such a redeeming thing, going beyond, realizing that I can forgive. Not because that person deserved it, but because I choose to forgive. And forgiveness is kind of powerful because. You don't need the other person to collaborate with you to forgive them. For peace, you need two sides, but for forgiveness, you only need one. And it doesn't condone, it doesn't accept, but it says, I am not gonna let that control my life.
15:24 Speaker 01 And from that point on, this has become what I want to work for, is bring people together and hopefully stop what happened to me from happening to other people.
15:34 Chris Duffy? I've heard you talk many times about your father and the example that he played for you because he's a person who, of course, has many grievances, very legitimate grievances that could have led him to be bitter and hateful. And instead, he always pushed you and the entire family towards an idea of taking the high road and reconciliation and controlling emotions in a way that often was really difficult and I think you disagreed with many times. One of the moments that I wanted to talk about is not a moment between Israelis and Palestinians, but actually a moment where you caught a thief in the house.
16:11 Speaker 01 It's one of the craziest things because I was with my parents. My brother calls and he says, I caught the thief in my house. I locked him in a room. Come to my house as soon as possible. And so I get there with my dad. The whole family is there. All these guys are angry, you know, cousins, second cousins. Palestinian families are big. I mean, tons of people were there and they wanted to beat up the guy. And my dad walks in, talks to him and lets him go. He gets his name, calls his family and he lets them know this is what happened. And they sent a delegation, basically, to speak on their behalf. And in this delegation, they meet with our family.
16:52 Speaker 01 And we go back and forth into a Palestinian conflict resolution tradition. And it's not going to the police, it's not going to courts. You have elders of the families meet together and go through what do we expect from them? They accept that their son did what he did. Basically, when he got in to steal stuff, he thought he had enough time. So he decided, you know what? Why not get a joint and smoke a little bit? So he smoked his joint, fell asleep, and that's how my brother caught him. He was young, maybe younger, eighteen years old. And so we're like, this kid needs help. That was one. And they said, okay, we'll get him help. We'll check him into a place to to help him get over whatever he's going through. The second thing, he shouldn't come into our neighborhood.
17:36 Speaker 01 And they agreed to that for a few months, just for emotions to go down. We don't want any confrontation between him and the young people in our family. But it ended with money, because there's the civic settlement where they have to make a payment. And it starts with how terrible the crime is. So it starts with a very high amount, started like a million dollars or something like that. And you keep going down through this process of honoring different prophets and God and respectable people here. So it started because of God, it goes down to half a million, and then it goes down to two hundred because of Moses and because of Jesus. There's a lot of prophets in Islam. So eventually it ends up down to like twenty thousand
18:19 Speaker 01 dollars. And they say, okay, we'll collect it. The whole family has to collect it. So cousins, brothers, everyone. And they bring it to us. And me and my brother, I remember just thinking, this is fantastic. Twenty thousand, we gonna go crazy. Like, what are we gonna buy? Where are we gonna travel? It's money we didn't count on. And my dad goes, no, we're giving back the money. And both of us were like, what do you mean you're giving back the money? We just got twenty thou- who gives back twenty thousand? This is absurd. And my dad goes, yeah, we have to give it back. And he explains to us that, you know, look at us, we are a big family. I have twenty plus nephews and nieces.
19:00 Speaker 01 He looked at us and said, you guarantee that none of your nephews and nieces gonna do something stupid? If people remember you as those who forgive, they will forgive you when one of our kids do something dumb. But if they remember you as the people who punish those who make mistakes, they'll punish us as well. And so I'm like, I don't like that, but okay, fine. I get it. At that point, I was too fixated on the money. I asked him, why then keep the money? Like, he had them give us the money and he kept it for a few days. I'm like, why did you do that? You could have just forgiven them on the spot. He said, no, if I forgiven them on the spot, they would not have felt the pain of losing the money or the gratitude of giving them the money
19:45 Speaker 01 back. So by making them collect the money, feeling they lost it, and then keep it for a couple of days and then go back and give it to them. That made them understand the gesture a million times more than just forgiving them on the spot. So I often think what brought me into conflict resolution and peace building, and even though it's not my dad's job, there's a lot of what he did that I watched growing up that has taught me so much. And this is one of those moments.
20:19 Chris Duffy? We're going to take a quick break, but then we'll be right back.
