Translator: Norberto Amaral Reviewer: Nuno Monteiro
Hello my dear friends.
It's a huge pleasure coming from so far away
to be here with you.
You know, they say that a good TED talk
is like a miniskirt.
It has to be long enough to cover the theme
but short enough to maintain interest.
(Laughter)
Do you remember the movie "The Godfather"?
For some of you it's a classic.
In it, the main character
was Michael Corleone.
He always said:
"Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
This is something that, in my profession,
I did for many years.
I don't know why.
One day I have to go to a psychologist and clarify that.
The truth is that I dedicated my professional life
meeting with people who, technically, are defined as enemies
who, in many cases, would probably rather see me dead.
Maybe it's some form of masochism, I'm not sure.
In any case, I would like to
share these experiences with you
and tell you about how one feels about them.
It's an extraordinary adrenaline. It really is highly emotional.
We get very nervous.
It's like a chill, when you enter a room
and you see a person who could be a terrorist leader,
who could kill someone from your family,
hours before or hours later.
And yet, you know, I...
... I studied at the Garcia da Horta, here in Porto, I was born here.
(Applause)
For me, everything started here.
And really, it wasn't...
— I was a relatively a good pupil,
but I wasn't very good at Physics —
but I remember something I learned in Quantum Physics,
that's been with me all my life,
which is this:
When you observe a phenomenon, when you touch someone,
when you talk to someone, you are changing that person,
you are changing that phenomenon.
It's a very important principle
when you talk to the enemy, when you dream about peace.
When you dream about saying that war is a thing of the past.
That's something that has always been with me, all my life.
One of the most particular and strongest moments I lived was
before I was a journalist, when I arrived in Israel,
— I was very young, I was 16 —
in 1977, I remember an image I saw on TV,
that left huge mark on me.
An Egyptian airplane lands in Ben Gurion airport, in Tel Aviv.
The door opens, and who's in that airplane?
The leader of the most important enemy country, Egypt.
Out comes Anwar al-Sadat to speak to the people of Israel.
Everything started with secret negotiations in Morocco
between general Moses Dayan and General Tuhami, from Egypt,
first time negotiations...
Now, you have to understand.
Egypt is one fourth of the Arab world,
one out of every four Arabs is Egyptian.
So that really changes everything.
It's a country where, in several wars with Israel
since 1948, thousands of people died on both sides.
And, suddenly, after these secret negotiations,
Sadat, the leader of that country, says: "I am willing to come to Jerusalem."
"I am willing to speak in the Parliament of Jerusalem."
Talking about peace. Nobody believed him.
When I was preparing this talk,
someone in Israel told me a secret that has never been published:
Such was a degree of disbelief in Israel that for that reason,
in the moment that the airplane landed,
there was a highly prepared elite unit called Sayeret Matkal,
prepared to act in case it was an ambush,
in case that suddenly soldiers came out
and started shooting against the leaders of Israel
who were waiting for Sadat.
I remember that moment,
and I hope and wish, for me and everyone around the world
who want to end this conflict, currently the oldest in the world,
— over one hundred years old —
that it may happen again, in either way,
that there is another Sadat, or two.
At the same time, you know
what it's like finding someone
who, maybe three days before, could have killed my son?
This happened to me.
My son used to study in high school, when he was 15, a few years ago,
in a high school in the north of Tel Aviv, in a city called Herzliya.
His girl friend, Hadar Hershkowitz,
she wanted to buy a falafel pitta,
you probably know what it is, a common food in the Middle East,
she was hungry, left the school and went to buy one.
When she was waiting in line to buy the pitta
a young man went in, asked for a glass of water, drank it
and squeezed the detonator of the bomb hidden under his shirt,
and he exploded, killing Hadar, my son's friend,
wounding 16 young people also in the queue.
Three days later I had to go interview Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
I don't know if you remember, but he was this tetraplegic man
in a wheelchair, almost unable to move,
I had to see and interview him
and I knew he had given the order
to carry out that attack, three days earlier.
That's indeed quite emotional.
