It’s not just because my mother is from Bethlehem or that my father is from Jerusalem that makes me so concerned about peace between Palestinians and Israelis.

What happens in the Middle East directly impacts our own lives right here in America. I can’t help but to believe that if President Clinton had solved the conflict in his rush before leaving office, maybe we would not have the troubles today that made it easy for fanatics to attack America on Sept. 11 — not that the Palestinian revolution has anything to do with the Islamicism fanaticism that is spreading throughout the Arab World.

Maybe the cost of gasoline would not be so high. Maybe we wouldn’t be in Iraq today, losing three and four American soldiers’ lives every day with no hope of winning in sight.

But then, I’m a “moderate,” which is just another word for a fatalistic optimist.

So next week, I will be off on another one of my Middle East peace crusades, trying to do my little part, the make my tiny, maybe insignificant contribution towards nudging the two sides, Palestinians and Israelis into believing that peace is possible.

I’ll do another comedy tour of Israeli and Palestinian cities partnering with fellow Chicago comedian Aaron freeman and two courageous Israeli comedians, Yisrael Campbell and Charley Warady. (www.IPComedyTour.com). I will also participate in a conference on defining a vision for peace Monday June 11 at Haifa University with Professors John Myhill and Fania Salzberg. I’ll have more information posted on my web site at www.hanania.com and also here.

Warady and I met by accident. I penned an online novel called “MidNight Flight” about racial white flight from Chicago’s Southwest Side in the late 1960s that he read, discovering that he lived only a few blocks away in “Pill Hill.”

Pill Hill was where all the rich doctors lived, along with Warady’s neighbors like Curtis Mayfield and Ernie Banks.

Actually, I lived east of Jeffrey in the neighborhood called “Bill Hill” where all the patients of the doctors lived.

Warady e-mailed me around Thanksgiving. When he said he was a comedian, too, I challenged him to appear with me on stage to do what Jackie Mason refused to do back in August 2002, though the brouhaha landed us both loads of media. Warady took up the challenge without hesitation and with enthusiasm. (We just returned from a 1,200 seat performance at Toronto’s prestigious Roy Thomson Hall.)

There are 18 Arab American comedians, I’m the only one not in jail, none so far will partner with Israelis, or “the entity” as they call them. I think it is a ridiculous taboo so I decided that in order to set an example for peace, you have to break the ugly, stupid and ridiculous taboos.

We performed five sold out shows in Israel and East Jerusalem last January. Next week, we go back to do 10 more performances beginning June 7 in Tel Aviv, West Jerusalem, East Jerusalem, Haifa, Ra’anana and Beersheba in the Negev Desert.

Humor is a powerful way to diffuse anger and undermine hatred.

If we can laugh together, we can live together. I know because my wife, Alison, who is Jewish, and I celebrate 10 years of blissful marriage this July; our only conflicts involve the fact that she is a Republican and I am a Democrat. (She says the Republican Party is the Party of God. Where I come from, that’s called Hezbollah.)

Humor won’t resolve the conflict but it might help change a few minds. It’s easy to hate someone you don’t know, and harder to hate someone you do know.

Sharing laughter, laughing with someone rather than at someone as Don Imus once did, can change how people see each other.

And right now, we can use a little laughter. Not just in the Palestine-Israel conflict, but also right here in America.

Which reminds me: President Bush is concerned about the invasion of Chicago by that new and ferocious al-Qaeda sub-cell, that he calls, the “sa-Qaedas.”

(Ray Hanania’s web site is www.hanania.com.)