Arabs and Autophobia: II

Sousan Hammad, The Electronic Intifada, 4 April 2008

The Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour (www.ipcomedytour.com)

Four comedians recently came together in Houston, Texas “to promote peace through comedy” under the banner of the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour. However, rather than promoting a just end to the conflict, their material exploits it in a disturbing manner.

“We rely on the conflict; peace would ruin our show,” co-founder Ray Hanania said in an interview. When asked by the author if they considered performing for an audience in the West Bank, Hanania joked that he doesn’t want to get shot at by Palestinians angry at him for performing with Israelis.

Ray Hanania, a Palestinian-American journalist and Charles Warady, an American Jew who moved to Israel 12 years ago, say the group breaks the taboo of Palestinians refusing to appear and perform with Israelis. However, there are numerous artistic and non-profit organizatins (for example, the Freedom Theatre and the Palestinian Circus School) in the West Bank which have culturally collaborated with Israelis while taking a stance against the occupation, unlike how Hanania’s xenophobic image of Palesitnians would lead one to believe.

The other comedians in the group — Aaron Freeman, a Black, Jewish convert and Yisrael Campbell, an Orthodox Jew who was born a Catholic — each made their dire and desperate attempt to make people laugh. The show moves through individual acts from the comedians, each one peddling their version of a peace formula.

At the center of Freeman’s act is his description of himself as both a Black person and a Jew — a subject of constant harassment, he said. He was the first to perform on stage, and after a brief sarcastic introduction of stating his goal to end the Palestine-Israel conflict in six years, he went into a musical frenzy, emulating the dramatic singsong approach of The West Bank Story, the Academy Award-winning short film that purports to satirize the conflict but ends up reinforcing stereotypes instead.

Freeman sang the story of a patriotic Palestinian woman who falls in love with an Israeli settler, using an anti-Semitic pun to reference the phonetics of the Arabic and Hebrew languages (dramatically coughing each word in reference to the phonetics of the Arabic and Hebrew languages). Of course the Palestinian is illustrated as precarious and violent, while the Israeli is the rational actor.

In the following act, Warady describes the Arabic script as “backwards” and “tough to read,” the basis of his nonsensical explanation as to why Palestinians voted for Hamas. “They must have read ‘Hamas’ as ‘hummus’ and ‘Fatah’ as ‘pita,’” he said. Warady then goes on a tangent of how beautiful it is to live in Israel. He insists Israeli women are the world’s “hottest” and talks about this to some extent. The audience laughed, apparently not bothered by his bigotry and sexism. Meanwhile the act goes on for a dreadful 20 more minutes as Warady continues to fragment his stories about the “great life” in Israel.

The saddest portion of the night, however, had to go to Hanania, a guest columnist for Israeli publications such as The Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews. Almost every single one of his jokes focused on himself as a Palestinian Muslim, despite being an Orthodox Christian. He joked how as a child, instead of playing with a GI Joe he played with a “GI Abdallah” action figure, while his sister played with a “Fatima” doll instead of a Barbie. He then pointed at different Arab men in the audience, asking them how many wives they had.

Hanania said that after he joined the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour, he had gigs cancelled by five Arab-American organizations because of his performance alongside Israelis. But what Hanania doesn’t mention is his problematic perspective on the Palestine-Israel conflict. In December 2007, Hanania wrote an article for The Jerusalem Post titled “Getting past normalization,” in which he states Palestinians refuse to accept reality (i.e. normalization of Israeli occupation) and is critical of Palestinians for refusing to work with Israelis even when doing so would undermine their struggle against the occupation.

Ironically, this is a man who says through his comedy he is “defining the moderate Palestinian Arab voice, offering reason to the American, Israeli and Arab public,” according to his website. Yet in the same Jerusalem Post article, Hanania calls the Israeli occupation of Palestine, a “self-imposed imprisonment.”

Sixty minutes into the night, the concluding performance was finally underway with Campbell appearing on stage in his Orthodox garb. He starts off by making fun of his appearance and then going into a maelstrom narrative of his life, relating anything he said with being a convert to Orthodox Judaism. Campbell, like Warady, also decided to live in Israel and become an Israeli citizen.

The group finished with a performance once again invoking The West Bank Story and reinforced the racist characterization of Palestinians and Israelis through the Orientalist contextualization of the Arab and anti-Semitic illustration of the Jew. Both the short film and the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour claim to promote hope and peace. However, instead of bringing new clarity to this increasingly bloody conflict, they only reinforce the misunderstandings that allow it to rage on.

