For more tolerance, we need more ... tourism?
00:00
I'm a tourism entrepreneur and a peacebuilder, but this is not
how I started. When I was seven years old, I remember watching
television and
seeing people throwing rocks, and thinking, this
must be a fun thing to do. So I got out to the street and threw
rocks, not realizing I was supposed to throw rocks at Israeli cars.
Instead, I ended up stoning my neighbors' cars. (Laughter) They
were not enthusiastic about my patriotism.
00:30
This is my picture with my brother. This is me, the little one, and I
know what you're thinking: "You used to look cute, what the heck
happened to you?" But my brother, who is older than me, was
arrested when he was 18, taken to prison on charges of throwing
stones. He was beaten up when he
refused to confess that he
threw stones, and as a result, had internal injuries that caused his
death soon after he was released from prison.
00:56
I was angry, I was bitter, and all I wanted was revenge.
01:04
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But that changed when I was 18. I decided that I needed Hebrew
to get a job, and going to study Hebrew in that classroom was
the first time I ever met Jews who were not soldiers. And we
connected over really small things, like the fact that I love country
music, which is really strange for Palestinians. But it was then
that I realized also that we have a wall of anger, of hatred and of
ignorance that separates us. I decided that it doesn't matter what
happens to me. What really matters is how I deal with it. And
therefore, I decided to dedicate my life to bringing down the walls
that separate people.
01:51
I do so through many ways.
Tourism is one of them, but also
media and education, and you might be wondering, really, can
tourism change things? Can it bring down walls? Yes. Tourism is
the best sustainable way to bring down those walls and to create
a sustainable way of connecting with each other and creating
friendships.
02:14
In 2009, I cofounded Mejdi Tours, a social enterprise that aims to
connect people,
with two Jewish friends, by the way, and what
we'll do, the model we did, for example, in Jerusalem, we would
have two tour guides, one Israeli and one Palestinian, guiding the
trips together, telling history and narrative and archaeology and
conflict from totally different perspectives. I remember running a
trip together with a friend named
Kobi -- Jewish congregation
from Chicago, the trip was in Jerusalem -- and we took them to a
refugee camp, a Palestinian refugee camp, and there we had this
amazing food. By the way, this is my mother. She's cool. And
that's the Palestinian food called maqluba. It means "upside-
down." You cook it with rice and chicken, and you flip it upside-
down. It's the best meal ever. And we'll eat together. Then we
had a joint band, Israeli and Palestinian musicians, and we did
some belly-dancing. If you don't know any, I'll teach you later.
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But when we left, both sides, they were crying because they did
not want to leave.
Three years later, those relationships still exist.
03:21
Imagine with me if the one billion people who travel
internationally every year travel like this, not being taken in the
bus from one side to another,
from one hotel to another, taking
pictures from the windows of their buses of people and cultures,
but actually connecting with people.
03:40
You know, I remember having a Muslim group from the U.K.
going to the house of an Orthodox Jewish family, and having
their first Friday night dinners,
that Sabbath dinner, and eating
together hamin, which is a Jewish food, a stew, just having the
connection of realizing, after a while,
that a hundred years ago,
their families came out of the same place in Northern Africa. This
is not a photo profile for your Facebook. This is not disaster
tourism. This is the future of travel, and I invite you to join me to
do that, to change your travel. We're doing it all over the world
now, from Ireland to Iran to Turkey, and we see ourselves going
everywhere to change the world.
04:21
Thank you.
04:22
(Applause)
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