There, we need to be very strong,
to talk to someone like that,
to be able to put emotions on the side,
without losing them completely
because I think our sensitivity
needs to be there always.
One moment that left a mark,
and I should say that, in 2004, Israel's
security forces killed Sheikh Yassin
precisely when he started talking about the theoretical possibility
of reaching a truce - not peace,
because he didn't recognise that Israel should exist,
but to reach a truce for a few years to allow for a temporary calm.
That never happened.
I found another leader of this group, which is clearly a terrorist group,
who killed thousands of civilians in suicide attacks.
I found him in the West Bank.
This is an amazing story,
because I find a man who is just like Sheikh Yassin,
so he wants a radical Islamic state in the whole region
and he doesn't accept not even a laic Palestine.
I go to his place and then comes his son, who's working with them
His name was Mosab.
This leader's name was Hassan Yousef
and his son asked me, "Do you know Ibiza?"
He asked by whispering in my ear.
"Ibiza? Yes, I do."
"I was there last summer and it was the best holiday ever."
It seemed a little weird.
I interviewed with the Sheikh and I noted a different tone.
So this Mosab — I strongly recommend reading about him —
after that I knew he got tired of all this,
he started to make revelations to the Israeli security service
about the next attacks against Israel.
He became a secret collaborator,
while helping his father in Hamas in the West Bank.
This same Mosab fled to the USA
converted to Christianity, otherwise he would be killed.
Meanwhile, his father went to prison
and I kept on talking to him - he had a hidden phone,
while he was in prison.
Sometimes he'd say: "I can't answer now."
"Later. Call again in half an hour."
His phone was hidden.
Prison is where peace is negotiated.
I don't know if you know this,
but many peace deals were made
sometimes by the exchange of prisoners and all that
happens in prison.
Sometimes they arrest a man so they can negotiate,
which is also quite curious.
But one day, after I saw him almost five times,
we were in his home's balcony, 15 minutes from Israel,
Jerusalem, in Ramallah,
— everything is so small there, so much history in such a small place —
and, suddenly, I look at Israel and I tell him:
"Sheikh Yousef, tell me:
You don't accept the existence of that state
that is right in front of your eyes?"
He looked at me, smiled and said, for the first time, facing the camera:
"We are — I am willing — to accept and recognise
that there is another state, if a state of Palestine is created.
And then I will accept that border."
This was the first time that an Islamist leader said that.
This is a revolution because it's a position held by a very small minority.
But one day I asked him:
"Why do you say that?
How do you dare? Aren't you afraid of being killed?
It's enough having a son who was a spy."
And he said: "Look, I said that for two reasons.
Firstly, for our conversations together.
and second, for the conversations I had and because I met Israelis in prison,
and I saw that they are as human as I am."
But things don't always end well.
Sometimes, as is the case of the journalist Daniel Pearl,
— you probably heard about it — a North-American 38 year-old journalist,
son of Israelis, who lived in the US
and who went to Karachi, Pakistan
looking for the secrets of 9/11 attacks
and reached an al-Qaeda cell, in Karachi.
He was captured by members of that cell
and then they shared a video worldwide
— which is one of the most terrible things on the internet —
a video of his beheading.
His wife, Mariane, was pregnant then
— I had known them not long before —
and, really, it is one of the most difficult things
that we all know, all of us in this profession
that can happen, unfortunately.
But, you know, something quite curious happened.
In the US they created an award, the Daniel Pearl Award
and I was with Osama bin Laden's son,
Omar Osama bin Laden, in Qatar,
interviewing him, or trying to, to convince him,
when I look at my phone and I see an email that says:
"We congratulate you for receiving the Daniel Pearl Award."
And it was at that moment that I thought: "My God, such is fate."
It could have been the opposite, Daniel Pearl receiving Henrique Cymerman Award.
But, thank God, I was on that side at that moment.
In any case, all journalists
and some friends who are now in Syria,
can suffer and, as we all know,
it's a kind of curiosity that sometimes can even kill.
There were times when I knew how to say 'No'.
