“The Only Answer Is Peace”: Israeli and Palestinian Activists Share Vision of Coexistence

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re continuing to look at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to the U.S. Congress and the protest outside the Capitol. We’re joined by two peace activists — one Israeli, one Palestinian — who are working together to end the war in Gaza and build a lasting peace.

Maoz Inon’s parents were killed during the Hamas attack on October 7th. Aziz Abu Sarah’s 19-year-old brother died in 1991 after being tortured in an Israeli prison. At the time, Aziz was just 9 years old.

Inon and Abu Sarah recently organized what’s been described as the biggest peace conference in Israel in 30 years. They also recently met Pope Francis.

On Wednesday, they took part in an event in Washington titled “Peace Is Possible: An Alternative Vision for Israel and Palestine.” Other speakers included Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who boycotted Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL: Speaking for myself only, the deep horrors of what is happening on the ground are not external to us, because the United States does remain the largest backer of military assistance to Israel, assistance that has been used to perpetrate these offensive attacks on a civilian population that’s been denied even the most basic of humanitarian assistance.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah join us now in Washington, D.C. Maoz, if you can start off by talking about what happened to your parents?

MAOZ INON: Hi, Amy. Good morning from D.C.

I was born in about a mile away from Gaza. And when I was 14, we moved to even nearest community to the Gaza border. And we lost contact with my parents on October the 7th, early morning. And in the afternoon, we learned from one of the neighbors that their house was burned into ashes, and he found two bodies inside. And on that day, I lost many of my childhood friends, their parents, their children, and it was the most dark time in my life.

And two days after, my young brother asked the family to send a universal message from our own tragedy, and he wanted this message to be that we are seeking no revenge. And in the same day, Aziz contacted me on Facebook. And I lost my parents, but I won a friend, I won a partner, and I won a brother, a brother to peace. And since that day, we’ve been working very hard to create and bring a new vision, a vision of hope, a vision of reconciliation, a vision of peace. And this is what we came here to do and say in D.C., that the future cannot and should not look like the present. The future must be a better future, and we are ready and eager to make it this way.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Aziz, could you explain what happened to your brother when you were 9 years old and why you reached out to Maoz after October 7th?

AZIZ ABU SARAH: Sure. Thank you, Amy, and good morning.

Yeah, my brother was arrested from home. We lived in the same — actually slept in the same room, me and him. He’s the one just older than me, Tayseer. And he was taken, on suspicion of throwing rocks, to detention. He refused to confess to the charges, and he was beaten up, tortured, until he eventually did. And by the time he was released from prison, he had internal injuries, and, soon after, he ended up dying from those injuries.

And unlike Maoz, I actually didn’t believe in peace right away. It took me quite a while to come to that conclusion, took me eight years, where I was very active, I was very angry, was very bitter, and I thought vengeance is the only way. I thought I had no choice. Honestly, only when I realized that regardless of what others do to you, you always have the agency and the ability to make your own choices. I was being a slave to the person who killed my brother. He killed my brother first and ruined my life second, because hate is very destructive, destructive thing.

And so, when Maoz’s parents were killed, I understood the pain he was going through. I understood that loss. I understood what it feels like to be subjected to this crazy reality that we live in, where death and killing is a reality. And I reached out and just told him that I care and love him and stand with him and that we are together into this, that it’s not Israelis versus Palestinians, that we are on the same side for justice, for equality, for dignity, and we shouldn’t be seeing it only as Israelis versus Palestinians. It’s those of us who fight for a future that is better, for a future that guarantees equality, ends the occupation, and those who don’t yet. And our message is trying to make sure that others can join us.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz, if you can talk about what Netanyahu didn’t talk about? Yes, he brought with him, sitting next to his wife Sara, one of the hostages who the Israeli military freed. But he didn’t call for a hostage deal, as so many thousands in Israel have demanded, as hostage families demanded in the streets of Washington, D.C., this week in protest of Netanyahu’s address. Talk about what you feel needs to happen right now and how unusual or not unusual you are in this demand that the war end, that Israel’s assault on Gaza end now, as an Israeli hostage family member.

MAOZ INON: Yeah, I can definitely tell you what he has never done. He never called any of the bereaved families of October 7th, not him or not anyone from his government or his coalition. They didn’t come the shiva, the Jewish way of mourning. They didn’t send us a condolence letter or a call. They didn’t come. They didn’t show, like they didn’t show on October 7th.

Netanyahu and his government are accountable and responsible to my parents’ death. They are responsible and accountable to October 7th. And he never accepted this and took this accountability. And I was surprised and shocked from the members of the Congress that they are not forcing him to take responsibility and accountability to his failure leadership.

And this is what we came here to offer, a new vision. And Netanyahu lost the people of Israel. Before October 7th, the protests were: Should Netanyahu resign or not? But now there is a growing protest that Netanyahu — should Netanyahu resign before the war ends or after the war ends? And Netanyahu thrives and prospers on war, on bloodshed, on revenge. And we are here to say to the representatives and to the American people that Netanyahu lost the people of Israel. Seventy-two percent of the Jewish Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Sixty-four percent of the Jewish Israelis believe in a conflict resolution that will be supported and championed by the U.S., a resolution that would lead to establishment of a Palestinian state and a normalization with the Arab world. And this is where the people of Israel are.