20:28 Chris Duffy? This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative. What connects a hidden laboratory in the Amazon, giant pandas in China's mountain forests, research relating to the ocean, and communities living alongside wildlife in India? That's what you'll hear on season six of Planet Visionaries. Stories from the explorers, scientists, and conservation leaders whose work addresses research, biodiversity, and conservation issues in specific locations. Planet Visionaries, hosted by environmental advocate and professional climber Alex Honnold, brings you real stories of discovery, determination, and research and initiatives relating to
21:10 Chris Duffy? environmental change. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch wherever you get your podcasts.
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22:50 Chris Duffy? Explore the new Peloton Tread Flex at onepeloton.com. And we are back. TED Talks are normally solo, but Aziz came onstage with his friend, the Israeli peace activist Ma'az Inan, and they had a conversation describing the tragedy of October 7th and their work in pushing for a different path forward rather than bloodshed and suffering. Here's a clip from their talk. The first voice that you're about to hear is Ma'az.
23:20 Speaker 03 You know, Aziz, only four days ago, last Thursday, we buried the remains of my parents. My mom was burned so badly, she cannot be identified. I lost them on October 7th.
23:35 Speaker 03 I lost so many of my childhood friends, their parents, their children. Many were kidnapped to Gaza. I was drowning in an ocean of sorrow and pain. I was broken into pieces. We met only once before October 7th. Even that was for two minutes, maybe. But you were among the first one to reach out, send your condolences, support. And I will always love you for being there for me in my hardest time.
24:09 Speaker 01 No, Mao Zedong, 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. It's so much easier to want revenge, to be angry. But you are a brave man.
24:45 Chris Duffy? You and I met at TED. And you were giving this talk jointly with an Israeli peace activist, Mao Zedong. And the talk is really beautiful. I got a little bit of the sense beforehand that people felt maybe a little bit like this was such a risky subject to have you and Mao's talk. And like broaching these issues was really out there and dangerous. I wonder what you think about that, whether people feel like these topics are so fraught that we shouldn't talk about them at all. And then about the idea that actually this is kind of core to what it takes to just be humans in community with each other at all.
25:18 Speaker 01 I think conflict avoidance is what causes conflicts to escalate. To even think a conversation about peace, a conversation about coexistence, a conversation about how to talk about these things is dangerous. And it could throw things off. How are we going to deal with it? Is what gets us to where we are today in the world, where people are unable to talk to each other, where friendships are Falling apart, where you see what's happening on some campuses. If you really want to deal with extremism, wherever it is. The antidote to extremism is us, is showing what's the alternative to it. Ignoring it isn't the solution.
26:01 Speaker 01 And in that aspect, I am very grateful that when I reached out to Ted and said, I think this conversation should happen. Not only did they respond, but also had it as the first session and like premiered session there. Because I know many communities have been afraid to do that. And in reality, my feeling is they usually suffer more because they don't have any guideline. They don't have any conversation. They don't have any relationships that has been created that could help in these kind of moments.
26:34 Chris Duffy? Hmm, I think that one of the things that is really scary about. I mean, specifically talking about Israel, Palestine and the the ongoing situation in Gaza. It seems like one of the really scary parts is that you're going to say something wrong. It's not possible to not accidentally say something that is offensive or ignorant. Because you just don't know. And and that's not to say there are people who are deliberately saying things that are inflammatory and offensive. But even if you're trying to do it right, you're going to stumble.
27:05 Speaker 01 I beyond agree with you. I think we know nothing about the other sides in in many situations. I looked at numbers in the US shows that only about thirty eight percent of Americans have known a Muslim person. That is really low. And if the only thing you get about Muslims in America is on the news, you're probably terrified of of Muslims. They scare you because often, unfortunately, the coverage is not positive. It's only when something terrible happens. And so if you start engaging in dialogue, you will have stereotypes. We all do. And you're gonna say some things that are wrong and you might fall in Islamophobic tropes.
27:48 Speaker 01 Just like if somebody who didn't know Jewish people might fall into antisemitic tropes. I think as long as the intention isn't there and you're willing to learn, we should be gracious. We should be there to help instead of the gatya kind of thing. And oh, here, I found that they said something horrible and use instead those moments as a learning for all of us, because like I said, we all do it. I told the story at Ted about my dad and how his first peace meeting, he asked if the Holocaust did happen. I was leading that organization where my dad asked that question. I could have got fired.