I think that the experience takes us to situations
of understanding, of having an intuition
that you understand that may be very dangerous.
That happened to me when the armed section of an organisation,
in the city of Nablus,
called a Palestinian friend of mine, who's been working with me for 20 years,
— we're like brothers, he's already saved my life 4 or 5 times —
and they told him: "Bring Henrique for an exclusive interview,
one night with the paramilitary of this organisation
called al-Aqsa."
But it smelled rotten.
It was the only time of my life when I said: "No! We're not going!"
The next day, a Frenchman and an Italian were kidnapped by that organisation."
So here I am now.
Really, it's the stories that happened
and that are part of the life of any journalist in a conflict zone.
When Clinton was president he went to Gaza,
the first and the last time a president when to Gaza,
I had to interview a man
who was the leader of the most radical group in Palestine.
It's called the Islamic Jihad.
It's a pro-Iranian group, financed by Iran.
Even today they keep trying to send missiles and other weapons.
And I went to see this man, Abdullah Shami, and I told him:
"How do you feel?
Tomorrow, Clinton will be here.
How do you feel?"
And he told me:
"I want to see Clinton dead tomorrow, here in Gaza."
This interview was published globally that Sunday afternoon
and at night my Gaza producer called me and told me:
"Henrique, you have no idea what happened.
Arafat, Palestinian president, received orders from the White House and CIA
to arrest the leader of the organisation, Shami, and ten more leaders.
because of our interview.
They said that if they weren't arrested, Clinton wouldn't go to there."
And in the next day I had to go to Gaza.
There I was with nervous ticks, looking around me,
checking everything out. It wasn't so simple.
These situations happen.
Three months go by and I receive a call from my friend in Gaza, who says.
"The Sheikh is available, he's at home and wants to have tea with you."
(Laughter)
And I told him: "You go!"
(Laughter)
And he did go. Six months later I felt remorse.
And there I went. It was so cold that day but I couldn't stop sweating.
I didn't understand what was happening.
We get to a point...
He looked at me and says:
"Do you see my library here?"
"Here I have the books of all Israeli leaders,"
"and their biographies translated into Arabic."
"You need to know the enemy," he told me.
And then he brings me his son, who was the same age as mine,
Ahmed, puts his hands in his back and says:
"This boy is the frustration of my life."
I asked: "Why?"
He says: "Because he won't accept being a martyr."
The kid was embarrassed, looking at the floor.
He had no idea what to do.
There were situations when yesterday's enemies
are today's allies, to attain peace.
There a big Palestinian businessman who told me that
in 1982, during the war in Lebanon,
he called the Israeli leader, Yitzhak Rabin, and he told him:
"If you don't talk to the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat,"
"there is no way to reach any kind of a peace deal."
And Rabin answered:
"Arafat is a terrorist and I will never speak to him again, ever!"
Then 11 years went by,
and they're all together. Arafat, Rabin, and the businessman himsef,
whose name is Mahrit, in Casablanca, and Arafat says:
"Prime Minister Rabin, I would like to introduce you..."
"... to a Palestinian businessman."
And Rabin sees the man who had called him years before,
remembers him and secretly tells him:
"It's our secret. Don't tell anyone."
Sometime, yesterday's enemy becomes our contact point.
My friends, it's hard.
It's so much easier to talk here in Porto than actually doing it.
Hating is so much easier, generally.
There are moments when I'm not in favour of dialogue.
It's just not always possible.
I think Chamberlain made a mistake when he talked to Hitler in 1938
who then invaded Czechoslovakia and caused the death of 60 million people.
But you need to try all the time.
It's necessary to keep trying, eye to eye, and educating for peace.
Mostly, to educate for peace.
Sadat, the Egyptian leader I spoke of,
Rabin, the prime minister who I was the last person ever to interview,
and Abraham Lincoln, president of the USA
in the decade of 60 of the 19th century,
all three were assassinated for their ideas.
They were brave but paid with their lives.
Lincoln used to say:
"The best way to destroy my enemies,"
"is to turn them into friends."
Thank you.
(Applause)