Going to try (again) to organize an Arab-Israeli Comedy Festival in Jerusalem

You would think Arabs and Israelis hate each other. They must have some kind of issue or something between them. I know. if it were really a big story, the mainstream news media would be writing on it.

I'm going to try AGAIN to organize an Arab-Israeli comedy festival in Jerusalem. When I launched my comedy for peace drive in January 2002, the purpose wasn't to be a professional standup comedian. I'm not. It was to use comedy and humor to break through the animosity between Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis and get them to see each other as people.

The Comedy for Peace gig did not last long. We tried hard. I worked with a great TV producer and creative mind, David Lewis, who formalized the whole effort as "Comedy for Peace." We traveled to the West Bank and did a lot of interviews. David's mind never stopped working. genius and good guy. But the odds were so far against us. And everyone we encountered wanted to do it their way. By the end of 2006, we were on a difficult slope and it wasn't moving, unfortunately.

Then in November, 2006, I got an email from Charley Warady. Warady, who is Jewish, lived on Chicago's Southeast Side, where I lived. He was a few years younger than me and his friends were the younger brothers and sisters of my friends. He since moved to Israel and is doing standup comedy -- although there were no standup comedy clubs in Israel except one that didn't seem to have many shows in Tel Aviv (The Camel Comedy Club). Warady read an online book I wrote (Midnight Flight: The Story of White Flight from Chicago in the 1960s) which was about our old neighborhood in Chicago. He emailed me and he said he was a comedian. I asked him if he would be interested in doing comedy together and he was the first Israeli standup comedian to say yes.

We decided to bring in more comics. I reached out to Aaron Freeman and he reached out to Yisrael Campbell. I wanted to morph it all into Comedy for Peace but none of these guys new David and they all had their own ideas about how to do things. They ended up pushing to create a new comedy troupe called The Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour.

We didn't waste a lot of time planning and we set out to organize as many shows as we could in Israel, first, and then in Palestine. Our first show was in a place called the Syndrome in downtown West Jerusalem at the end of January 2007. We ended up doing a few shows at other locations too. In June, we came back and did more shows and included the Ambassador Hotel in East Jerusalem where we did a sold out crowd of mostly Palestinians. We did even more shows and cities in Israel then too. And we came back in December (this time with comedian Sherif Hedayat replacing Aaron Freeman who could not make the tour) and we did two shows at the Ambassador East and several in Israel.

By then, a comedy club opened in West Jerusalem at the top of Ben Yehuda Street and Sherif and I did some guest shows there too. We went on to do shows around the world including in Dublin and also Toronto where we did our biggest show at Roy Thomson Hall for some 1,800 people in the audience. We did tours of college campuses through MASA and even did Limmud in Los Angeles in 2008. This year, 2009, we did more shows including two in Upstate New York and Long Island, and also recently for an audience in upstate Pennsylvania. Houston was our favorite, although a Palestinian activist in the audience hammered us because she didn't like my two-state solution is the best ideas and because I happen to criticize not only Israelis but Palestinians, too, which is a non-no in the extremist Palestinian circles which dominate American Palestinian activism.

2010, though, will be the year we formalize a series of shows in Jerusalem. Campbell is off preparing to launch his one-man show in New York this November, but Charley and I hope to galvanize a new drive in Jerusalem for all of us and for more comedians who have courage and vision and who believe that humor is the best medicine to help the people -- not the politics -- in the Middle East.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'll make it happen.

I mean, it's not like peace is going to break out any time soon and undermine the whole premise.

-- Ray Hanania
www.RadioChicagoland.com

humor column (Jerusalem post) Is Facebook and Israeli plot to take over the world?

Humor: Is Facebook an Israeli Plot to take over the world?
By Ray Hanania

Why would the Israelis want to control the world when they are having a hard enough time trying to control themselves? Still, it's a question worth pondering especially in the age of the Internet and the rise of the Zionist conspiracy called "Facebook." Let's "faceit," Facebook has a very strong Israeli face. Well, that's if you assume all Jews are Israelis and all Israelis are Jews. The evidence suggests a link.

The founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was born on May 14, 1984. Coincidence? (Hint, Israel's birthday!) And 1984 - the subject of George Orwell's book about the battle to control the world! Zuckerberg is from New York, or, little Israel as Osama bin Laden refers to it. He launched Facebook from his dorm room at Harvard, a scholarly institution controlled by, you know who. No! Not Jews. Presbyterians. (Jews think they control the media, the Arabs believe the Jews control the media and the Presbyterians do control the media. And Presbyterians are not sure who they dislike more, Jews or Arabs.)

