LOS ANGELES — It was last summer and Israeli-Palestinian tensions were at the highest they’d been in some time when Jamie Masada hit on a formula for world peace: Forget about guns and bombs, and just tell jokes to each other.

The onetime stand-up comic is, after all, the owner of the venerable Hollywood nightclub The Laugh Factory, so the idea wasn’t unfamiliar. Still, it’s one thing to get a liquored-up audience laughing at lines like, “Take my mother-in-law — please.”

It’s another to bring people from across the world who dislike each other together — and hope they will laugh at each other. And yet, that’s what he’s trying to do with what he calls the first Funniest Person in the World competition.

Masada has scoured comedy festivals from Afghanistan to South Korea and Egypt to Israel for candidates and had online voters winnow the list to 10 semi-finalists who would perform at the Laugh Factory and before a worldwide Internet audience today.

After online voters narrow the list to five, the finalists will travel to the Laugh Factory’s sister club in Las Vegas.