AzizAbuSarah 2014U

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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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