Word: arabism
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...audience is Jewish, the comedian an Arab. This is something of a rarity in the divided city of Jerusalem. A flutter of apprehension runs through the packed basement that is the Syndrome Club as comedian Ray Hanania takes the stage. Hanania is a Palestinian, and the Jewish audience is wondering if his jokes will strike like Molotov cocktails. "I usually perform for Arab groups in the States," Hanania says peering through the nightclub smoke at the crowd, "And this is quite a change for me... it's good to have an audience that's not hooded and shackled...
...Hanania gets a big laugh, and relief lightens the nightclub air. To the Jerusalem crowd, he may be an Arab, but he's not dangerous - just subversively funny. A few jokes into his routine, Hanania, 53, a U.S. citizen raised in Chicago, is making his Jewish audience laugh at themselves and at the luckless, ordinary Arabs living in the U.S. after 9/11 who are often branded as terrorists by their countrymen...
...Welcome to the "Israeli-Palestinian comedy tour." Organized by Hanania and American-Israeli comedian Charlie Waraday, the January tour took three Jewish and one Arab stand-up comedians to Tel Aviv and three Jerusalem venues, one of them a synagogue. They never made it into the Palestinian territories; two of the comics hold Israeli passports and are banned from travel there. The tour's aim, says Hanania, was to show that "If we can laugh together, we can live together...
...Hanania laughs and lets rip with his version: "I'm an Arab, so we read from right to left. There's only one virgin, she's 72 years old, and they promise her to everybody. That ain't paradise." Hanania adds, "The best jokes are the ones that take on the toughest topics. If we allow the tough topics to define us, we become prisoners of that crap...
...Moreover, Indyk says, the deal casts a shadow over the Administration's efforts to form a strong coalition with Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the other moderate Arab states on a range of issues, including not only the Israel-Palestinian issue but also opposing Iran's nuclear defiance and operations in Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories...