The images of members of US Congress giving Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu multiple standing ovations during his recent visit to Washington DC are certain to go down in history. But as Netanyahu spoke of “finishing the job” in Gaza, to raucous applause, there were others with a far different perspective who also intended to make their voices heard on the Hill. Peace activists Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon also recently addressed members of Congress—but with a message of peace and reconciliation, not genocide. Abu Sarah, who is Palestinian, and Inon, who is Israeli, share some things in common. Both have lost close relatives, and both believe that peace is still worth fighting for. Abu Sarah and Inon join The Marc Steiner Show for a discussion on their shared vision for a future beyond apartheid and genocide.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Marc Steiner:
Welcome to the Marc Steiner Show here on The Real News. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us once again. My guests today are Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah. They were supposed to be on my program early this month while they were here in Baltimore, but unfortunately got COVID and now they’re back in Israel-Palestine, but they’re joining me today. Maoz Inon runs the Abraham Hostels and lost both of his parents when Hamas attacked Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara on October the seventh. Aziz Abu Sarah is a former Plus972 writer, Palestinian peace activist, journalist, also a tourism entrepreneur who founded the Mejdi Tours, lives in East Jerusalem. And when Aziz was 10 years old, his brother was beaten to death by Israeli Police. Both men have felt a horrendous pain that comes out of this conflict in deeply personal ways. Somehow they both emerged as warriors for peace. And gentlemen, welcome. It’s good to have you with us.
Aziz Abu:
Thank you, Marc. Thank you for having us.
Marc Steiner:
I’m really sorry I couldn’t meet you while you were here, but I did not want you to have to go back home with COVID, so I had to cancel our interview. But let me start with what happened while you were here, you went to Congress and you spoke in Congress to some congressman. Talk about that. I want to hear just what happened when you came here, what your reception was like and what you made of all that, because you were here the same time that Netanyahu was giving that speech that I did watch, which we’ll talk about as well. But first let me talk about the two of you and what you experienced in Congress when you were here and Abu Sarah, let me start with you, Aziz.
Aziz Abu:
Well, we came here to tell Congress that peace is possible. We wanted to say that there’s an alternative vision and that Netanyahu’s vision is the wrong vision and that it was actually a mistake to invite Netanyahu to address Congress. If anything, it’s people like us, not just us, but people like us peacemakers, who should have been invited to address Congress. Because we present a vision of coexistence. We present a vision of reconciliation. We present a vision where Israelis and Palestinians can live together. And as you mentioned, Maoz lost his parents, I’ve lost my brother and if the two of us can work together, then it’s possible. Instead, unfortunately, we got to hear a vision that promises that the future is even worse than the present, the current reality today. So we wanted to tell Congress that come and talk to us. Listen from people who are peacemakers, listen to people who know how to make peace possible.
Listen to people who suffered because of this conflict and see that there is a possibility for a future that doesn’t include bombing and killing and hurting and continuing this cycle of violence. And we did get some positive responses. We had 12 members, I think more of Congress come and listen to us at an event that we did at the same time as Netanyahu was speaking. And then we met with two dozen of Congressional offices while we were in Washington. And people were really happy to hear that there is a possibility. I think people, like you mentioned earlier in our conversation, some people are finding it hard to be hopeful, and we came here to create that hope together with them.
Marc Steiner:
Maoz.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Yeah, first Marc, it’s great to be here on your show.
Marc Steiner:
Thank you.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
For me, surprisingly the visit to DC was much more emotional than I thought it will be, because Prime Minister Netanyahu found the time to spend a week in the US, a weekend in Miami. He invited the hostages’ family to the US while refusing to meeting them back home. He was tokenizing the hostages’ family and he found the time to do so. But he never find the time, not him, not any of his cabinet member, not anyone from his coalition to call me or any of the other bereaved families. He never send us condolences. He never send his empathy. He never send us a letter or came to the Shiva, to the Jewish way of mourning. He completely ignored us and still ignoring us. And for him, receiving a standing ovation in the Congress was one of the most shameful day in the history of the Congress.