Palestinians complain they have an extremely difficult time on Facebook. Do they join the Zionist entity and engage in "normalization" or do they go to the Arab alternative, Berqabook?

I HAVE my own tribulations with Facebook. I have been booted from the worldwide entity twice! Coincidence? The first time, I was writing criticism of the Israeli government. The second time, just this past week, I was writing criticism of the Israeli government. (Actually, I always write criticism of the Israeli government, but so what?) Immediately after and without notice, Facebook shut my account and my 1,363 "friends" vanished off my computer "facescreen" like "born again Christians" scooped up in the rapture. (That's where Evangelical Christian supporters of Israel turn on the Jewish state and read the fine print that if Jews don't convert to Christianity, they get punished like the Muslims.)

I am slowly working my way back from "Ground Zero" and no friends to recovery. I now have 124 "friends as of this writing." What I am learning is that I now have 1,363 people who were once "friends" and who are now angry at me, thinking that I "de-friended" them. Oops! (De-friending someone to a Facebook-nick is like anti-Semitism to a Jew.) About 911 of those former "friends" are Arabs, mostly relatives. (Yes, "Hanania is my last name" has a group on Facebook.) It includes the 15 Saudis whom I don't know but who asked to be my "friend" using a library computer at Guantanamo.

But de-friending 896 relatives and Arabs is the quintessential definition of Jeeeehad! I'll never make my "fourth wife" goal at this rate.

SO I HAVE to slowly re-friend people, one-by-one, cursing my Zionist entity nemesis, "Maaaark Zuuckerberg!" Worse in all this is the jolt to my ego. I went from 1,363 "friends" to zero friends, reminding me that no matter where I live, I am little more than a Palestinian refugee in a harsh and insensitive world of YouTube videos, Twitter and podcasting.

There is something nice about not having people to argue with, though. Yes. In making "friends" on Facebook, you are actually setting yourself up for conflict, which is the dark side of the Facebook experience. The worst thing to do on Facebook is to let your heart do the talking. I've gotten into so many mini-Suez Canal wars with Israelis, but into even more "Black September" battles with Arabs.

The Americans are like "duh!" They friend me, read that I am "Arab" and then say good-bye, explaining they thought I was Puerto Rican. Americans are the most educated people in the world but the least educated about the world. They can't tell the difference between a Palestinian and a Pakistani, an Indian and an Iranian. And a good president and a moron. Well, that was before President Obama, who I love! "Yalla habeeby Barack Hussein! Luuu luuuu luuuu luuuu luuuu!" Give me a gun and I can do that celebratory dance Vanessa Redgrave did so salaciously years ago.

Maybe, though, we should use Facebook as a new forum for negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis. And make them post their views using Twitter, which forces each side to limit their disparaging comments about each side to only 140 characters, including spaces, which comes to about 35 words.

Do you know how hard it is for Arabs and Jews to insult each other in only 35 words? We can only hope. Hey Bibi. Do you want to be my friend?

(The writer is a Palestinian American comedian, columnist and Chicago radio talk show host. www.RadioChicagoland.com)

Israeli sitcom uses humor to shatter stereotypes of Arab citizens

Arab Labor: A humorous sitcom that turns tragedy into understanding

By Ray Hanania

The life of an Arab citizen is anything but funny. Just ask my relatives who live in several Israeli cities. Non-Jews in a Jewish world caught on the edge of the wall that separates Palestinians from Israelis.

Yet, that’s exactly the premise of a sitcom that was a hit last year and is in its second season on Israeli TV called “Arab Labor.”

The sitcom is the brainchild of Palestinian writer Sayed Kashua and produced by Israeli Danny Paran. Even in our everyday language, you might note, Arab citizens of Israeli are still spoken of as if they are not a part of the larger Israeli society.

A sizable 20 percent of Israel’s population, the Christian and Muslim Palestinians rarely get any real or substantive airtime on Israeli television, outside of the news reports which, like most Western media, portray them purely in a negative light.

“Arab Labor” is a mild translation of the sitcom’s Hebrew name, Avoda Aravit, which is slang for “sloppy workmanship,” a derisive stereotype of the Arabs of Israel.

