A Speech for Peace
I was asked by my friend, Achinoam Nini (Noa), to speak at an event raising funds for a concert for peace happening next summer in Florence, Italy. Many of the attendees have asked me for a copy of the speech so I am posting it here (with minor edits).
I want to start, even before introducing myself, by thanking my dear, huge-hearted and compassionate friend, Yaffa Maritz for that generous introduction. I promise you, if you believe a word she says about me, you will be sorely disappointed by the reality of me.
And to you all, good evening.
My name is Mo Husseini. I am a writer and a filmmaker, which means I am professionally obligated to be an introvert. I usually prefer to hide behind the words. But tonight, the words aren’t enough.
I should probably warn you in advance: I am a Palestinian who was educated in English boarding schools. This is a very specific recipe for a deep love of literature, a distinct and profound level of emotional repression, and access to reams and reams of creative profanity.
So, if there are children here, this is me technically apologizing… in theory, just not in practice. There will be swears.
I don’t know what kind of day you’ve had. Maybe it was full of noble deeds. Maybe it was just a long slog of unanswered emails and mild existential dread.
Either way, you showed up.
And that alone makes you action something of a modern miracle.
Because to show up right now, to gather for anything that dares to whisper the word “peace,” takes a degree of emotional fortitude and optimism that deserves a small medal and possibly a glass or three of wine.
We are living in a time where everything — from the news to the discourse to the algorithms that feed on outrage — is wired to divide us, depress us, or sell us something we don’t need while we argue with people we’ve never met about bullshit that doesn’t matter.
And in a time like that…
The simple act of choosing to stand for hope is borderline rebellious.
So here we are. Rebelliously gathered.
I want to thank the amazing Sunny Finch Miller for opening up her space tonight — for her generosity and her big heart. I’d also like to thank her for inviting me to speak here, despite having a very accurate, long-standing understanding of my… let’s say, limited social skills. I’m honored. A little confused — that’s normal for me — but honored.
And yes, I am reading this. I’m a writer. It’s what we do.
Or as Harrison Ford once said to my old boss, George Lucas, on the set of Star Wars: “Just because you can type this shit, George, doesn’t mean I can say it.”
So, with that caveat, I thought I’d start with something simple:
I’m fucking exhausted.
I think most people involved in issues around Palestine and Israel are.
We’re exhausted.
Exhausted by the killing. By the hatred. By the refusal to see each other. By the endless conflict.
By the way everything tries to shrink you into a position.
By the way the noise drowns out the humanity.
We’re exhausted.
Because the story we’ve been sold is a bad one.
It’s a lazy script.
You know the one. It’s the binary story.
The one that says there are only two kinds of people: Victims and Monsters.
Us and Them.
The Righteous and the Damned.
It’s a very seductive story because it’s simple. It requires zero processing power.
You don’t have to think; you just have to pick a team.
But the problem with that story is that it’s a lie. It deletes the nuance.
It edits out the inconvenient humanity of the “other side.”
It demands that I, as a Palestinian, look at an Israeli and see only an occupier, not a human.
It demands that they look at me and see only a terrorist, not a man.
And maintaining that lie takes an immense amount of energy.
It takes work to keep your heart closed.
It takes physical effort to constantly suppress your own empathy just to stay loyal to your “tribe.”
That is what’s exhausting us.
We are burning ourselves out trying to maintain a fiction that keeps us safe but leaves us lonely.
So, the real rebellion tonight isn’t just about “peace.”
It’s about plot twisting.
It’s about refusing to play the character you were assigned in a tragedy written by men who profit from your rage.
And what we need now is a way out of it all.
Not a UN resolution.
Not a treaty.
Not a utopia drawn in crayon by some armchair wonk.
A way out.
A way back.
A way through.
And that begins not with a side, or a flag, or a position. It begins with questions:
What if we simply decided to stop being afraid of each other?
What if we rejected the idea that grief must come with a passport, or that empathy needs a permission slip?
What if we stopped parroting the same tired mythologies that have left us here, cynical and spiritually threadbare — and instead, with whatever battered courage we have left, imagined something different?
Not something perfect. Just something better. Something possible.
Hope isn’t a mood or a slogan, and it sure as hell isn’t something you print on a tote bag.
Hope is not a noun; hope is a verb.
An action. A stubborn refusal.
Hope is what you do in the dark when you can’t see the exit, but you’re walking toward it anyway.
It’s inconvenient. It’s slow. It’s fragile.
But when it’s real, it’s contagious.
And I know. I know how easy it is to roll your eyes at all of this.
Because hope can sound like a trick, like a bumper sticker, like the thing you try just before you give up.
But here’s the truth: hope is dangerous. It’s dangerous because it forces you to act before you’re certain.
It dares you to believe in people who’ve disappointed you. It dares you to open your mouth when silence would be easier.
It dares you to be soft in a world that rewards hard edges.
And that’s not weakness. That’s resistance.
Because despair is seductive.
Despair gives you an excuse to do nothing.
Hope says: do it anyway.
Even if it won’t fix everything.
Even if you’re tired.
Even if your heart is half-broken and duct-taped together with coffee and gallows humor.
Because the other option — the one where we all just fold our arms and say “nothing will ever change” — that option leads exactly nowhere.
And we’ve been there.
We’ve seen what happens when we build shrines to cynicism.
Spoiler alert: no one gets saved.
But hope… real, grounded, stubborn hope… asks you to do something.
To show up. To listen. To risk being changed.
And yeah, to write the damn check. Let’s be honest.
But more than that — to stay in the room.
Even when it’s uncomfortable.
Even when you want to scream.
Even when it would feel better to walk out.
That’s what this night is about. Not the machinery of war, but the mechanics of hope.
The slow, stubborn, inconvenient business of choosing to see the human being in front of you — even if they come wrapped in a story you were raised to mistrust.
That’s what this festival — Reimagine Peace — is for. Not to soothe you with sentimental nonsense, but to challenge you with beauty.
To provoke you with generosity. To remind you that before we are slogans, or nations, or tribes — we are bodies and voices and breath.
And tonight, we get to listen.
To people who are not supposed to be on the same stage.
To songs that are not supposed to be sung in harmony.
To ideas that, frankly, make all the warmongering assholes very nervous.
Good. Let them be nervous.
Because tonight, we get to choose music over dogma.
Creation over cruelty.
Art over algorithm.
Tonight, it is my honor to introduce someone I’m proud to call a friend.
Someone who has been choosing that for a very long time.
If you know her, you already know: there is no one like her.
An internationally renowned singer, songwriter, activist, and poet, she has spent the last three decades putting her art where her mouth is. She’s sung on some of the biggest stages in the world, represented her people at Eurovision, and stood beside my people in solidarity, and somehow — through all of it — never stopped being a fiercely independent voice for dialogue, empathy, and yes, peace.
She doesn’t just believe in peace.
She fucking builds it.
With melody.
With courage.
With hope.
And with love.
So please — with gratitude, with admiration, with that very specific kind of awe reserved for someone who still gives a damn when most people have gone numb — join me in welcoming the extraordinary, the uncompromising, the most excellent…
Noa.