28:27 Chris Duffy? Yeah, it's a really loaded and intense moment to have your father, as you're organizing the meeting, ask probably the most tense question possible to say, did the Holocaust really happen?
28:37 Speaker 01 Yeah. Yeah. Instead of people getting mad at him, getting mad at me, saying, how could you bring your dad? And he starts saying this nonsense stuff. Instead, one of the Israelis in the meeting, he gets up and says to my dad, I don't expect you to believe in something you never learned about. But if you want, I can help you learn about it and you make up your mind after. I'm not pushing you. And he had his father, who was a survivor from Auschwitz, take my dad and then 70 other Palestinians who had the same question, but were afraid to ask that question because they didn't want somebody to think they're anti-Semitic, even though in their mind, they're like, we don't know, did it really
29:19 Speaker 01 happen or not? They all went to the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem with three Holocaust survivors and spent the whole day there, hearing their personal stories, learning about the Holocaust. And that ended up creating a project that's still happening today in the organization that they surround, the Parents or Co-Brift Families Forum, where Israelis and Palestinians are learning about each other's history, going and asking and dealing with hard questions, including did the Holocaust happen, but also what happened 1948 to Palestinian villages? Did people get displaced or not? And not being afraid to ask those hard questions, not comparing pain, not comparing stories, but really understanding. That's the essence
30:02 Speaker 01 of peacemaking. You have to ask those hard questions. We come from a place of ignorance. We don't learn about each other. So affording each other that grace instead of like, I got some... Something on you is such a key moment for peacemaking.
30:18 Chris Duffy? You talk also about how your Israeli friend of yours came to visit you at your house. And it was her first time being in a Palestinian neighborhood, surrounded by Palestinians. And she had all these stereotypes in her head about how dangerous it was and how people would want to attack her. And there was a moment where, in fact, the neighbors start banging on the door and she's really scared. And the reason they were banging on the door was was completely different than what she thought.
30:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's Shalom. We actually were about to start doing a radio show together. And we did for three years, me and her. And it was her first time coming to East Jerusalem. She was in my house and the doors start banging and she was definitely like, what is going on? Why are people banging on the door? And what happens? There was a fire close to her car. And they were afraid that her car will burn. And even when they say there is a fire, she thought somebody put a fire there to burn her car in the beginning. And it was the exact opposite. They were like, oh, please tell your guests to move her car because there is a small fire that happened and want to make sure her car is safe. And I can tell you maybe a million of those stories.
31:29 Speaker 01 The more I spend time with Israelis and Palestinians and they get to know each other, we not that different. I think we are sold this lie that we are so different and it's us versus them and we must hate each other. We have been divided in a way where you can demonize and dehumanize the other so easily because you don't know who the other is. And now it's easier in some ways to meet abroad between Israelis and Palestinians than to meet in Israel and Palestine, which is absurd. But when that's the reality, it becomes so much easier for people to buy into this narrative that they just all want to kill you, they all hate you, they all sleep and wake up thinking, and how can I kill somebody?
32:12 Speaker 01 And you'll find a few of these videos online that will show you people who think in that way. And you think it must be everybody because those kind of videos that have individuals who speak that hate language. Unfortunately, it gets spread much faster than this conversation you and I might be having. So people don't maybe always share it as much as, oh, look, they want to kill us. And when you make decisions out of fear, those are always flawed decisions. And that's how we get to a situation where incredibly smart people, incredibly thoughtful people will say the craziest thing because they are motivated now more by fear
32:56 Speaker 01 rather than are motivated by hope and by conversations like the one we are having now.
33:02 Chris Duffy? So when people are in these moments where they're motivated by fear, maybe there's a moment of ignorance and emotions get instantly heightened, right? All of a sudden, people's backs are up and their, you know, their blood is pumping. How do you lower the temperature in those moments and get back to communication?
33:20 Speaker 01 You cannot win an argument with somebody who's in that situation. Anyway, you shouldn't try to win an argument. Instead, I try to tell stories. I always resort to storytelling because people can see something be moved, let their hearts be differently when they hear a story about the other side that shocks them and makes them go, wait, but that doesn't fit into my narrative. So if I'm talking to Palestinians, I'll share stories of Ramil Hanan, whose daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber, or Ma'oz Inon, whose parents were killed on October 7th, and say, here's two people who don't hate you, who are actually angry about what's happening in Gaza now.