Yet under all this, Kashua may have achieved one of the most brilliant portrayals of the challenging life Arabs in Israel face every day. And using humor, he may have presented it in the only way most Israelis are willing to see it, one filled with racism, suspicion, distrust and stereotypes that must be brought out into the open if they are ever to be one-day healed. Because healing is something Arabs and Israelis need very badly.

Kashua’s remarkably captivating series focuses on the life of one Arab, Amjad Aliyan (Norman Issa), a journalist working for a Hebrew language Israeli magazine. Around him are his wife (Bushra played by Clara Khoury), daughter (Maya, played by Fatma Yihye), his parents, the rascal-like Ismael (Salim Dau) and cautious Umm Amjad (Salwa Nakra). Dau happens to be the head of the Arab Theater in Haifa.

What is really impressive is how the insignificant in life becomes the symbol of the very significance of the relationship between Arabs and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis.

Each episode of the sitcom focuses on one underlying challenge set in the broader theater of life. The first episode cuts right to the chase when Amjad is driving through the checkpoints – remember, he is a “citizen” of Israel – and he wonders how is it that the Israeli soldiers know how to single him out and pull him aside for constant inspection. He asks his daughter to please make sure not to speak Arabic and greet the soldiers in English. And of course, the daughter, in her best formal and religious Arabic, warmly and effusively greets the soldiers, who immediately check all their papers.

But his Israeli friend explains the reason for his daily harassment isn’t the way he looks, dresses or “smells,” but rather the car he drives.

Amjad drives a Subaru, his friends notes. And Subarus are only driven by the most extreme Israeli settlers who wear a yarmulke on their heads, or by Arabs.

So Amjad determines to buy a new car, through his father, who negotiates a purchase price and sale price and his double-sided commissions.

But in the process of lampooning something as subtle as the car you drive, other idiosyncrasies of Arab-Israeli life emerge. If you wear a seat belt in an Israeli licensed plated car through an Arab village in Israel, you must be an Israeli undercover agent with the Shin Bet.

Amjad engages in an argument about another subtle but serious topic. Why are there more accidents in the Arab communities in Israel than in the Jewish communities? Because of Arab culture of the fact that Arab villages and cities get so little funding their roads and infrastructure are dilapidated and eroded, causing more accidents.

Only a person who lives this life can see these details and expertly turn them into a humorous debate about everyday life.

In another episode, Amjad hears from his father about an Arab shepherd who has on goat who, when the Israeli soldiers pull him over for inspection, uses his snout to pull out the shepherd’s ID card from the shepherd’s pocket. When they try to recreate the scene for the magazine story and photograph, the goat is shy. So they stage it, of course. And once everyone is gone, the goat does precisely what he was acclaimed to do.

And in another episode, Amjad and his wife discuss placing their young but clever daughter in kindergarten, rather than leaving them to learn about life from the wily roguish grandfather.

So, they enroll her at an Arab school which happens to be religious. The daughter doesn’t want to go to the school but decides to go to excess in her religious transformation to shock her father into removing her. He then takes her to an Israeli school, called the Peace School.

That sounds innocent enough until they are told they have never had an Arab enroll at the Israeli school. And yes, while the name is “Peace” they never expected it to mean it might attract Arab children to mix with the Jewish children.

Unheard of, and shocking.

Episode after episode draws the viewer through the maze of conflicts that make of the reality of Arab-Jewish life in Israel.

The sitcom is broadcast in Hebrew with English sub-titles that are easy to read and understand. Words are often mistranslated to disguise the more obvious racism that sometimes exists in dialect and speech patterns and habits.

But the biggest tragedy is that most Arabs will not be able to see “Arab Labor,” because there are no cable or TV systems that are of any real reach that can present this sitcom to the public in the United States or the in the Arab World.

The first season features 10 hilarious episodes from start to finish. You can purchase the DVD online at www.AliveMind.net. 300 minutes on 2 disks, the DVD sells for an bargain price of only $34.98. Or, you can purchase it from its American distributor, “Cinema Purgatorio” atwww.CinemaPurgatorio.com.

I urge you to get it. Not to laugh at the foibles of human tragedy, but rather to understand through the only medium that permits understanding in the emotion-charged Arab-Israeli conflict, humor.

(An award winning Palestinian American columnist, standup comedian and Chicago radio talk show host, Ray Hanania is the 2009 Winner of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He can be reached at www.RadioChicagoland.com.)