And I said it to all the House representative we met that it was very difficult to me the way he was acknowledged and received in the US and it was a wrongdoing by the Congress. And we, Aziz and I came to offer a radical vision of hope, of reconciliation and of peace and our messages were accepted in a great way. They were eager to learn about the Palestinian-Israeli peace movement, a growing movement. They were eager to hear feedback regarding the US policy and how it should be changed. They were eager to hear about Aziz and I work to bridge to break the walls of ignorance, of fear, of hate, and to start dialoguing and channeling our pain, our sorrow, into creating a better future in the Middle East.
And of course, our politicians lacking this ability, this leadership, they’re lacking political imagination. And that’s why Aziz and I and many others, Palestinian-Israelis decided to stand, up to stand up and be there in the front line of the peace process. So we offered and ask for a dialogue, for a partnership, for a long-term relationship between the peace movement to the representative and to the State Department.
Marc Steiner:
So given what we are all facing now is war on Gaza. Thousands of Israelis have been killed, but 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza alone, mostly women and children. The war doesn’t seem to be stopping. The Netanyahu government doesn’t seem to even consider peace in any level or peace negotiations. And so where do you take the vision that you two hold so deeply from here, given the reality of what we face on the ground? And both of you have experienced this deep personal pain and became peacemakers, but there are now thousands and thousands of Palestinians and some thousands of Israelis as well, but tens of thousands of Palestinians who experienced the same pain, losing everything they had in their lives. And so how do you transform that into a large movement for peace? What would that look like? How do you do it beyond the kind of sacrifices both of you have made? I mean, it must be a very difficult time for both of you.
Aziz Abu:
I think what we telling people is very simple. We saying we have lost family members. I’ve lost my brother, Maoz lost his parents, and we are able to come together. We understand that the current reality is awful. We are angry about the current reality. You can’t tell people don’t be angry. You can’t tell people don’t feel the pain. We feel the pain. We cry with our people every time I read the news. Look, this week I’m reading the news about people being abused and killed and tortured in prison. That’s how my brother was killed, so it makes me very, very angry as I read these news. But what we are saying is let us make this anger fuel us into working together rather than be more hateful.
Because if we become hateful, we will guarantee that more and more people will end up joining us. That the future that we are going to have is going to be even worse than the current reality. So let us not let our anger make us make more people go through the reality that we live and lose just like we lost and have people killed in their families like people have been killed in our families. That’s one. But the second thing we tell people in the recipe, you have to dream. You have to dream about a better day. You can’t only be focused on the moment of today. You have to dream about the future that is better than the current future.
You have to have a vision for that future. And without vision, people perish. Without vision, we do not know where to go. If we don’t have an aim a to where we go, we will get nowhere. So one of the most amazing thing that unfortunately wasn’t even as we met people in government and the US didn’t know about is on July 1st, the Israeli-Palestinian peace movement had a 6,000 people meet, the biggest rally for peace that has existed in the last maybe 20 plus years. And that shows that there is a possibility, that there is a vision, that people are tired of this reality. And if we want to stop the many, many future potential wars, if we want to stop, you mentioned 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza. Unless we provide a current vision today, what do we expect that those people in Gaza are going to do in the future?
What do we expect that people who lost family members also and have been killed in Israel will do in the future? It’s going to be a cycle of revenge that will never end. So the antidote to extremism, the antidote to violence, the antidote to war, the antidote to all of those is us, is the vision that we are modeling today. The vision that says Israelis and Palestinians are not on opposite sides and are not enemies. And we are on the same side of justice, of equality, of dignity, of peace, and we are trying to convince everybody else to join us, because there is no other alternative.
Marc Steiner:
So Maoz, let me ask you, how do you see the movement for peace and building for peace in life between Israelis and Palestinians? How do you feel that on the Israeli side, the people you know, family, friends, your colleagues?