34:05 Speaker 01 And Ma'oz often says, I cry for the children in Gaza, just like I cry for my parents. And they never heard somebody who would say anything like this. And so it really touches their heart. And then if I'm talking to Israelis, I tell them my story. And I said, look, my brother was killed by Israeli soldier and I'm here not to tell you I hate you. I'm here to stretch my arm and my hand and say, I want to work with you. I want us to live together. I want us to be neighbors. I want us to care for each other. And that always shocks people because it's not what they expect from the so-called enemy. Stories are the key to all the problems we're facing
34:46 Speaker 01 because it really goes down to bad communication and to propaganda and to misinformation. And the best way to counter all of that Is through storytelling.
34:57 Chris Duffy? In your book, you have a quote from Ibn Battuta that travel makes you speechless, but then it turns you into a storyteller.
35:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, he's my favorite. First, he was one of the first ever explorers in general. He's lived about 700 years ago in was born in Morocco in Tangier and traveled all over from China to India to part of Europe, to the Middle East, to everywhere. And then he wrote his whole story and Ibn Battuta said, yes, travel makes you speechless, but then it turns you into a storyteller. And he's absolutely right because when you come back from a trip that was all sightseeing, what do you tell your friends? Okay, I saw the pyramids and I saw this and I saw this and that's it. It's the stories that make
35:43 Speaker 01 your trip interesting. It's the stories of the people you meet. It's the stories of what they overcome. When we travel, sometimes we get so much into the sightseeing mentality that we forget the people. And I think the best thing about every country you go to, every city, every town you visit are the people who live there and what they offer you, the different sense of humor, the different food, the different stories. It's fascinating. It makes me fall in love with these places. And those are the people I remember.
36:16 Chris Duffy? You're also very thoughtful about which stories you're telling and whose stories you're listening to. When you lead these tours, and especially when you lead tours in Israel and Palestine, you have joint tour guides, an Israeli and a Palestinian. And that, of course, is showing a narrative from an Israeli side and a Palestinian side. You also talk about diversity within communities, too. So it's not like this idea that all Israelis think the same way and all Palestinians think the same way. On one of the tours that you were leading, people expected the disagreement to be between the Israeli and the Palestinian guide. And instead, it was you and the Palestinian arguing over where the site of the crucifixion of Jesus. Both of you are Muslim, neither was Christian, but this was like you had different perspectives on where the most likely historical site was.
36:59 Speaker 01 I joined a tour that two of my tour guides were guiding, an Israeli and a Palestinian, were going through the Holy Sepulcher. And my tour guide went to a Catholic school as a kid and I went later on to a Christian Protestant college. And so we both were. Given a different history for Jesus was crucified and buried, resurrected. And so the two of us ended up going into this long conversation debate over where is the exact site of the crucifixion and burial and resurrection? And you have this group, you know, the Israeli guy just sat down and is like, you guys figure it out. I'm not part of, I'm not part of this conversation.
37:41 Speaker 01 And you're right, I want my travelers to understand there is no one voice and, and any of these issues. And I want them to hear unheard voices. When I plan a tour, normally I like to say I plan the tours in a responsive way. What are the things that we are responding to? What are the voices that are not heard? What are the narratives that are ignored? And sometimes these are major narratives and I'm not necessarily like small things. Like I challenge you, you look at a tour in, to Egypt today, you will find ninety plus percent, if not ninety nine percent of the tours not meet anyone except their tour guides.
38:23 Speaker 01 The whole trip, one person, you leave the country with one perspective, but there are farmers, why not meet with a farmer? There are people who work in recycling that I often meet with. There are artists that I bring to meet with people when we're in Egypt and, you know, we do the same in Northern Ireland, you have Catholic and Protestant, you do it in, in South Africa, I have a black and white, but it's in every country. No country is homogenous.
38:50 Chris Duffy? And again, this goes back to the idea that wherever you are, you can challenge those set ways of thinking and is actually kind of fundamental to building a more just and equitable society.
39:01 Speaker 01 It's where you spend your money as well, which is really important. If all your money is going to a big tour company, a big major hotel chain, we are enforcing an injustice in this world. Local people should be part of the travel industry and should be part not only in telling their stories, but also in benefiting financially.
