Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon: The Future is Peace
Two bereaved peacemakers — a Palestinian and an Israeli — offer a radical roadmap for reconciliation that moves beyond binary thinking at the Chicago Humanities Festival.
Why we picked this
Abu Sarah and Inon have both lost family members to the conflict — and chose dialogue over retaliation. Their joint case for reconciliation is more unsettling, and more necessary, than most political conversations you'll find this spring.
Aziz Abu Sarah is a Palestinian activist, cultural educator, and National Geographic Explorer who has spent decades building dialogue across the divide. Maoz Inon is an Israeli peace activist whose parents were killed in the October 7, 2023 attacks — and who emerged from grief not with calls for retaliation but with a renewed commitment to coexistence. Together, they represent something genuinely rare: a conversation about the future of a region that starts from loss rather than ideology.
Their joint appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival challenges audiences to think past the binary framings that dominate political discourse on the conflict. The conversation asks not who is right but what reconciliation actually looks like, what it demands of both sides, and whether it is still possible.
Part of the Chicago Humanities Festival’s Bridgeport Day at the Ramova Theatre.