Sarah Maoz Inon:
I will start by sharing the most important lesson I learned since October 7th and it’s the lesson of hope. That hope is not something you can find, not something you can lose or that someone else will bring you. Hope is an action. It’s a verb. We create hope. We make hope. And it’s very simple to explain how to create hope. You always do it with others. You cannot do it on your own. You do it with others, Israelis and Palestinians and international community by envisioning a better future and by acting to make this vision into a reality. So this is a fundamental lesson that we shared on our visit to DC. And both Aziz and I are entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs know how to make a vision into a reality. And it is also a very simple formula, a recipe of five steps, how to make it happen. And it start with the dream. That’s step number one.
Step number two is the values that you build on this dream. And Aziz just showed them with us. It’s equality and dignity, shared acknowledgement and recognition, reconciliation and healing, security and safety. Those are the values of the future. And on top of those values, we are now building a coalition, a coalition of Israelis, of Palestinians, international community, a civil society organization, a politician, ex-politician, influencers. So we’re building, it’s a growing coalition, a growing movement, growing, and we have a roadmap. The first step is build a roadmap, a blueprint. And the fifth is execution. And the roadmap has four chapters, amplify our voices, build a legitimacy as the future, as the leaders of the future. Policy change from tools of distractions to tools of constructions.
And the first part of the roadmap is building a political power. So in between this framework, we are working, we are working very hard on the ground, but it showed on all other conflict areas throughout the world that without international intervention and support, the local peace movement will fail. So this is exactly why it was so important for us to be in DC to tell them at the moment the US is investing only 50 million a year in the Israeli-Palestinian civil society, but the minimum is $5 billion in military aid. So invest so much in military aid. So of course the result will be what we’re experiencing now. So there must be a change in the policy. So this is exactly what we discussed with the representative here in Israel. Now I’ll get to your question in Israel.
Marc Steiner:
Sure.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
All Israelis and Jewish will ask will tell you we want peace. It’s part of our culture, our religion. We want peace, but we lost hope in peace. And what they mean is they lost hope that our current politicians, we have no leaders now, not in Palestine, nor in Israel, our current politicians don’t know how to take us there to the promised land, to the lasting peace. So this is why the civil society is so important. So we are now do public speaking in schools, gap year program, college, university, all over, webinars, interviews. We are amplifying the message, amplifying the voices of peace.
And we are grouping together with other peace activists, Palestinian, Israelis, young, adult, elderly. So this is how we are creating a movement and we’re creating big public events and we do small retreats. Like I’m speaking from now, I’m missing a very important presentation of Accord Institute that the research showing that 64% from two weeks ago, 64% of the Jewish Israelis, 64, it’s the majority want to reach conflict resolution that will be sponsored by the US that would lead to normalization with Arab world and a Palestinian state. This is 64%.
Marc Steiner:
Of Jewish Israelis?
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Jewish Israelis, yes. But again, those 64% as basically zero representation in the Knesset, in the parliament house. So this is why we need to build our political power, because our politicians thrive on division, on bloodshed, and we were hijacked by those politicians. And we need to get be empowered and be supported by US, by the EU, by other countries. Because peace, again, it’s back to the three most important words, peace is possible.
Marc Steiner:
So taking from what both of you have said and given the reality we face, the devastation we seeing in Gaza at the moment, and you made a point here and I think is really critical, is the United States is the linchpin in many ways to creating this peace, to making it happen, to bringing people together. I think about when Jimmy Carter was president, bringing in their Camp David Accords, the attempt was made. And so something even with more vigor has to happen like that.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Marc, it was also Secretary of the State, James Baker, that in ’91. First Israeli, Palestinian, and the Arab nation to meet in Madrid as the First Intifada was still going on. He didn’t wait for a ceasefire, it didn’t wait for the war to end. He forced a dialogue, he forced negotiation. And when we are speaking, when we said it, exactly those examples to the representatives and the staff and State Department, some of them didn’t know about it.
Marc Steiner:
No, exactly. Yes.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Yeah. So he said, this is the US policy. The US policy is not to give military aid with no condition to the state of Israel. The history of the US policy is exactly the opposite. And what you are doing now is damaging Palestinians, you are damaging Israelis, and you are ensuring the war and the conflict will continue.
