Dubai Bling star: Silence by my cousin DJ Khaled hurts his fellow Palestinians
▶ Reality TV personality Fadie Musallet says he and his family expected more from the Grammy winner as the incessant war destroys lives and homes. Saeed Saeed reports
DI don’t think he can go there ... they are really hurt by the lack of support. They feel like they have been let down FADIE MUSALLET
Reality TV star
J Khaled will not be welcomed in Palestine, according to his cousin Fadie Musallet. The reality TV star says the Grammy Award-winning hiphop artist, who is Palestinian-American, will always be remembered for staying silent during the Israel-Gaza war.
Musallet is speaking out after returning from what he describes as his monthly visits to the West Bank where his mother lives. “Khaled always wanted to go to Palestine, but I don’t think he can go there now,” he tells The National. “They are really hurt by the lack of support. They really feel like they have been let down.”
Musallet also shares that anguish. As an event producer and entrepreneur, he understands the risks celebrities face when commenting on the current war. But the scale of destruction and lives lost – about 34,100 Palestinians have reportedly perished in the conflict – are impossible to ignore, he says.
“At some point, there must be a stage where you have to ask yourself how much money is enough, you know what I am saying?” Musallet says. “And I know that Khaled is not afraid to use his important voice as he did before, during the
Black Lives Matter protests. So what has changed now? We are all humans at the end of the day and when it comes to Palestine, we are talking about people that are our own blood.” DJ Khaled has not responded to The National on the back of Musallet’s comments. Musallet says that reckoning is in store for those artists and entertainers who financially benefited from touring the region, yet remained silent during the conflict. He admits that he’s personally reappraised some of his existing professional and personal connections within the entertainment industry in light of the conflict. Taking names out of his contact book is a significant move for someone who has built his stature in part due to his stellar Rolodex. Since moving to the UAE eight years ago, he built a career as an events manager and celebrity booker.
He was also behind the team that brought the rock band Kiss over for their record-breaking New Year’s Eve concert at Atlantis, The Palm in 2020. Musallet is also the founder of The Giving Family, a charity organisation serving meals to blue-collar workers in labour accommodation in Dubai. He says their latest Ramadan campaign led to the organisation welcoming more than 5,000 volunteers, who collectively served more than 300,000 meals throughout the holy month.
Away from his charity work, his proximity to stardom coupled with a congenial lowkey demeanour made him a compelling, if not enigmatic, cast member during the first season of Dubai Bling in 2022.
“As someone who understands branding, I was not surprised at all that the show became a success,” Musallet adds. “You can tell the Netflix guys knew what they were doing just by naming the show Dubai Bling. The show is a bit of clickbait and I do feel they wanted me to, I guess, supply more drama in the show, but I just wasn’t the kind of person to give them that.”
Musallet says it was his mother, who was watching from the West Bank, who convinced him to leave Dubai Bling after the first season, despite its international success.
“She wasn’t a big fan and she was really brutally honest with me,” he recalls with a chuckle. “She told me how she didn’t send me to Dubai to cause drama on some TV show. So after the first season, she said: ‘Well, that’s enough of that’.”
While the programme offers an entertaining, yet skewed version of the Dubai lifestyle, Musallet says Dubai Bling captures that entrepreneurial spirit coursing through the city. That sense of opportunity is what convinced him to move to Dubai from Miami and leverage his industry contacts to convince celebrities to spend time in the UAE.
In what has to be one of the best gigs in the country, Musallet would often take the likes of LeBron James and Will Smith on tours of Dubai during their free time.
“I almost look at my job at times as a kind of entertainment concierge,” he says. “Oftentimes, these celebrities will only stay here for a day or two max so I try to create these itineraries that make them see different facets of Dubai, from the must-see attractions to places that only those who live here know.”
These include private visits to At the Top viewing deck at Burj Khalifa and the Museum of the Future and a desert safari, followed by a trip to Bur Dubai to sample the grilled dishes of the famed Al Ustad Special Kabab. Established in 1978, it is one of the oldest Iranian restaurants in Dubai.
“I took everyone there from Steve Harvey to Floyd Mayweather and they all love it,” he says. “And it is these things I take pleasure in the most because it does show this side of Dubai and the UAE, where it’s cosmopolitan and people of all cultures live together with no issues. That is important ... it’s not just about the bling.”