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I'm a tourism entrepreneur
and a peacebuilder,

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but this is not how I started.

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When I was seven years old,
I remember watching television

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and seeing people throwing rocks,

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and thinking, this must be
a fun thing to do.

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So I got out to the street
and threw rocks,

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not realizing I was supposed
to throw rocks at Israeli cars.

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Instead, I ended up stoning
my neighbors' cars.

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They were not enthusiastic
about my patriotism.

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This is my picture with my brother.

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This is me, the little one,
and I know what you're thinking:

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"You used to look cute,
what the heck happened to you?"

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But my brother, who is older than me,

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was arrested when he was 18,

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taken to prison on charges
of throwing stones.

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He was beaten up when he refused
to confess that he threw stones,

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and as a result, had internal injuries

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that caused his death soon after
he was released from prison.

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I was angry, I was bitter,

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and all I wanted was revenge.

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But that changed when I was 18.

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I decided that I needed
Hebrew to get a job,

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and going to study Hebrew
in that classroom

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was the first time I ever met Jews
who were not soldiers.

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And we connected over 
really small things,

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like the fact that I love 
country music,

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which is really strange
for Palestinians.

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But it was then that I realized also

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that we have a wall of anger, of hatred,

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and of ignorance that
separates us.

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I decided that it doesn't matter
what happens to me.

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What really matters is how 
I deal with it.

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And therefore, I decided
to dedicate my life

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to bringing down the walls
that separate people.

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I do so through many ways.

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Tourism is one of them,
but also media and education,

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and you might be wondering,
really, can tourism change things?

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Can it bring down walls? Yes.

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Tourism is the best sustainable way

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to bring down those walls

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and to create a sustainable way
of connecting with each other

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and creating friendships.

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In 2009, I co-founded MEJDI Tours,

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a social enterprise that
aims to connect people,

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with two Jewish friends, by the way,

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and what we'll do, the model we did,

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for example, in Jerusalem,
we would have two tour guides,

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one Israeli and one Palestinian,
guiding the trips together,

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telling history and narrative
and archaeology and conflict

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from totally different perspectives.

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I remember running a trip together
with a friend named Kobi,

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Jewish congregation from Chicago,
the trip was in Jerusalem,

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and we took them to a refugee camp,
a Palestinian refugee camp,

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and there we had this amazing food.

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By the way, this is my mother. She's cool.

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And that's the Palestinian
food called maghluba.

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It means upside down.

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You cook it with rice and chicken,
and you flip it upside-down.

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It's the best meal ever.

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And we'll eat together.

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Then we had a joint band,
Israeli and Palestinian musicians,

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and we did some belly-dancing.

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If you don't know any,
I'll teach you later.

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But when we left both sides,

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they were crying because
they did not want to leave.

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Three years later, those
relationships still exist.

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Imagine with me if 
the one billion people

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who travel internationally every year

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travel like this,

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not being taken in the bus
from one side to another,

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from one hotel to another,

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taking pictures from the windows
of their buses of people and cultures,

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but actually connecting with people.

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You know, I remember having
a Muslim group from the U.K.

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going to the house
of an orthodox Jewish family,

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and having their first Friday night
dinners, that Sabbath dinner,

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and eating together khamin,
which is a Jewish food, a stew,

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just having the connection
of realizing, after a while,

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that a hundred years ago,
their families came out

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of the same place in northern Africa.

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This is not a photo profile
for your Facebook.

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This is not disaster tourism.

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This is the future of travel,

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and I invite you to join me to do that,
to change your travel.

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We're doing it all over the world now,

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from Ireland to Iran to Turkey,

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and we see ourselves going
everywhere to change the world.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)