39:22 Chris Duffy? You know, we got to spend a fair amount of time together in Vancouver. And I had, it was such a pleasure to get to know you and to see your public talk, but also to have dinner with you and talk casually. And something that I've been thinking about since then, when I think about our interactions, is how there are ways that identity can really get flattened when we talk about these big issues, like the conflict in Palestine and Israel. There's this way in which you, for example, can be presented only as this very serious person, right? This victim of the conflict, but also a peacemaker. But you are also so much more than that. You're hilarious, you're funny, you're complex, you're not any one thing. So how do you personally push back against that?
40:05 Speaker 01 It's a challenge I've faced through my whole career. One, I use a lot of humor in everything I do because that's part of who I am. And if I was as brave as you, I would have done stand-up comedy more often. I've done it a couple of times and man, it is so hard to put yourself out there and hope people will laugh in the first 30 seconds of speaking.
40:28 Chris Duffy? Well, certainly if there's one of the two of us that's brave. It may be that neither of us is brave, but certainly it's not me.
40:34 Speaker 01 Ah, you are, you absolutely are. But yeah, I try to definitely show that I am not only one identity. I don't want you to only look at Palestinians with pity or look at us only as victims. We are much more than that. I grew up, like many Palestinians, loving poetry. I started writing poetry when I was seven or eight. It was terrible poetry, but I still wrote poetry when I was that young. I used to call the radio almost every week to read my poetry. Now I'm very embarrassed of the kind of poetry I read on the radio. But that's how our culture is so different than what people think.
41:14 Speaker 01 And often I get like, oh, your culture is so much a culture of death, which is not the culture I grew up with. You have people like Sami Al Qasim, who wrote The day I'm killed, my killer will rifle through my pockets and he'll find three tickets, one to peace, one to the fields and the rain, and one to the conscience of a humankind. I beg you, my killer, do not waste such a thing. Do not ignore these tickets. Take them. I beg you to travel. And I say, that is one of our most famous poets. And it's not a poem about glorifying death. It's telling his killer, in a time where he feels so much conflict around him, I don't want this to continue.
41:56 Speaker 01 Even if the price is my death, I don't want you to live in this reality. And that's what I want the world to know. We're not only victims. You know, even in these hard moments and looking at what's happening in Gaza and so much death and so much suffering and so much pain, if you only see people as victims, if you only see them in one small box, it's much easier also to dehumanize them. It's much easier to not see them as as normal people who have dreams, who want to be teachers, want to be doctors, want to be comedians, want to be all these things. And that's what I want people to know about me and I want people to know about Palestinians in general, Muslims, Arabs in America. That's where we started.
42:38 Chris Duffy? It feels like so much of bridging divides, whether it's during a war or against prejudice or anything, it it starts with being willing to see a person as more than you might start by expecting. Because there is this desire to say like, okay, we're going to put you and have you talk with an Israeli. And of course, the Israeli will say this, the thing we all know what they're going to say. And the Palestinian will say this, the thing we all know what they're going to say. It leads only to tragedy and further intense conflict. So we have to find ways to have new narratives. And those narratives start by seeing people as they actually are, rather than flattening them into these one-line descriptions.
43:19 Speaker 01 I refuse to be interviewed anymore. After October 7th, I can't tell you how many calls I got. It's like, we're going to have an Israeli and you you just fight it through. And I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not willing to reinforce that kind of image.
43:37 Chris Duffy? To me, one of the really meaningful things that I hear from you and that I hear from Israeli peace activists as well is there aren't two sides here. That is a false narrative. People being killed is a tragedy and people being oppressed is a tragedy. And you can feel that across both sides. You don't have to, to present it as it's, I'm a Palestinian, so I will only care about these deaths and I'm an Israeli and I will only care about these deaths. That's the way that people keep dying. We can't get to a better outcome. And that's true all over the world, right? Like if you only care about white people dying, that's a real problem. Cause people do often get mad about the idea of like empathy across the issues.
44:17 Speaker 01 I often tell people, if you need to know the nationality of a victim before you decide if you're for it or against what happened to them, you've lost it. You've lost the most important part of our humanity is if I need to decide if a child who's killed, first I need to know if he's Palestinian or Israeli before I feel that it's wrong or not, or I should justify it or not. What has happened to me? Then the problem is me if that's what I need to know. And I think that's the essence of our conflict. That's the essence of the problem now is too many people, especially in the US, I would say even more than Israel and Palestine, too many people have gotten into this, I
45:01 Speaker 01 want to know who so I can figure out who do I want to justify. I can't accept that as a reality. I think empathy should exist for every innocent person, for every victim, for every innocent life that is being lost. And there are thousands and thousands of those. When my friend Ma'oz lost his parents, I sent him a message a day after because I didn't think, oh, well, he's Israeli. I'm not gonna like, that doesn't even cross my mind anymore. And I know. Anytime something happens in Jerusalem and he calls me to check on my family, he doesn't think, oh, well, let me figure out he's Palestinian, I shouldn't check on him. We got to overcome this mentality.
