This weekend, I was supposed to be in Jordan, floating in the Dead Sea, hugging my Bedouin friends in the Wadi Rum desert, leading a group of travelers to this country I love.
But my trip didn’t fill. I only had one person signed up, which rendered the trip impossible.
So instead, I flew to NYC to attend WITS Summit, the largest gathering of women travel creators in the world, hosted by Beth Santos and Wanderful.
I was at WITS to moderate a panel called Travel, Power, and the Role of Creators in the World on Fire.
With my brilliant co-panelists Janine Jervis, a communications director for Visit Jordan, and Dr. Anu Taranath, a University of Washington faculty member, educator, and consultant on human rights, race, and privilege, we spent an electrified 30 minutes channeling the pain, grief, and frustration so many feel.
In front of 600 people, I delivered a message that has been in my heart for the last few years.
Listen to the Episode
Check out our interview on YouTube →
A friend I met at the conference asked me, How are you?
I was honest with her, just like I will be honest with you:
Not great.
Since October 7, 2023, the Israeli government has killed at least 17,400 children. That's the equivalent of one child every 45 minutes for 18 months in a row.
In the last week alone, the Israeli government has killed at least 599 civilians.
There were more journalists killed in Gaza in the last two years than in the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, COMBINED.
Preceded by a violent occupation of Palestine in the last 77 years, this genocide, qualified as such by genocide scholars, human rights organizations, and the United Nations, is an abject failure of humanity funded by US taxpayers (at least $17.9 billion in 2024 alone).
Yet, none of this is acknowledged and discussed in the main spaces I operate in: travel and media.
I’m deeply disappointed in both.
The mainstream media industry contributes to the dehumanization of entire groups of people, twisting headlines, making language choices that normalize oppression, and failing to report on significant events like the 500,000-strong protest in London this weekend.
The travel industry talks about lofty ideals and the power of travel to connect us all. In practice, it fails to acknowledge the harm and hold even bare-minimum conversations because in this industry, corporate interests trump basic human values.
Gaza is the prism through which we can understand so many other injustices happening in our world. It’s our generation’s Vietnam War, live-streamed in front of our eyes.
The fact that we're able to go on with our lives, that this mass murder is normalized, is not ok.
As a travel creator, journalist, and storyteller human, I cannot ignore it.
I’m privileged because I can travel; I have a powerful passport. I get invited to places and spaces others can only dream of.
With this privilege comes responsibility.
For people who cannot travel or leave their homes as often or as freely, creators like me can be a powerful source for stories that humanize and add context.
We can be the channel, the vessel for people who follow our work, who may not be able to go where we go.
What we choose to cover matters.
In his New Yorker essay In Defense of Despair, Hanif Abdurraqib reminds us about our hearts. He says:
“Consider the responsibilities of the heart, responsibilities that the world will attempt to detach them from in the name of individualism, or the ever-growing realities of isolationist attitudes and power’s contempt for community.”
What is the responsibility of your heart?
We’ve been so conditioned to live our lives disconnected from our hearts that we’ve forgotten how to listen. This disconnect is harming us, killing people all over the globe, and destroying the planet. It’s time to get back to our hearts.
Individually, we may feel like we don’t have much impact. But collectively, the choices we make about who we work with, what types of stories we tell, and how we tell them–all these decisions hold power.
You don’t have to be an “expert," an “activist,” a “politically-minded person,” an Arab, or a Palestinian to care about the atrocities happening in Gaza and to do something within your sphere of influence to raise awareness, speak up, support, protest.
You just have to be human.
Thank you to the WITS Summit, Wanderful, its CEO Beth Santos, and programming director Ariel Goldberg for giving us the space and the stage.
I hope many more organizations and leaders in the travel and media spaces will be brave enough to do the same.
Going Places is an audience-supported platform.
Member discussion