Arab Christian comedians organize fundraiser for Arab Christian member of the Israeli Knesset Oct 8 Oak Park, Illinois

I know some of you might be interested in seeing the only Chicago performance of the INFIDELS OF COMEDY Arab Christian Comedy Tour in Oak Park at the Arts Center on Wednesday October 8, 2008 at 6 :30 PM.

Attached is the press release, but it might be the only time you'll see Christian Arab comedians coming together to help a Christian Palestinian woman who is running for re-election in the Israeli Knesset with the Labor Party. This event will also help support Mar Elias Campus which is a branch of the University of Indianapolis in Ibillin in the Galilee. You can get information and tickets online at www.InfidelsofComedy.com.

Please pass it along if you can and I hope you come out to see my comedy and the comedy of two other Christian Arab comedians Nasry Malak and Maria Shehata.

Thanks
Ray hanania
www.TheMediaOasis.com
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PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ray Hanania
312-933-9855
www.InfidelsofComedy.com
August 3, 2008


Christian Arab Comedians highlight fundraiser for Nadia Hilou Christian Arab member of Israel’s Knesset October 8


Chicago – A unique troupe of Christian Arab standup comedians will be the featured entertainment at a fundraiser to be held for the Honorable Nadia Hilou, a Christian Palestinian Arab member of the Israeli Knesset with the Labor Party on Wednesday October 8, 2008 at the historic Oak Park Arts Center.

The evening will feature an overview of the challenges facing Christian Arabs in the Middle East, support of the peace process and the upcoming elections in Israel this Fall.

The comedy group, called the Infidels of Comedy, was formed by Christian Arab comedians Nasry Malak, Maria Shehata and Ray Hanania. Malak, from New York, and Shehata, originally from Ohio, are Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians. Hanania is Antiochian Orthodox Christian raised Lutheran and from Chicago.

The fundraiser will also support the Mar Elias Branch Campus in Ibillin, Galilee in the Holy Land, a branch campus of the University of Indianapolis, Indiana which offers a Christian Arab Education.

“The peace process for me is also very important,” Hilou said, former head of Social Workers for Peace and Justice in Israel.

“We have very good relations with the Palestinians and we work closely with them on joint projects. We cannot close our eyes to the difficulties but we have no other solution. In the end, there must be two states for two people siude by side in peace.”

Hilou was first elected to the Knesset in 2006. She is one of only 17 women in the Knesset, and one of only two Christian members of the Knesset. Hilou is a social worker by profession focused on the development of children, challenges facing women and the protection of the family.

The event will be held on Wednesday, October 8, 2008 at the Arts Center in Oak Park, Illinois, 200 N. Oak Park Ave., (708-366-3981) with doors opening at 6:30 PM. Tickets for the fundraiser, which includes a presentation by Knesset Member Hilou and the Infidels of Comedy American premiere performance, are $40 per person. They can be purchased online at the comedy web site www.InfidelsofComedy.com or through the organizers listed below.

“The Schools are revolutionary, the faculty and student body is Christian, Muslim, and Jewish. It is a place where all religions meet and interact on equal footing, where the value of each human being comes before their form of religion,” said Susan Drinan, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mar Elias Campus.

“The students learn, play and work together, they learn respect and tolerance instead of hate. The school represents ideas and interests for a better future for all faiths, and offers a chance for Christians to remain in the Holy Land. The Mar Elias Schools are the model, the best example for how lasting peace can be achieved.”

Tickets are $40 each.

For More Information, contact:

Ray Hanania, 312-933-9855 cell, 708-403-1203 home Susan Drinan, 630-653-8309 Order tickets online at www.InfidelsofComedy.com

EVENT INFO

Wednesday Oct. 8, 2008, 6:30 PM – 10 PM

Benefits: Fundraiser for the Honorable Nadia Hilou, member of the Israeli Knesset, Labor Party. Social worker and advocate for peace.

Also, support Mar Elias Branch Campus of the University of Indianapolis, Indiana located in Ibillin in the Galilee in the Holy Land.

Location: Arts Center of Oak Park, 200 N. Oak Park Ave, 708-366-3981

The Arts Center is a magnificent neoclassical building, an architectural gem, inside and out. Large lobby reception area, 700 seat auditorium with spacious dressing rooms and the Ernest Hemingway Museum.

Entertainment: the Christian Arab Comedy Troupe “The Infidels of Comedy” featuring Nasry Malak, Maria Sehata and Ray Hanania.

Tickets are $40 each.
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