Sousan Hammad is a senior in journalism at University of Houston. She is the opinion editor of The Daily Cougar and a staff writer for Free Press Houston. She can be reached at sousan D O T hammad A T gmail D O T com.

Arabs for Israel (and autophobia)

I know that people are allowed to have their own opinions, and I am not one to silence them. It just strikes me as being odd that someone would support something that actively discriminates against them. For those familiar with “The Boondocks” think of Uncle Ruckus.

“The Sandmonkey” is a blog written by an Egyptian Muslim (although it appears he is not very religious) who supports the United States and is a proponent of Zionism. The first part is completely fine and somewhat logical for the average Egyptian to support a country that pours money in. It does sound off that he would support the Zionist cause. It is odd because that he would not be allowed to enter the country of Israel based on his skin tone and religion, yet he praises them for their actions. Often he degrades Muslims and falls into the same stereotypes we expect from the American south.  His blog name alone is offensive to those of us who oppose racial discrimination.

I guess part of the allure is his contempt for his own people and fellow “middle easterners” ( I should say Arabs but it might offend him). Its almost like watching Ann Coulter, you simply want to see the next train-wreck. Americans and journalists flock to him the same way they flock to others who hate their own kind (after converting to evangelical Christianity *that means you Nonie Darwish*). They systematically equate Muslims to Arabs and Arabs to Muslims. They claim that terrorism is a strictly Muslim tool. They neglect the demographics and distort the truth. Hence their popularity. I mean it comes as no surprise that their fan base is in a region that has made Bill O’reilly the most watched man in America. The opening statement on the “Arabs for Israel” website illustrates their ignorance even further

Reject hate, embrace love. Bring out the best in Islam by showing your compassion, gratitude and forgiveness. Make the holy land truly holy by giving Israel and the Jewish people the respect they deserve in their tiny little country.

Again I must be unaware of the homogeneity in the Middle East. All this time I had thought that there was more than one religious group (Christians, Zoroastrians, …) and more than one ethnicity (North Africans, Indians, Kurds, Berbers, Arabs, …). How could I have been so stupid?

When people challenge them they refer to the standard lines. Their opponents must be anti-Semitic, they must hate America, they don’t want peace, et cetera. I would think these people would want to counteract the years of stereotypes and biases that are lobbed at people from the Middle East but again they do exactly the opposite. The author of the sandmonkey even wrote:

Someone just left me an anonymous comment wondering if I could tell him what, exactly, is a sandmonkey. Hmm, A truly excellent fantastic question. let me explain… A Sandmonkey is the same thing as a Towelhead, arabiac, A-Rab, Rag, sandnigger, cameljockey, Turbanhead, dune coon, raghead(Thanks MaGdee) and-my own personal favorite- a Hasn’t-Been-Laiden. And in case you are still confused by what it means, it’s a derogatory term used to describe middle-easterners. You know, when they are not in the same room with you.

Yes, let us rejoice in being called Sand Niggers. It truly is the only way to get the respect of the Western world. I mean it has worked for blacks in America right? In a recent post he exposes his  ignorance (not the first and not the last time):

The poor penniless people of Gaza don’t seem to be really that Penniless. Between buying basic survival necessities such as Cement, Motorcycles, and Dish receivers, they have spent almost half a billion dollars there in less than 2 weeks.

Now we can look up in the CIA Factbook that the average person in the Gaza Strip makes $600 a year. He then claims  that

Now, them having that kind of money isn’t a shock really. The people who can smuggle in weapons can also smuggle in cash and food, and everyone knows that Iran is picking up that tab, so the entire Gaza diet no money thing, well, was never really logical from the get go.

If they could smuggle things in the Israeli blockade would not have an affect. They would have electricity, the sewage would not be running into the streets, and they would be living in complete luxury. They don’t, it is, and they’re not. It really is that simply.  He further claims that “the average Egyptian makes 300 pounds a month.” 5 Egyptian pounds = 90 cents (by his own admission),  so we know that is another lie.  And then he states that pita bread is 30 pounds because of the inflation due to palestinians (not for a dozen but for a single piece). So a slice of bread costs 5 American dollars and the average Egyptians only makes 60$ a month. When will the lies stop? A standard bag of pita bread is one month wage.

I don’t know what else needs to be said about people like this. He also claims that Egypt has rules against insulting the government, yet he has been blogging (with much fame) for 3 years now. The crackdown must be slow….