Aziz Abu:
Yeah, I think what ended up happening, Marc, is we got so comfortable with the status quo. We got so comfortable with what was known and became very popular term in Israel and Palestine, and even within the US government and this administration and the last administration for sure is a conflict management. We are going to keep things as is because we’ve tried to solve it, it didn’t work, so let’s just keep it as is. And we will manage to have an acceptable level of violence. A couple hundred people get killed a year, we can live with that. That became the policy, that became acceptable. And what Maoz and I are saying, this is not acceptable. What we want isn’t to go back to October 6th. What we want isn’t to go back to this. Let’s get to a level of violence, a level of reality that we willing to live with or our politicians are living to live with.
Instead, we need a conflict resolution. People don’t want a vision that doesn’t guarantee that this is it. This has to be the last time we go at violence. And if that’s not the vision, two years from now, you’re going to be hosting people like us and talking to them about the same thing. And that’s what we cannot allow our politicians to do again. That’s what we cannot allow our governments to do again. And that reform we’re talking about isn’t only, let’s be clear, I’m not talking only about reform in the Israeli government. I’m talking also reform on the Palestinian side. We need younger people in the Palestinian government. We need elections.
We need a transitional period that brings all those involved in politics in Palestine and run elections that brings young people. Last time we had elections was in 2006. It’s absurd. It’s been 18 years since we had election, 19 years for our presidential elections. It’s time to tell those leaders. Netanyahu has been in power on and off for almost 30 years. Abbas has been on and off because he was Prime Minister before and so on for over 25 years. It’s time for these people who have failed us, who have again and again led us to the hell we live in today to say, okay, let somebody else try it. It’s that simple.
Marc Steiner:
I really want to get your visions about how you organize and build that because it takes organizing on the ground, both in the Palestinian world and the Israeli world, but it also takes organizing here in the United States. And I start with the Jewish world and I start with the Arab-American world, but especially the Jewish world in this country. I mean, more and more younger Jews are detaching themselves from Israel and going against what’s going on and want to build a new future. So question is, how do you two see organizing that political energy both in Israel, Palestine, and the United States, and what has to happen to create that? Because we can’t, as I said to a friend the other day about this, people have been trying to wipe Jews out for 2,000 years. Now we’re doing it to ourselves with the policies and what we’re doing. So how do you both envision building that movement, both where you live and here in this country and how we make that bridge? What’s your ideas?
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Yeah, it’s a very good question, and I’m not sure if we have time, but I must say it’s so fun and great to be in your show that I hope you will invite us again.
Marc Steiner:
I’d love to have you both back. Absolutely.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
It’s through partnership and coalition. We don’t want you, Marc, just to do this interview with us, to put it on your podcast channel and that’s it. Forget about us. We want to be your partners. And this is what we say to everyone. So there are already a peace organization that got presence in the US, like Combatants for Peace, American Friends of Peace now, and others. So we already working with them and there will be more peacemakers, Palestinian, Israelis that will come to do advocacy in D.C. We are now putting that together. And they’re also a great, the Palestinian and Israeli in the diaspora are a major part, can play a major role in supporting the peacemakers and our movement.
So we see it as a global movement. Each one will do his part, we’ll synchronize it together and we share the same vision and the same values, and we we’ll work to make this vision into a reality. So it’s not just one thing, it’s many things that many of us need to do, but together we can change the future. We cannot predict it, but we can change the future. So we came back very optimistic after visiting Baltimore, New York and D.C., and we are waiting for the next visit. And we’re also welcoming everyone to come if it’s representatives or media or common people like us, come to the region. We are offering an amazing six or seven day package that really get you to know with the challenges on the ground, but most important with the opportunities.