And we are here to say and to represent a growing movement, a peace movement, Palestinian-Israeli movement, that believes the war must end and conflict resolution must start now. We cannot wait, because the sorrow, the pain, the casualties, it’s — we cannot take it anymore. We cannot suffer more. And we deserve a better life, a normal life and a better future.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Aziz, if you could speak a little bit more about what you think could bring about this kind of peace, how at least to grow this peace movement, Israeli and Palestinian? And describe the day, which you’ve spoken about, in Jerusalem when suddenly you saw that everybody was standing still and you were the only person moving, and what that explained to you, what you saw in that moment.

AZIZ ABU SARAH: Right, yeah. So, I grew up, lived in Jerusalem all my life. And I want to just say it’s amazing how little we know about each other. I mean, I lived in East Jerusalem. Walking distance from my house is West Jerusalem. And Palestinians and Israelis really never get to meet, never get to talk to each other. And when I went to study Hebrew, I studied in West Jerusalem. It was my first interaction with Israelis and Jews who are not soldiers and who are not settlers.

And going to that classroom, there was a siren, and everybody just stood still, and I was the only person moving. Cars had stopped. People got out of the cars and just stood literally still with the siren going on. And I honestly thought this was like a sci-fi movie, a sci-fi book, like it’s just aliens controlling humans. And I ran away, because nobody would talk to me. And later, my teacher, my Hebrew teacher, explained to me that was the memorial for the Holocaust. That’s how people remember those who were killed in the Holocaust. I had no idea what she was talking about. And that’s how little we know about each other.

And honestly, this is how little we know about each other even now. I talk to people in Israel who have no idea what’s going on in Gaza, despite all the images and all the stuff on social media, actually not being able to see it. We don’t know the suffering. We don’t know the pain that is happening. And that is a key element of what keeps wars, what keeps conflicts, what keeps killing going on, because if you cannot humanize who’s on the other side, if you do not see them as normal people, you don’t see them as people with dreams, you don’t see them as people who want to live, then you don’t care if they’re alive or not. You don’t care what’s going on with them. And that’s — Martin Luther King had a saying where he says people hate each other because they don’t know each other. They don’t know each other because they are separated, because they don’t communicate.

And that’s an important element of what Maoz and I are trying to do, is saying: Don’t hear what corrupt leaders, who want to sell us this language of only through bombs, only through killing — as Netanyahu said yesterday, “If I only have a little bit more weapons, I’ll finish the job.” Don’t believe that. Instead, talk to us. He also said, “Oh, we’ll need a new generation of peaceful Palestinians.” Guess what: We are here. Peaceful Palestinians do exist. I’m here with Maoz because we are working together. We are showing what Netanyahu says is impossible. We are showing that there is an alternative to the language of bombs and to the language of killing. We are showing that we are not doomed to live in this cycle where we keep losing our loved ones. And our existence, in itself, the fact that Maoz and I together, is an answer to those who say, “Only through killing, we can achieve peace.” Well, no, that doesn’t happen. And we can see in reality where we are today, a century later, that we haven’t achieved peace through that. Israel hasn’t achieved peace with any country through war. It hasn’t achieved peace through bombs. The only peace it actually has achieved, by sitting down and saying, “OK, I’m willing to negotiate.” And that’s what Netanyahu doesn’t offer.

So, Maoz and I are showing that an alternative exists. The event you mentioned earlier, where thousands of people, Palestinians and Israelis, gathered together in Tel Aviv, saying it is time now to make a difference — we are telling people we can’t remain indifferent. We can’t remain silent. We have to come together. We have to build coalition together. We have to have values that we agree on, that equality and dignity is the most important. Safety and security for both Palestinians and Israelis is essential. We cannot leave that out ’til later, and that we can’t wait anymore. It is now that peace is needed. It is now that the occupation needs to end. It’s not in 20 years. It’s not in the next generation. It must happen now.

And we need to organize. We need to organize in Israel and Palestine, and we need to organize here in the United States. As we heard before, Americans are very involved in this. They are very much part of this. And we need Americans’ not only thoughts and prayers, not only saying, “Oh, we’re not happy with Congress doing this and doing that,” and sending us tools of destruction and war machines instead of ways to come together and have peace. We need Americans to join this, because you are, Americans, we are a part of this, of what’s happening, and we are responsible and should be accountable.

AMY GOODMAN: Maoz Inon, you have said we have to go back to the overall deal that was on the table. Prisoners can play a significant role in reconciliation and peacemaking. If you can address the issue. I mean, you lost your parents in the Hamas attack on October 7th. Since that time, tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military, and thousands of Palestinians imprisoned, like Aziz’s brother decades ago, but those thousands of Palestinians. Explain what you mean by “all for all.”

MAOZ INON: All for all, it’s the deal that was on the table already on October 7th evening: all the Palestinian prisoners kept in the Israeli jails in return to the all hostages that are kept by the hands of Hamas. So, this deal was on the table from day one.

And I also said earlier — I think it was in October — that the difference between Benjamin Netanyahu and his brother, Yoni, is that Yoni sacrificed his life to save the hostages in Entebbe, while Benjamin Netanyahu is sacrificing the hostages in order to save his position as the prime minister. And we must stop it. And it’s already too late for too many Palestinians, for too many Israelis.

And we are calling that, again, the only answer is peace. And the only way to bring security and safety, like Aziz said, is through equality. And those who believe that bombs will bring safety and war will bring security, they are naive, because it failed again and again. Again and again, it just brings more bloodshed, more revenge and more hate. And —

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli peace activist — we have to end now — Maoz Inon, who lost his parents on October 7th, and Palestinian peace activist Aziz Abu Sarah, who lost his brother decades ago in an Israeli prison. He came out after being tortured and died of his internal injuries. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. Thanks so much for joining us.