Israeli, Palestinian Comics Take Show on the Road to the Heartland

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It's not every day that an Arab comedian marries a Jewish woman.

"We didn't have a bridal party. We had a U.N. peacekeeping force, right down the middle," says Ray Hanania, recalling his wedding day in a joke that caused laughter across Israel. The stand-up comic visited the Holy Land with three Jewish comedians last year during the Israeli-Palestinian Comedy Tour, a show that tries to break down cultural barriers in the strife-ridden Middle East.

The troupe has brought its act to the United States in a tour of college campuses, including a recent performance at Ohio State University.

The small band of comedians spins jokes from both sides of the bloody conflict. In Israel, they sought to ease suffering through laughter. Now they're trying to score some American laughs and dispel prevailing stereotypes of Israelis and Palestinians.

Seeing Hanania, a Palestinian American, perform alongside comedian Yisrael Campbell -- a Catholic turned Orthodox Jew -- may turn some heads, but that is entirely the point, Hanania says. Aaron Freeman, a comic who converted to Judaism, and Charley Warady, whose jokes about Israeli life and politics have graced Comedy Central, round out the group.

Breeding humor from the ashes of violence is still a relatively new phenomenon, though stand-up comics are known for building their acts around taboo subjects such as racism and prejudice.

"We don't make fun of the death and the killing, but we do make fun of the stuff that goes behind justifying it," Hanania says.

Their material mocks Hamas suicide bombers and the Israeli government in a single breath. One segment spoofing the musical "West Side Story" -- "West Bank Story" -- features lyrics such as: "When I will go back to Jerusalem, I'll start a delicatessen; all Arabs will praise to Allah, thank you for each oil dollar."

At the troupe's U.S. debut in Chicago, where they played to a predominantly Jewish audience, some jokes brought an uncomfortable pause but no boos.

"We got no complaints after the show at all," says Hal M. Lewis, a professor at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, which hosted the sold-out performance at Ohio State. "No one indicated that they thought it might be inappropriate or too much."

A former president of the Palestinian American Congress, a nonprofit activist group, and nationally syndicated columnist, Hanania is accustomed to controversy. A public disagreement with a Jewish comedian over the conflict in 2002 ended his relationship with a popular Chicago comedy club, and he was labeled a "terrorism supporter" by a conservative commentator on the Web.

"We think part of the big deal is, you know, Western perception," Hanania says. "The way people look at the conflict. The U.S. has a major influence over what happens in the Middle East."