Aziz Abu:
Yeah, I’ll give you an example, Marc, where when we talk about this is not just hear us and feel good for us and give us your thoughts and prayers. We are not asking for your thoughts and prayers, we’re asking for you to be with us. And I’ll give you an example. Maoz had an interview with a Italian journalist a few months back and she asked him, “What do you want?” And he said what we told you here, “We want you to amplify our voices, to make our voices legitimate. We are the leaders of the future. If our politicians are not doing it, we are doing it.” And so on and so on. And she said, “How do I help you do that?” He said, “Go back and get us the opportunity to spread this message.” And because she’s Italian, Maoz asked her if she knows the Pope, and it sounds like crazy to go, “If you know the Pope, get us in.” And a couple weeks later she called back and she said, “Okay, you’re going to come and meet the Pope.”
Marc Steiner:
That’s how it happened. That’s how you met the Pope.
Aziz Abu:
That’s how we met the Pope. It’s through a journalist who put our name in for a conference where the Pope was speaking. We ended up not just speaking with him, but being invited to hug him, to have this intimate moment with him and to really feel how much he cares. But most importantly beyond the Pope is he asks us, “What do I do now? How do I help you?” And it shows first, a leadership that we lack among many of our politicians all over the world. And we say, “Take our words to your next meeting.” He was heading to the G7 meeting and we said, “Take our words and tell them we need civil society to be highlighted. We need peacemakers to be on the table. We need politicians to recognize they’ve failed and they need us.” And he said, “Okay.” And so a few weeks later, a couple of weeks later, he’s at the G7.
And you read the communique coming out of the G7, and word by word, the things we’ve asked him to ask them to put into their communique, made it into the communique. He’s got Joe Biden, Macron, everybody, all these leaders from G7, for the first time to say, yes, peace without civil society, without peacemakers is not possible. So now we need everybody who’s listening to us to also go and say, we don’t want these words to be just words. We need it to translate how the US Europe, how the G7 do their policies. But that’s an example of how one person could change so much in the political realm.
And the biggest problem we face today is people who are indifferent or people who believe I cannot make a difference. Everyone listening to us today can make a difference. You sharing our stories make a difference. You connecting us to more people make a difference. You getting us to speak into wherever possibilities, that makes a difference. Churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever religious affiliation, not religious affiliation, families, groups. We have so many voices who should be heard and right now, unfortunately are not the ones being heard. So we need to change that.
Marc Steiner:
And I think in many ways we’re on the cusp of the horrendous nature of the war that we’re in now in Gaza, actually in all that pain and that destruction gives us a path to peace. This is the time.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
This is the time. And like I said, also in the past when the people of Israel were in the desert walking for 40 years to the promised land, they were crying for water. They were walking in the desert crying for water. And this is exactly what we are doing now. The war has been waging, this war for 10 months, but the conflict for a century and we are now crying for peace. This is the most human thing to do, to cry, but also to work and make peace. It won’t happen without us. So now is the time to make peace.
Marc Steiner:
So we will stay in touch.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Love to.
Marc Steiner:
We will find other conversations to create together with other people around you as well. And I look forward to working with you and keeping the fight for peace going. We have to have it. There’s no other way.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Yes.
Aziz Abu:
Thank you, Marc, and welcome to being part of us. We now we are working together.
Marc Steiner:
So again, I’m really sorry we didn’t get a chance to meet, but we will meet. Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time today and we’ll talk again soon on the air and we’ll keep in touch and we’ll be fighting for a peace.
Sarah Maoz Inon:
Thank you.
Aziz Abu:
Thank you very much.
Marc Steiner:
Once again, I want to thank Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah for joining us today. We’ll be hearing more from them and others in their movement in the coming months. And thanks to Cameron Grandino for running the program, producer Rosette Sewali for putting all this together, audio editor, Alina Nehlich, making it sound good and the tireless Kayla Rivara for making it all work behind the scenes. And everyone here at The Real News for making this show possible. Please let me know what you though about what you heard today, what you’d like us to cover. Just write to me at mss@therealnews.com. I’ll get right back to you. I’m looking forward to your ideas. Once again, thank you to Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah for their work and for joining us today. But we’ll bringing you more about this struggle and struggle for peace in the Middle East in the future. So for the crew here at The Real News, I’m Marc Steiner. Stay involved, keep listening, and take care.
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