45:46 Speaker 01 Now, I often ask people to do this. I say, if you see something and you think it's justifiable, that has hurt innocent people because it's your side, switch the sides. Always close your eyes and think, what if it was the other way around? Would I have felt the same way? And I ask myself that question all the time because it's a good test to knowing where is my humanity? Where is my heart? And to keep myself connected to my values and not to a nationality and not to a political discourse. I want to be rooted in values. That's what's more important to me than anything else. So it's a good test for all of us to do.
46:26 Chris Duffy? And I also think that maybe one of the things that complicates this a little bit is that there is a difference between forgiveness, empathy, peace and justice. That those are not all exactly the same. And we should pursue all of them. But I think sometimes they get lumped together in a way that makes people find it easier to dismiss them all. So how do you think about those kind of four goals? Forgiveness, accountability, peace and justice? How do you think about them in the current situation where it feels like all of them are so far away?
46:58 Speaker 01 Two things you can do without a partner. Empathy, you don't need a partner. And forgiveness, you don't need a partner. So I think those we all should be striving to do regardless of what's happening. And you see somebody like Yonatan and Ma'oz and these partners and Ramel Hanan, who I mentioned, and they have empathy despite having so much suffering. So I think that's the first step is learning and pushing ourselves toward having empathy. With peace, if you really want peace to last, it must have some just elements of it. It has to have justice. It has to have equality. It has to have dignity. It must create a different reality. And those who want peace without any of that, which I think what a lot of people wanted before October 7th, honestly.
47:42 Speaker 01 I've heard politicians talk about it. They wanted quiet. They didn't want peace. They didn't care that, you know, people's lives were not right. They didn't know that there was oppression. That doesn't last. It might last for five years. It might last for 10 years, but it doesn't last forever. There is no way it would. If you really want a lasting peace, you have to also work for equality, for justice, and so on. And then reconciliation is a long-term project. It's not the one they think. I just came back from Northern Ireland. It's been 30 years almost for the peace agreement. And you will hear everyone there says, we're still in the beginning. We are not done. If we take our eyes off the target,
48:26 Speaker 01 we will get back into where we were 30 years ago. Peace agreement is actually only a beginning, and we'll work on it for 100 years later. That's how you maintain peace. So it's not a one moment, and it's an action. It's not a feeling. If you complaining why we don't have peace, why we don't have hope, then maybe you need to roll your sleeves and start doing something about it.
48:49 Chris Duffy? Well, Aziz, it is always such a pleasure to talk to you, and I really appreciate you making the time to be on the show.
48:55 Speaker 01 Likewise.
48:56 Chris Duffy? Such a joy.
48:56 Speaker 01 Likewise.
48:57 Chris Duffy? Thank you so much.
48:58 Speaker 01 Thank you. Thank you for having me, Chris.
49:03 Chris Duffy? That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Aziz Abu Sarah. His book is called Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler's Guide to World Peace, and his travel company is called Mejdi Tours. That's M-E-J-D-I Tours. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at christuffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the Ted side by Daniela Balarezzo, Ben Ben Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Laney Lott, Antonio Lay, and Joseph DeBrine. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Matthias Salas. On the PRX side, we've got Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gourville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible.
49:45 Chris Duffy? If you're listening on Apple, please leave us a review. That would be great. It really helps us to have new reviews written by people who like the show. Wherever you're listening, please send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it. We will be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.
50:08 Chris Duffy? This episode is sponsored by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Here's a question this show asks a lot. What can one person actually do? Take protecting the environment. When the task feels so big, it's hard to know where to even begin. Turns out, the answer isn't doing it alone. It's teaming up with people who care as much as you do. With the help of 3 million supporters, the Natural Resources Defense Council is in court to defend ancient forests, pristine coasts, and the wildlife that depend on them. None of these places or species can be replaced. They're still here because people fought for them, in and out of court. And that fight needs your support today. Donate at nrdc.org/human, and your gift will be matched five times.
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