Remarks before a screening

I was asked to speak before a screening of The Path Forward here in Seattle this Monday, and some of the attendees have asked me to share what I said. I don’t know what I said exactly (nerves!!!) but here is (for what it’s worth) the prepared text :)

First of all, thank you all for being here tonight to watch this short documentary.

Second, a huge thank you to Friends of Standing Together, Seattle, for inviting me and also to Karen for hosting us this evening and helping us create this space for connection and reflection.

Before I begin, I want to be clear about one thing: I speak only for myself.

I don’t speak for Palestinians. I don’t speak for Arabs. I don’t speak for anyone.

There is exactly one human being that I am legally allowed to speak for, and that’s my 16-year-old son. But I promise you that if he were here, he’d tell you, in no uncertain terms, that I am waaay too cringe to speak for him.

So, I’m here as myself and speaking only for myself.

I hope that by sharing my journey and my path to making sense of the world through words, pictures, and stories, something about my perspectives resonates with yours and that we, all of us together, manage to find some mix of harmonic frequencies that bring us all a tiny step closer to an equitable future.

Personally, this past year has been a time of reflection on solidarity, empathy, and justice. It’s been a year in which I’ve realized that coming together doesn’t mean ignoring differences but rather recognizing them and acknowledging those differences before figuring out how, despite them, we can stay focused on bigger, wider, and more important goals.

Because, to me, this conflict isn’t between Arabs and Israelis or Muslims and Jews; it’s between those who seek to oppress others and those who believe in something kinder, more compassionate, and more peaceful.

In any conflict — especially enduring ones — it’s tempting to ask, “Who has suffered more?” as if suffering itself can justify claims or blame.

But if we’re ever to find a path forward, we need to let go of the idea that suffering is a currency that proves righteousness.

I say this as someone keenly aware — and wounded — by the fact that suffering in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is far from balanced.

Yes, Palestinians have borne more displacement, violence, and oppression. But trying to weigh suffering with scientific accuracy doesn’t bring us any closer to justice. It just keeps us tethered to the past.

It’s profoundly human to want our pain recognized. But that desire can also be a trap… because trauma does something strange to us: it locks us into our own stories. It convinces us that acknowledging “the other’s” suffering somehow diminishes our own and that seeing humanity in the other is a betrayal.

But if we to resolve this conflict and move towards an equitable, and sustainable future peace for all of us, we have to figure out how to move beyond that.

I didn’t always understand this.

Like many of you, I grew up with a deeply personal narrative that framed MY people’s suffering as a badge of identity, proof of resilience. But then I worked as an assistant editor on a documentary about Thich Nhat Hanh, and listening to his teachings profoundly shifted my view of the world.

The big takeaway for this accidental-lay Buddhist?

Suffering isn’t a zero-sum game.

Recognizing someone else’s suffering doesn’t take away from your own — it connects you.

To quote Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Very often, in a conflict, we believe the problem is the other person or group. We think it is all their fault and that if they would just stop doing what they are doing or being the way they are, we would have peace and happiness. So, we may be motivated by the desire to destroy the other side. We may wish they didn’t exist.

But looking deeply, we know that we are not the only ones who have suffered — they have also suffered.

When we take time to calm ourselves down and look deeply into the situation, we can see that we are co-responsible, that we have co-created the conflict by our way of thinking, acting, or speaking, either individually or as a group or nation.”

Suffering, if we allow it, can bind us. A willingness to hold space for someone else’s pain requires us to let go of proving who’s hurt more. Building our future on a foundation of retribution will only keep us locked in cycles of violence.

And that’s the homework.

It’s not about ignoring or erasing the imbalance of suffering but about recognizing that we all carry grief, and each burden is real and significant. At the heart of it all is the harder question: What are we willing to do with that pain? Will we use it as a bridge or a barrier?

Because if we use our suffering to justify endless retribution, we’re simply repeating the cycles that brought us here. Because your pain doesn’t legitimize your story over another’s. Because there’s no trauma so great that it gives you a monopoly on truth.

This isn’t about false equivalencies; it’s about creating space for multiple truths without making it a competition. Yes, the suffering is imbalanced; yes, some have borne more of the brunt. But if we approach each other with empathy, we see each other as fellow human beings with shared struggles.

This isn’t an abstract ideal; it’s a choice we have to make daily.

We have to choose to let our pain connect us rather than divide us. And that choice — difficult, uncomfortable, painful — is the only way forward I see. True empathy requires us to sit with discomfort to recognize each other’s pain and to understand that that recognition doesn’t mean that we lose anything personally. In fact, it means that we actually gain something. We gain something that we profoundly need — a way forward.

Clinging to stories of suffering can make us feel legitimate, seen, and understood, but we can use those stories to transform ourselves instead of trapping ourselves.

Lots of folks talk about peace like it’s a lofty ideal, a distant goal. But what if peace is the daily choice to let go of the need to be right? What if the Jiu-Jitsu of pain, is choosing to sit with each other’s pain without needing to prove who’s suffered more?

I’ll be the first to admit this isn’t easy.

As a Palestinian American, I feel the weight of history, of unresolved losses. But I also believe that suffering isn’t a license to stay locked in anger — it’s an invitation to build something better.

My friend Maoz Inon, an Israeli peace activist you’ll see in the film, once said, “I can forgive the failures of the past, I can forgive the failures of the present, but I will never forgive the failures of the future.” That’s it, in a nutshell.

That’s the heart of it — to forgive the past enough to make room for the future we want because if we can’t imagine a future beyond our pain, then we’re condemning ourselves to repeat our worst chapters.

So, what do we do with all this? How do we carry our pain in a way that pushes us forward? To me, it begins with letting go of the idea that suffering entitles us to a greater claim on the truth.

The future we want will not come from balancing suffering on a scale but from seeing each other’s suffering as part of a shared humanity.

That’s the message that Julie Cohen, my incredibly talented co-director and the producer of this documentary, and I wanted to get out there. We wanted to show just a few of the people who are making that decision, who are doing that work… We wanted to get the word out that they’re not unique… that they’re not alone… that, like them, there are many other good and ethical and thoughtful and proud… deeply proud… Palestinians and Israelis who, despite unimaginable personal losses, have made the difficult decision to find a path forward, however hard and steep it might be. If they can do it, then the rest of us can, too.

And so, as you watch this film tonight, I hope you can reflect on what we, each of us, can bring to the table. Not our loss… not our pain… not our anger… but instead… our capacity to let those losses soften us, connect us, and guide us toward a different path.

Because we’re at a fork in the road…. we’ve all got a choice to make…Whether to hold onto our stories of pain and grievance, or to use that pain and grievance as a way to transform the arc of the future into something more compassionate, more just.

It’s a path to avoiding more pain and grievance… for everyone, not just us. If we want the future to look different from the past, we have to be brave enough to choose compassion over righteousness, to choose humanity over being right.

The work we do today, the choices we make to see each other beyond our suffering, to connect rather than divide — that’s what will bring us closer to the future we all hope for.

Anyway… that’s more than enough from me…

Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. And thank you for standing together.