What would make a new Oleh living in Be’er Sheva want to start his own gaming platform? We sat down with Ziv Mor of Peace Through Gaming to tell us about his experience moving to southern Israel and starting his new gaming initiative.

Ziv was born to Israeli parents but spent most of his childhood in the US. Growing up, he always knew he wanted to move back to Israel. Ziv was always tech-oriented and worked for Altice (the company that owns HOT here in Israel), and Dell before his Aliyah. After getting married, Ziv and his wife made Aliyah and chose to settle in Be’er Sheva.

“We like Be’er Sheva a lot, it has everything you need in a city and the fact that it’s more affordable than anywhere else in the country is pretty great.

When we were planning our Aliyah, I knew I would make my idea for a gaming app to connect people across cultures happen once we got to Israel. My co-founder, Amir, is 24 years old, and he is a Palestinian studying at Hebrew University. We met a few years back through our mutual love of gaming on a platform called Rainbow Six. We started talking, and before long a friendship formed. Because of gaming, we were able to be blind to the conflict and found that even though our societies tell us we shouldn’t be friends, we were able to look past those boundaries. We thought if we are able to do that, then we are sure others can too.

In this area of the south, we see the diversity a lot more than in other parts of the world. The busses are filled with both Arabs and Israelis, and something in Be’er Sheva allows our lives here to be as diverse as I could imagine. I think that is the foundation of a great opportunity for change and innovation – when you have that honest diversity and openness around you. There is something unique about the south that allows the conflict to be calmed a little and walking around, it feels like there’s a bit more harmony. I knew that for my initiative this area would be the perfect place for making it happen, and I would be able to connect with others who had similar dreams of innovation, and of creating something in the face of a need.

My initiative is called Peace through Gaming. Gamers from a variety of nationalities and backgrounds can connect through Discord, a chatting platform for gamers, where translators will help people from different parts of the world connect via their shared language of gaming. We hope that as our community of international gamers grows, we will host live meetups based around this shared language of the game, where our relationships across cultural lines can be strengthened live and in person.”